I agree, I love the environmental effects and think it adds a lot to the battles. But god damn, I can't even move my characters around without using abilities. Every damn spell makes some kind of huge zone of death or impassibility. Id say lower the area of effect from most spells, and just use a few key ones that have a larger area specifically for the purpose of blocking off areas of the field. And/or give environmental effects like a 3 turn duration
The reason I like these comments is because they show a complete misunderstanding of the first game... because the first game definitely had this as well. In fact it was WAAAY worse with skills like Firefly whose only job is to create fire land.
Why didn't it matter as much? Because you could CC or utterly destroy enemies in seconds (typically through environmental damage) long before they ever even graced your presence. Now you have to actually use those attacks closer to home. The whole Electricity and blood was in the first game as well, but I bet you didn't even notice.
To admit though this game gives enemies waaaaay more actual combat ability then the first game... Though the reason why is obvious: Because they still have to get through your armor.
No really, that is why... In the first game an archer with a single special arrow was already absolutely deadly because the entire game was a "First hit" war... It really didn't need any other attacks.
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Anyhow to me the problem isn't "Too many environmental effects" so much that there is too little environmental manipulation for a game that feels like it dialed it up to 11.
You can mitigate it through magic armor but outside of that the Warrior's best option is too valuable to use on the environment.
Then there is Bless, which is a good option to admit, especially against undead.
