First of all, disclaimer - these are all just my thoughts and opinions. Also this post focuses on mechanics and gameplay design not story - please keep that in mind
Game starts very strong. Almost everything clicks. Map has good layout. Fort Joy Ghetto is design is such a way that no matter where you go you will probably be fine. After Fort Joy in the swamps difficulty scales also quite nice - further east you go the more difficult encounter you will face. Gear and enemy scaling is not an issue. New initative mechanic is not a problem because of usually approximately equal number of enemies to PCs.
And then Act 2 happens and everything breaks. If you dont know where to go you will have a very bad time trying to find out. Gear starts scaling massively and do enemies which makes combat a lot more grindy. Everything is cursed and source is hard to come-by so your stuck either in cursed fire/blood or going back to the Meister cellar for refills almost every fight, till you'll have 3 max SP. With every level up lack of balance of some skill trees(eg summoning)starts to get really noticeable and slowly mindset of 'damage is all that matters' sets in. There is also that feeling of being cheated a little bit by AI because of how many actions it can perform, how sometimes you magically lose turn or their bloated stats. Act 3 is pretty much all of the same but turned up to 11.
Overall I expected it to be better, especially in the combat department. For me DOS1 was one of these RPGs that were all about mechanics not so much about story. With DOS2 I really enjoyed the story and wanted to get more of it but mechanics were and are mediocre compared to DOS1. Despite all of that I enjoyed DOS2 but I will mostly likely be not replaying it untill some bigger mods are created that at least try to fix it.
Whats your opinion on that matter?
