Anyway, the more I play the game the more I like. My life got better when I realized that some bosses are optional. Playful darkness was making my want to tear out my hair -- it's level 37 min-max boss vs a level 12 party.
I had to google how to beat the bosses at the end of Drezen (
Staunton and Minagho
) just last night and I'm telling you, I very, very rarely do this (looking up on how to beat a boss). I play on hard and after clearing Drezen I more or less have an idea (or maybe I don't) what to expect from this game, and holy shit this fight was completely nuts. Eventually managed to pull it off with my very average party and far-from-optimal buffing thanks to a very lucky attack of opportunity at the end of the cutscene that automatically wrapped up the fight, and I'm not even sure what triggered that AOO. I'm about to redo this whole section because I previously skipped that bigass optional boss in the dungeon, and obviously you can't go back there after this act has been finished. I've spent 2 whole days just on this Drezen part.
Anyway, I read a reddit thread about this fight, as well as another threat in which the OP posted a screenshot showing the class split of a certain rogue/alchemist enemy that looked pretty crazy. Apparently, judging by the things people say in these threads, I think this game just gets lots of things blown way out of proportion, with insane enemies, mini bosses, insane builds with insane stats, funky ways to insta-gib aforementioned enemies, whacky difficulty spikes, "major" bosses being a joke with out-of-the-blue god-tier enemies casually thrown at your face, who promptly wipe the floor with your party, right after you've just wiped the floor with aforementioned major bosses. Some of the posters mentioned the Playful Darkness and an "easy" way to beat it. Apparently many enemies are meant to be next to impossible unless you figure out just the right solution to the puzzle.
Someone said that clearly devs didn't give a shit about "balancing". They weren't trying to challenge you through well-designed encounters. They gave you the difficulty options, then just put in things to kill you. "Makes sense", I thought.
Dunno, the optional bosses in most games are usually more difficult than story bosses, that´s why they are optional (From demogorgon or Kangaxx in bg2 to the optional bosses of FF). That´s usually what most games do. Some enemies require specific tactics to beat them. They may be difficult until you know the trick to beat them.
If when you meant "balancing" means you can beat any enemy with every party composition, every character at every level with any equipment you have, in the way skyrim and other games do.... I do not think that would be a game I want to play. Too much balancing makes things boring, makes changing tactics or switching classes or party members pointless.
PD: I assume you already read it, but in the final fight of Drezen
you just have to hurt Stanton, Minagho is almost unkillable. When the dwarf is hurt, Minagho just flees. You can also convince Nurah to double-cross them before the fight. If you target the dwarf with magic and projectiles (he curses the melee attackers with the power of his armour) you can finish the fight in 4-5 turns.
Just needs a trick that you may not get the first time you fight. And that´s a good thing, makes things more interesting than beating every fight you encounter on the first try doing the same thing.
