- The Emperor feels more like a poorly shoe-horned plot device than ever, and that we were deprived of Daisy and the theme of losing oneself to temptations of power for him to be a constant annoyance and a thirst trap is a travesty. Anyone remotely familiar with illithid lore should know that they are beyond sexual desire and emotional attachment, and if one raises such topics, it's as blatant a manipulation as it can be.
Finally, the difficulty becomes practically non-existent, though I'd say it's less Larian's and more the system's own fault. 5e is braindead easy in general, but a Level 11 great weapon fighter trivializes it to the point of it no longer being funny anymore. When I am casting Disintegrate on the final boss out of pity of all things when I could have just kept smacking it for >100 damage per turn, it's actually quite sad instead.
I highlighted two relevant things:
First, from what I understand of illithid lore (and who knows it may have changed over the years), they are not actually beyond emotional attachment. Even mindflayers dominated by an elder brain can have thralls they treat as pets and get upset when they die. Moreover it isn't unheard of for them to occasionally retain properties of the person they sprang from. So (at least from what I know) it is not actually true that if such topics come up within an independent mindflayer that it is necessarily manipulation.
Second: The lack of difficulty is absolutely, one hundred percent Larian's fault. The absolutely absurd levels that martials can reach in this game are completely down to the ill-considered, completely unbalanced itemization and homebrew rules that they themselves put into the game. It is *resolutely* not 5e's fault, it is *not* a feature of 5e that martials become this ridiculously overpowered at 12th level, it is absolutely, *completely* Larian's own doing.
