So I fought the Tax Collector again. I knew about her tricks but went in role-playing the party without metagaming any preparations. She won the initiative and one-shot the entire party because everyone had quite a bit of gold. So I had no choice but to reload, metagame, and dump all gold before fighting her. And then it was an effortless snooze-fest of a fight. From an impossible extreme to a boring easy fight. It wasn't fun the first time around, and it wasn't fun the second time around. What's the point of such combat design?
Grym is the same but his "puzzle" is even more obvious. Abuse the gamey targeting AI and bludgeon him to death. It doesn't really matter if the party is level 4, level 8 or level 15. Once an easy puzzle is cracked, it's not a fight anymore. Beating it feels more like cheating than the characters being particularly skilled at anything. How's that supposed to feel rewarding in an RPG if character development and character skill doesn't matter?
The game punishes the player for role-playing the encounters. Combat design that forces the player to metagame in an RPG should be a huge red flag. That is, using knowledge the player has but the characters shouldn't have.
