Keep in mind this is the perspective of someone who was not in betas. I am a new player to the game, like many are now, and I believe coming at this from fresh eyes is important, because the game has a level of tedium and difficulty that will be insurmountable to all but those who are willing to do internet research, constant trial and error, and in general waste a lot more time than the average player would want to. Here is my story thus far.
It's worth noting that I have recently played Wasteland 2 (arizona only of course), Banner Saga, Watch dogs, Wolfenstein, Stick of truth, and a couple others... And that was just in June. I am a gamer. I am both very competent and at the same time I have no time for nonsense, because there's lots of fish in the ocean.
The first thing that went wrong in the game is the slow movement coupled with the constant backtracking around Cyseal in order to do somewhat boring (storywise) quests with little to no action involved. This got old quickly, and if it hadn't, it would have gotten old slowly because it takes a while.
Eventually I got out into the combat world, got to level 5, and then came across some astoundingly difficult fights. Now I realize you can cheese fights. I realize if you are a beta player you know what combos to do, how to cheese things, how to munchkin it up. I do not. Nor, from what I've read, does my party even have the makeup to effectively do any of this.
So my party of 4 first ran into trouble trying to get past a huge amount of mobs on the way to the northern cave tunnel. I only lost one character in this battle, but it was very difficult, and took I think like 20 minutes just to complete.
The robot was easy to defeat, despite the universal controller not working at all. And I tried every useful command.
The second problem, and the one that inspired me to write here, was the fight with Dietmar and his 7 thugs. Or was it 6. I don't care, it was too many. On my second attempt, I thought if I killed him quickly, the rest would scatter. No such luck. 7 vs my 4, everyone equal level. Crowd control effects sticking to my chars at a ratio of 2:1 vs what they were affected with.
There was really no way, without a lot of luck, after 3 tries, I was going to win this fight. I was beaten. I often opt to play in easy mode in games, especially those that I don't like other aspects of. But I like the PREMISE of the combat in DOS, and I wanted to stay on normal. I was forced to lower the difficulty and feel like a total loser. Thank you for that.
What was most frustrating is the weird environmental effects, the completely arbitrary splash damage on spells that are otherwise single-target, and the friendly fire issues. My ranger was often stunning HERSELF BY FIRING AN ARROW AT A CLOSE RANGE ENEMY, YET NOT STUNNING HIM. Every little puddle ended up electrifying whoever happened to be standing in it, and wasting points moving, just to take attacks of opportunity was even more punishing.
I feel my party is weak, I feel my characters are weak. By level 5 they've been given the most paltry of skill and attribute points to work with. I have played for what seems 20 hours already, maybe it's less than that, and we are only level 5.
So it's on easy now, but by forcing someone like me, who should have no problems with this (ToEE, BG, Icewind, etc games) to lower difficulty, you simply cannot consider the game top-notch. Combat shouldn't be about cheese to win, or X abilities are all better than Y abilities.
Keep in mind, the game has lots of good aspects, but I see very little criticism along these lines, so I feel it has to get out there.
I disagree with everything, honestly.
This type of game is not meant to be played quickly. Your problem is you had an expectation of what the play experience was supposed to be like, but it was unduly applied to this game.
The fight with the pirates is meant to be difficult. However, if you burn down the captain first, it spawns several other enemies. If anything, you should figure this out the first time fighting him, if you can't beat him.
There are probably a lot of other reasons you're having difficulty. You should take your time and progress to the beach cave slowly. I was lv6 or 7 by the time I finally went there.
Also, you need to diversify your party a bit. It's easy to make characters fall into strict RPG roles, but you're better off with a little synergistic diversity.
ALSO, some of the fights are going to be very difficult without AOE effects, and you're meant to use statuses and terrain to win fights. If your enemies are within a level of your party, there's no reason you shouldn't win a fight.
All of your sentiments seem to indicate that you are playing the wrong game, but none of these complaints are objective AT ALL.
The fights you describe as astounding difficult, I merely found challenging. The slow movement, I had no issues with by using waypoints. The Roderick fight was very hard, but once i realized that burning him down spawned more enemies, the fight was easy. The "arbitrary" nature of environmental effects are things I learned from and utilized to my advantage. I feel my party is strong because i've taken the time to make them work together.
And I don't know what you even mean here about needing to cheese, unless by cheese you mean actually pay attention to how environmental effects work, understand how to build characters, and actually equipping them well.
