I'm enjoying this less and less the further it goes on. The game loop is growing irritating chasing the mages around the map until finally being able to fight them, constantly interrupted by regular enemies, traps, other mages at the same time.
Overtuned is the word I will use. It just isn't fun. Even with full Rank 4 Heavy Armor mostly fully upgraded, level 63, one mistake and I'm pretty instantly dead on the Mage hunt. A combination of, what I would call, bad stamina management design and near zero iFrames. You just bounce around getting hit continually with nothing you can do about it.
It has been way too long since I played the original so won't go back. Some of it carried over to this sequel but I'll relist my annoyances. Exploration isn't encouraged. No map, once again, is just an asinine design decision for the sake of not having one. It just makes exploration more difficult when you're trying to remember 5+ biomes of doors with different key requirements. Flasks tied to gatherable resource. You can't just "test strats" because eventually you'll run out of components for flasks. Which means wasting time picking berries. Thankfully, most, spawn locations are around a bush or two. You can just about net zero if you gather them. But again, you are forced to gather every.single.time. Dumb design decision that adds to frustration and doesn't add anything positive. [the offensives flasks I could understand, maybe, but healing flasks you need to explore with]
All of that would be easier to understand except that progression is boring. Maybe it is the Paladin starter class, but the skill tree is boring. +1 str, +1 carry, +3 heavy armor. These artificial roadblocks to progression aren't really guarding anything interesting or making me care about anything. Upgrade materials are also rare and spread over 5 (?) different categories (Ashpyr, Frostpyr, Blazpyr, Voidpyr, Mosspyr, some others also I think). Barely had enough to do the one Class 4 Heavy set. God forbid if I want to experiment and try some others.
Anyways. A lot of complaining, probably b/c I've been beating my head against a mage for the last little bit so it is just piling up. Need to take a break for today and maybe come back tomorrow. Revisiting this when Fextralife is filled out with item info, maps, NPCs, Co-op, and all the other stuff would also probably be a good idea.