Well, I've just finished my second playthrough - by which I mean I finished chapter 3. I'd have to be stupid to willingly expose myself to the retardation of chapter 4 again. A few closing thoughts:
- The economy is completely bonkers. As I predicted, after leaving the moon crypt you never have to worry about having geld to level-up anymore. In fact, the game drops so much cash and epic-level junk loot that sells for 100k each on you, the attrition aspect flies completely out of the window after that point as well. Even without campfires around, you can just haul ass to the nearest trader and heal everyone to full for a fiver.
- There is a good game hidden under all the insanity, and I think it shines the most after you leave the moon crypt up until late chapter 3, when the obnoxious bullshit begins to appear (spider queen, the undead mob before Xadriphar). Mind you, as evidenced by the greater grap genocide posted above, some bullshit will be less bullshitty for you depending on party composition, but I dare say chapter 4 will be nothing but aggravating nonsense from start to finish nevermind what your party is.
- Otherwise, the post-moon crypt, pre-chapter 4 part of the game is very solid, and I liked most of it quite a bit. The goblin arena and goblin king are probably the highlights for me, though I also liked Pizdarra, the witch coven and the black dragon. I was also surprised at some of the small differences between this and my previous playthrough, like the different things you can do with the tome of the dead if you copy it or don't give it away to the witches. For example - Maphistor appears at the start of chap4 if you don't let the witches summon him, and you can cut a deal with him. Using the staff of reversal, he... actually joins your party.
- Party building is deffo a big strength of the game, and all the three parties I had (including the terrible one from my aborted first playthrough) played very differently, showing different strengths and weaknesses. I was particularly surprised how effective the rogue turned out to be. I was sure he'd be a deadweight, but it was quite the contrary.
- I must say I have absolutely no idea how some of you could have been restarting this game like a dozen times with different parties because you were hitting a wall at some point. I can understand hitting a wall at the moon crypt. The moon crypt is bullshit, particularly the domain of fiery rape. But after that it's mostly smooth sailing up until chapter 4 (and as I said above, every party in existence will probably get assraped in chapter 4). And I say that as someone who doesn't have too big of an idea about D&D, so it's not like my successful parties were munchkins inc., unless I somehow managed to accidentally make munchkin bands, but I strongly doubt it, given that they included "total useless shit (tm)(c)(r)" classes like sammy, rogue and storm warrior, and I never even had a single mantis or half-giant. It also boggles my mind that some of you had to do stuff like xp banking.
- Unfortunately, most of the fun stuff is wasted on the late game bullshit. Late chapter 3 already starts being "tiresome" because combat fatigue kicks in once you realise that you're basically unticking a checklist of encounters left on the map, with very little other stuff to do ("ok so i'll now do the vampire lord, then i can kill the bugmen, then use the campfire and go for the death snare and..."). Then chapter 4 simply leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Chapter 4 is an abomination that shouldn't exist. If you ask me, the spider queen is the final boss of the game, and that's that.
- Though obviously there's also plenty bullshit to come around before the late game. Domain of fiery rape in the moon crypt takes the cake in that regard for sure. I also have a love/hate relationship with the fucking sharkman druid in chapter 1 - this encounter is 75% based on luck, but at the same time something about it is kind of cool, though I can't place my finger on it. Still, another absolute bullshit thing that's been bothering me ever since I noticed it, is that all enemy casters have access to all the spells they can have at their level. This is just stupid, lazy and cheap. And even then they also often pack a bunch of mega-annoying SLAs because having full spellbooks (further bonus points if they are "dual class" casters like warlock/sorcerer) is simply not enough. And don't even get me started about the bullshit arbitrary immunities to critical hits that almost everything starts having from late chapter 3 onward - at first I thought this was just an effect of foresight, but it ain't, since you also have generic evil cultist fighters who are immune to fucking crits.
Blaaaaah.