What's wrong with this game?

Is this the first game ever made where easy difficulty is actually hard difficulty and medium difficulty is impossible?

And it's not like I don't constantly pause and reassign appropriate skills to their full effect and synergy, I've been playing games like this a long time but this is just frustrating.

[Izno]

Hello,

The game is a challenge, and the difficulty standard is clearly above your average game, but this is the intended design.

However, we think we gave the players the tools they need to do just fine, especially in easy diffculty where the damage from mobs is pretty low.

In most cases the diffuclty is pointed at as a quality rather than a problem. I agree some of the early bosses and large group fights can be really tough, and you do need to look for the information by yourself, but nothing is unmanageable.

Good luck with the game

What I'd say is wrong with the game is the lack of replayability, not the difficulty.

In fact I'd say most mainstream games are way too easy to the point where it takes away your sense of
accomplishment when you finish them.

I played through the game twice and don't really know what else to do now, as there's no challenge left.
I guess I could try to do a speed-run and try to finish the game in record time.

Anybody else up for new challenges?

What I'd say is wrong with the game is the lack of replayability, not the difficulty.

Yes, this is mainly caused by the game deciding beforehand everything about your character i.e., skills, visuals, gender.
Shadowrun Returns' approach where you can pick every single skill you want when creating your character is much better.
It's weird they chose to do it this way.

Another thing that significantly reduces replayability is that, for the most part, game decides for you which characters you have in your party.

Another thing that significantly reduces replayability is that, for the most part, game decides for you which characters you have in your party.

I think you should finish the game first, as soon as you enter the maze in Act II you can switch your characters between fights.

Also, this is in no way different than other similar games like: Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, where you gather your party as the game progresses, and party members leave as part of their character quest. Also, the only character you really design in these games is your main character, the rest being designed beforehand.

Such a customization takes resources, that could have been otherwise used to develop other parts of the game. I understand it's nice to identify with your characters, but you don't create your characters either when you read a book or watch a movie

Shadowrun Returns' approach where you can pick every single skill you want when creating your character is much better.

I don't think Shadowrun and Aarklash are comparable. Shadowrun is more of a mix between D&D and XCOM. Whereas Aarklash would be more of a mix between DotA & Dragon Age.

Also, having so many skills available, allows for a lot of unused skills, since they only become useful during certain parts of the game.
Sometimes (not talking about Shadowrun here) you have abilities that simply buff your character's ability to talk, spending points there will then diminish their ability to fight, being left with a philosopher on the battlefield...

Too much diversity creates confusion, while limitation quite often stimulates creativity. The best part would be to take each game and look at it for what it is. Make a simple list of things you liked and things you didn't like. Perhaps things you wish would have been expanded on, so that developers can expand on your feedback for future games.

As gamers we are not entitled to dictate what a game should be like.
The devs make a game and we can choose whether to play it or not, like Sarego pointed out, AAL and SR are very different games and I like them both for different reasons and some ideas work better in certain settings.

Well given that you do not yet know that you can switch characters (or that there are more than 4 characters or even that not everyone in your party is a female), how much of the skill tree have you seen?
Do you know that skills branch out and you could choose one path over another and also that you can reassign skill points on the fly?

The amount of time you're spent posting so-called issues with the game, if you had put it into playing the game, you would have seen most of what we're saying for yourself, and at that point you'll be in a better position to evaluate the game.

This game is not perfect but is very good, imho. In a time where every game has been dumbed down, is too fast paced (when you press a button something awesome will happen..lol!) and is afraid to challenge the gamer, AAL is a breath of fresh air.
However, there are times where the game has been very frustratingly difficult, I'll accept that.