So what do I start playing after finishing Divinity: Original Sin 2 with Terrik, Dei, and Snuffles?
Divinity: Original Sin 2 again, of course.
Because I always overindulge in whatever I'm doing at the moment until I'm sick of it and can't ever look at it again, apparently.
Anyway, this time I'm doing a tactician mode playthrough, and so far
@Dei's gripes ring pretty true. The opponents are not particularly smarter, it's just that they seem to have more grenades and more often a fight will have a "gimmick" like having a fire immunity aura or something, when fire is CLEARLY supposed to be their weakness in vanilla mode.
Also, now that I am not rushed, I'm noticing bugs much more acutely. I swear to god my number of memory slots sometimes changes at random, and furthermore crafting recipes that I know I've learned (specifically, combining potions to make better potions) occasionally disappear from my list. Also, I've noticed things like quest updates may stop showing up for a couple minutes then suddenly they'll all spam the screen at once.
All that aside, I'm doing a lone wolf dual-wield warfare necro with a touch of polymorph, based on what I learned on my previous playthrough. Since Necromancy does physical damage, it benefits from the Warfare "5% damage boost to all physical damage" schtick (as do the polymorph attacks, naturally). I have to split my stat points between STR and INT, but the lone wolf bonus makes that less of an issue.
For my one NPC companion (Lone wolf only lets you have 1 other person in the group, instead of a full group of 4), I spoke to all 5 of the possible candidates in Fort Joy, and even did the first couple steps of some of their quests before dismissing them, and ended up going with Lohse (because of reasons you will never fucking guess that might rhyme with Dead Bear), but the further I get the more I start to kind of wish I'd gone with Sebille because her quest arc - and her personality - seem a lot more interesting. But, what's done is done, I made my choice.
I let Lohse stay with her initial default "Enchantress" build (Hydromancy/Aerothurgy), with Lone Wolf thrown in for the bonus (because might as well), but as the game progressed I found myself having her put almost everything into hydromancy and intelligence... and now she's a fucking scary cannon. On my first playthrough with the others, I was warfare/necro/hydromancy but mostly for the heals... the damage was an afterthought and it kinda showed because of my split build without being a lone wolf. With Lohse putting almost all her points into Hydro and Int, a single medium-radius AE spell is usually enough to completely strip the magic armor off of anyone it hits, which means the followup usually freezes two to three enemies solid. Also, something I didn't realize... points in hydromancy boosts ALL water damage, not just for spells. Gave Lohse a couple water wands to dual wield and she can easily pump out jawdropping damage with those alone. I'm kinda worried about what's gonna happen when I have to face her in the arena, TBH.
Anyway, in the meantime, I'm finding and completing a LOT more quests than we did as a group, and leveling up a LOT earlier, and because there's only 2 people in my party to buy equipment and spells for, I'm rolling in dough. Kind of trivializes a lot of the encounters, TBH. I mean, yeah, the first few battles in the game were really hairy, but by the time I hit level 4 it started to even out... and by the time I was 6 shit was effortless. The big battle against the Chapter 1 boss, Bishop Alexander, was hilariously cake. Now I'm 11 and in chapter 2 and nothing (within level appropriate range, of course) has really stood a chance against me.
It's slightly irritating how often I have to go back to the ship to re-spec out of persuasion into thievery and back, because so much relies on picking locks in this game... but so much ALSO relies on persuasion checks.