Haha, I hear ya. Yeah, I really enjoyed reading your play comments when you were doing your hardcore run.
I'm more normal difficulty = perfect challenge kinda of crpg guy. But I'm making progress. Got through the Drake boss on lvl.5 last night in Old Nua. Did lvl.6 with the mass skeletons everywhere too, but had to do that by getting their attention and then running back and roadblocking a hallway with my tanks.
I'm starting to do actual MMO-style tank swaps with my Fighter off-tank character & Eder whose my main tank. This essentially doubles the length I can survive a fight since when their HP (not endurance but actual HP) gets low I swap them out and bring the other tank in.
Anyhow, now that I got to lvl.7 of Old Nua, gonna go back and finish exploring Defiance Bay and doing the quests there in Act II. When I see pictures of your equipment, it puts mine to shame haha. My best swords are still like rare gold icon 14-20 damage with some bonus effects. I need to get further in the story/quests and get some higher progression loot.
Like you, I'm loving Pillars. It's one of the most fun and satisfying quest & dungeon & combat rpgs I've played in a while. BUT, the game is still a bit buggy which drives me up the wall sometime.
-I'm constantly pausing and assigning tasks in battle but way too often the pathfinding FUCKING SUCKS and my guy/gal/dog does not go where I want and it fucks up the fight. Pathfinding AI constantly has issues navigating in Old Nua imo.
-When I scroll my cursor down to select a character in pause mode to assign them tasks, too often the cursor like goes through the face portrait? And think I'm clicking WALK HERE to whoever I was previously assigning tasks to. I probably should use the keypad 1/2/3/4/5 to change between characters but I find it easier to just click on their face and then assign their next move, especially since it brings up their skills.
-The game could use better QoL fast travel than it already has. I get tired of bringing up the map, clicking on the exit point of a map, and then sitting in fast mode waiting for my team to run over to the exit point so I can exit. I'd like a more modern fast travel from the pause menu anywhere kinda thing. Like in Old Nua, if there's not a grand staircase exit on your floor, you have to run back through a few floors each time to the previous exit zzz; this isn't a huge deal, but combined with all the load screens and everything it's just a little inconvenient and with all the other modern upgrades I'd like better fast travel.
-The stronghold stuff is maddening. I constantly get notifications that someone is at my stronghold and I exit the map I'm in and head to the stronghold and by the time I get there 23+ hours have passed and the person is gone. Like I wish you could at least instant warp to your stronghold. Especially if you need to change party members or something. Otherwise I enjoy the role playing aspect of the stronghold but it does seem like a money sink. I've probably got like 20,000-25,000 gold at this point in the game and I currently am down to about 4,000 gold. I haven't bought ANYTHING besides refilling camping supplies and occasional quest where I give money to someone. All the rest has been going into buying one stronghold upgrade after another and for all the tens of thousands of gold I put into the stronghold, I'll get like 500 gold in taxes, and bandits will take 300 of it, so I'll get 200 gold -_- I googled around a bit and since release people have generally complained about the stronghold as a money sink and distraction with the bandit attacks and you basically spend all your money and waste a bunch of your time defending it just to get a few bonuses.
That stuff plus the HP/Endurance handling being kinda eh are my nitpicks. Otherwise everything else is GREAT. Tyranny really does not hold a candle to this game and I liked Tyranny. I held off on playing Pillars for all these last years because it seemed like a generic kinda crpg and I expected combat sorta like Tyranny (and people said Tyranny combat is better; maybe in very short bursts but without the dungeons and progression development it never feels fulfilling like Pillars), but the combat is super satisfying here along with the dungeon crawling.
Also having the Old Nua optional dungeon you can do at your own pace is a genius game design decision. That way whenever you want some good satisfying challenging combat, there's always Old Nua to progress further in. It's a great pacing counter to when you're doing lots of non-combat questing like where I'm at in Defiance Bay. I do a bunch of non-combat quests and then when I'm feeling the itch to fight something I go to Old Nua and do another floor or two.
And the boss fights are great >>>>>>>>>> normal fights. I get that normal fights need to exist to make the boss fights more satisfying, but the boss fights here are all really exciting and the normal fights are like auto-ai go go go and I'll just watch out and make sure no one is dying besides the wolf because he will always die.