First time playing, the shaman killed me due to dumb luck. Second time playing, a few hours into the game, I reached a point where I was confronted with an unavoidable, unwinnable battle. Restarted. Third time playing, I was a little smarter during the intro. Still found the game needed a ton of grinding to make any progress.
I took a look at the walkthrough and found there was a whole room in the intro that I missed. There are spells and abilities that can only be accessed via this room. If you don't learn fireball in the intro, is there really no way to learn it later in the game? I think this is a huge design flaw. I was aware of the difficulty percentage after the intro but it wasn't clear if higher meant easier or harder. The percentage was lower on when I found myself on an unwinnable path.
Basically, the path of least resistance during the intro results in the most difficult main game. This punishes new players. It's interesting to include more difficult paths, but it should be more of a conscious choice for players on multiple playthroughs. There should at least be some reason to choose a difficult path, too. Instead of offering some tantalizing reward for choosing a difficult path, the entire game just becomes a punishment for a bad choice made in the first 5 minutes of play.
