Rant after completion

I've just completed Div: OS twice and I feel like ranting a bit. I used the following characters:
Setup 1
Wizard (Lone Wolf, Glass Cannon): Maxed Int + Speed + all magic schools.
Ranger (Lone Wolf, Glass Cannon): Maxed Dex + Per + marksman, scoundrel and some utility (stealth, lockpicking, etc).

Setup 2
Knight (Lone Wolf, Glass Cannon): Maxed Str + Speed + Man-at-Arms + Blacksmithing + various defensive skills. Used a 2h almost exclusively.
Wizard (Glass Cannon): Maxed Fire, Earth, Witchcraft + a bit of utility + a few points here and there for things like healing and teleportation.
Jahan (Glass Cannon): Maxed Water, Air, Fire + a bit of utility.

Both setups ended up at around level 22, and I completed all quests except a few companion quests as far as I know.

This is going to sound a bit negative, so let me first start out by saying that I greatly enjoyed the game overall.

Puzzles
What were they thinking.. ? There are some genuinely good puzzles in the game, but others are simply terrible. Don't have Pet Pal? Ah, that's a shame. You're going to have to google a lot of puzzle answers, as the clues are usually handed out by a rat in the corner. I generally like the Pet Pal thing, but it shouldn't be mandatory like this.

Also, a puzzle isn't supposed to be "try all possibilities until you get it right". That's just brute force. How much weight to put on a plate I wonder? Let's just toss down an apple and take it from there..

And don't even get me started on the "find a tiny switch on the wall" "puzzle" that was re-used all over the place. Spending 10 minutes hunting for some incredibly small item (be it a candle, brazier or switch) is not my idea of fun, and sadly it's the primary reason the game takes so long.

Scope
I didn't use the Steam version, so I don't have exact hours. Is there any way to find it in-game?

At any rate, I have no idea how it's supposed to take 100 hours, unless the fights are taking forever or there's a lot of reloading going on. The actual amount of content is probably half of BG1 or some such thing. There are some crazy long fights (like the Hunter's Edge fight) that I guess could make the game seem much longer than it really is, but there really aren't that many locations to visit or people to talk to.

Weed out the switch hunting and incredibly long fights and it's probably a 25-30 hour game. In its current form it's probably twice that, but it definitely suffers from the DA: I syndrome of having quite a lot of time consuming crap that simply shouldn't have been present.

That's okay, however, as it's the kind of stuff that's easy to bypass when replaying it: My 2nd setup completed it very, very fast compared to the 1st one, as I already knew all the puzzles and I knew how to build a party that could stomp anything in a few turns. It was actually far more enjoyable the 2nd time around. However, replaying games makes it rather easy to notice flaws in the story and overall writing, and that's a bit of an issue, because..

Story
It just doesn't make sense. Oh, it's not as bad as the main story of ME2, or the ending of ME3, or the ending of DA2, or.. you get the point. It's just that I was expecting more, especially given references to characters like Zandalor, Bellegar and Maxos.

I get the idea that this is between DivDiv and Dragon Commander, but I started out with the feeling that Source Hunters were a relatively recent thing, but then I got told that Source was corrupted extremely long ago. In fact, I even think they used the term "eon", which I'm not a big fan of as it usually just describes "an absurd amount of time ago".

The events in question must be monumental then, but it isn't referenced in any of the games. In fact, I don't even think "Source" is mentioned. Are Maxos, Bellegar and Zandalor "Sourcerors" then? They should be, yet "Source Hunters" aren't actually mentioned in Dragon Commander, but Source should be tained there as well… or.. ?

I'm seriously confused as to the timeline of it all.

That being said, I can always ignore some inconsistencies. I was able to ignore just how flat out ridiculous the reaction of the entire galaxy was when Shepard came back from the dead, so I can ignore this as well.

What I can't ignore is the silly tone that gets mixed in all over the place. A bit of comic relief is generally a good thing (such as the rather simple orc who keeps sliding on ice), but it's way too much. This isn't South Park or the Simpsons. Larian pretty much nailed that aspect in previous games, but here they overdid it, and it kept breaking the immersion for me. There are so few good side quests that aren't silly in some way. Perhaps a handful in total, and that's not enough, sadly.

At any rate, I did overall enjoy it a lot, as I mentioned before I started ranting. The music, atmosphere, character development and so on is all top notch.

What you find irritating, I plain adored. Different tastes?
For example I adored puzzles - except the pixelhunting in some. And the sillyness gave the game an additional charm in my case. I was so crazy about it, that this is SMS notification sound on my phone:
https://app.box.com/s/viegiizfz37ag7wmxzh0

Don't ask me which nuthouse I escaped from. If I did, I don't remember.

I found the puzzles part of the game very refreshing. It was nice not having a GIANT marker point out press here to continue.

I don't think there was one thing in the game I didn't like.

No one has as many friends as the man with many cheeses.

At least that one was better than the guy in Silverglen telling every person passing by that they're his dream come true or whatever.

Yeah, I can't stand such a stupid things. I am staying away from this.

I agree with the super tiny switches. I lost a lot of time with the pirate cove one. I am excited to try the enhanced edition though.

Yes, it's strange that we haven't had more comments around here about that. I guess it's been overlooked a bit due to The Witcher 3. However, it is looking very interesting, with some really nice additions.

I probably spent about 100 hours beating it, but I agree, the length of combat was a large part of that. If I remember correctly, the final boss took about 90 minutes. It wasn't fun, just tedious. The outcome was never in doubt. The rebalancing they have done to shorten the fights is one of the main things I'm excited about in the EE.

Yes - I was seriously put off by the silliness and haven't got far in the game. Will wait until they release the extended edition before giving it another shot. I got thorougly bored by the verbosity and dullness of NPCS, maybe will have to look at a walk through to see what can be skipped next time, because some of the combat mechanics are quite neat.

Games should not dump you in a large town, right at the start, where there are so many tortuos interactions. Would have been much better if they just continued something like the tutorial dungeon, which is quite fun to play through, apart from the prevalance of urns full of junk.

Oh and the trend to make games "open world" and non linear without really thinking out the mechanics, just leads to confusing gameplay, when in fact the order of encounters is mostly linear anyway.

Yeah, I really enjoy good jokes, but this game just reminded me of Colin from the Fast Show in its strained attempts to be funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XLl6Hip_Io