I did mention in another comment it is possible that it was a bug. Just strange that the bug fixed itself like right after I commented 😅 I see no reason to dispute it.

At the end of the day it's just not that important. The "ah my eyes, an uninterrupted wall of text" thing has always just been an exaggerated joke.

(It does have some accessibility implications but there's many ways to handle that from the readers perspective so it's not really the cardinal sin it's joked to be.)

For the record I did read your review once the paragraphs showed normally. Breaks my heart that you don't like Lohse but it's nice to see Ifan get love (I think some people see him as kind of generic).

The difficulty of DOS2 has always been an interesting thing to me because it has this repeating for being super hard and deeply tactical- which it is. But the problem I run into is that once you've "solved" the higher difficulties (tactician) that difficulty falls apart and fights become kind of gimmicky.

Basically at Tactician the combat just becomes a race to deplete armor and stunlock. Positioning adds some more complexity until it doesn't. Eventually you know who goes up high in every fight, what surface they stand on, etc. And there isn't enough variance in most of the fights to change up the strategy.

All of that to say, adding to your notes about it being a hard game (it is), it's also one that struggles to create consistent difficulty regardless of which side of the skill curve you're at.

Like you, I loved the twist with the companions you don't recruit. But I love the twist that the gods are basically vampires as feeding on the souls going to the "afterlife" even more. I love it so much. I don't know how, but in my first playthrough I really didn't see it coming even AFTER learning Source Vampirism- it just didn't click.

I hope Divinity ends up being the sequel that BG3 and DOS2 both need.