I very much enjoy the game, but find those opponents difficult to enjoy.
The problem is not difficulty, but tediousness and lack of fun.
Alp: this is sluggish. Alps are spread out and spam those shadows next to my brothers. My archers are inadequate because it is nighttime and their melee sucks. Best way is to have a wardog on each brother to get more attacks per turn. Even then, running through all of the nightmares takes forever. There is no tactic, no thinking, just destroy them all, slowly, until I can reach each alp. An alternative to speed up the process would be to pick footwork on some high damage melee bros. Those are already perk-starved.
Even the previous iteration with alps putting my bros to sleep felt faster and less tedious.
Shrat: massive resilience and they try not to get surrounded, so it’s all about splitting the shield and doing as much damage as possible in one turn. Again, not much thinking is involved: just optimize the damage output on one target. This is a chore, it’s not exciting.
Hex: I know I am going to fight and wound my own brothers, both with the charm and the curse, when the whole game taught me to protect my guys.
What tools do I have against the charm? They cast it from a massive range and it is impossible to avoid reliably on all brothers. So I can use nets or bash my own brothers, while trying to get close. This is very risky and they are often accompanied by tanks (shrats or unholds).
On those encounters, I play less while watching my bros go down. Preventing a player from playing is generally viewed as a flawed design.
Maybe the charm range could go down to nets/throwing weapons or the hex could create a replica of the brother with the exact same stats?
On the other hand, I find the spiders and unholds more exciting. Their fights are dynamic and there are more options/choices.
I have yet to encounter a kraken.
Sorry about the negative tone, I love the game and hope the devs keep working on it.
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