[How much do you lose with hirelings in the party?]

Sadly, it doesn't seem like the game focused much on developing the traits of various companions. Mechanically, they develop no different than artificially created characters. There's no unique ability or power they gain in game due to their quest, that differentiates them. Hiravas doesn't get a new spiritshift nor an extra use of his druid shapeshift. Aloth doesn't get anything. It's probably due to the top design philosophy that a player should be able to play the game solo or with any party they want.

 

You know... I thought this was a missed opportunity. Especially with Durador. His relation with his staff in many of his conversations could have had a unique physical representation as the game progressed. I was sorf of expecting the weapon to reflect his evolution.

 

Maybe at some point that was an option in the development of the game that was discarded. Aloth, Eder and other companions, all have their unique items when you get them.

 

Back on topic, I found out after my first playthough with me and 5 companions on PoTD, that their power is good enough that it doesn't merit a min-max appoach to succeed. And that's with me being the huge noob that I am at this game. You'd also be losing quite a lot of flavor and lore (YMMV, of course) if you went with hirelings. I would recommend going with companions for your first playthrough, at least.

[Soulbound weapons.. SPOILERS!]

What I don't quite like is that there's only one ranged soulbound weapon. The rest are all melee. So if I want to use them all (and, of course, I do!), I have an overabundance of melee characters, with the collision and obstructions that brings.

[Thought/suggestion/request - Traps/secrets detactable out of sneak]

I´m also a long time RPG gamer and I find the sneak-to-find-secrets pretty annoying.

 

The secrets are there to be found, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered including those. But the mechanics to find them means you have to crawl through the whole game. That's not fun for me and, yes, I want to find them all.

 

What should happen is, if a character has high enough perception, he should say something vague like "Something's odd here" around an area with a secret, and only then you would need to sneak to find the exact location of the secret. IIRC, I think M&M11 worked like that.