That's called "game design". The game pushes you toward a certain area at first by design, because that's where the low-level enemies are. You said it yourself.
Except that, as I stated, my personal preference directly counterindicated my going toward that area. Nobody in town said "you should not go south, the enemies there are more dangerous", and the knowledge that Kasyrra was somewhere to the north made going anywhere else seem like the imperative choice, since s/he was both obviously too powerful to fight, and personally distasteful to me (as I mentioned over on the Too Futa For Me thread). As a final boss for the game, s/he works fine, but that means that whichever direction s/he appears to have gone in, I'm heading the other way pretty much without exception. Whether that makes him/her a terrible villain or me a bad player, I will let you decide. *wink*
Every RPG ever does it this way
Well, not *all* of them, but certainly most of the more popular ones.
either through only offering quests in those areas
Garth offers quests in all three directions more or less simultaneously; there's like three to the north, so some players might assume it's better to go that way and get multiple things done at once, but I generally have the opposite philosphy, preferring to have only one job on my plate at a time, so that I don't absent-mindedly forget what was going on (even having a quest log only reduces, not eliminates, the possibility of this happening; insert obligatory reference to bolting on one's own head).
or hard gating higher tier areas behind levels or some other mechanic.
Which is my preferred approach, and that's not what the game does, at least not in these instances. (There is flavor text that implies it in several places, but it's hard to tell when that's actually meaningfully binding. Mostly I only figure it out by Exploring about ten times and noting that I still haven't gotten a new path in the direction I'm trying to go.) The south gate isn't sealed, and the path east from Cait's wagon is also open; if there was a guy charging tolls or something, it would discourage blundering in those directions before being prepared. I'm not saying the game is terrible because it doesn't do this, I'm just saying that I would have personally preferred if it did.
nd if you do find yourself stepping in an area where you get one-shotted by the first NPC you meet, then that's a sign to run the fuck away and come back some other day. If you insist on going somewhere the game isn't nudging you into, then on your head be it.
Which is exactly what I did, but not until after my straight-dude character got assraped by the Crazy Horse (who attacks twice each round for some reason, so I didn't have any time to see that I was losing before I lost). Damn near ragequit the game over this.
These games don't have real-time GMs to keep you on track or adjust on the fly to moronic players. Hell, when I GM'ed D&D back in the day and my players absolutely insisted on being idiots and going to an area they weren't prepared to enter, I'd just say something like, "Fine, you arrive at the evil sorcerer's castle, walk inside and set off a trap and you all die instantly. Game over."
While these kinds of stories definitely involve an idiot player, they also tend to involve an overly inflexible hardass of a GM. A somewhat less lethal version of this message, like having all the characters blunder into a Teleport Circle instead of a Rocks Fall Everyone Dies, would obviate the need to roll up new characters. (Granted I'm given to understand this was a less onerous process back in the TSR days; I grew up playing 3E, where creating a character generally involves several hours of painstaking craftsmanship, so I have a bit more of a bias against unncessary character death. 5E has mitigated this somewhat, and amusingly every single 5E character I've played for more than two sessions has died, or in one case been given a "do this or die" bargain by a demon. I have nothing against those deaths, but that's largely due to being less invested in 5E characters, as they are so low in customization.)
I don't get it....
Enemies have levels, but just like D&D, you don't get shown them at every encounter. Your DM generally isn't going to say "oh by the way, this one is level 2," and similarly, this game doesn't.
The GM can however say something like "your character gets a gut feeling that this thing is way out of your league" or "your sixth sense warns you of extreme danger". The flavor text in COC2 occasionally does this kind of thing, but frequently lays it on equally thick for foes that have become utterly pathetic by the time you level up once (at least if you have the right party put together; Brint and Cait together are pretty much Easy Mode regardless of how badly you screw up your own build).
That said, areas also have adaptive difficulty based on character level: Harder foes like Arona and the Harpy Wingleader only show up in the foothills (east) if you're at level 3 and up, and the Manticore only appears if you're at level 2 and above.
Besides Crazy Horse, most of my worst losses were due to the goblin cultist (before I figured out that spamming Tease was the answer there) and to the Cultist Bloodletter. The harpies are annoying with flying but I can usually manage them, and the centaurs aren't that tough either. Maybe I just got really awful luck the first couple times, and that sort of imprinted my brain with the idea that I couldn't win, which made me run away too much and thus gain too little XP. Could well be my own fault, but I'm still entitled to whinge. >
Meanwhile, the southern path, the Harvest Valley, actually has level 1 and 2 enemies (albeit, most are a mixture of one at 1 and one at 2). The level 3 and 4 enemies stay away unless you ford the river. And even in the north, the Old Forest, all of the encounters except for the wolves (and the Effigies if below level 3) have enemies higher than level 1 present.
Right. My level 3 party with Brint and Cait has now gotten to the point that it can mop the floor with these guys, and I'm rather tired of them still showing up (in basically every RPG I ever played, I've wished for an auto-win system for battles sufficiently below your Challenge Rating; the industry really hasn't caught on to my perspective on this issue). For my other two characters, who are at level 2 and using only one of these companions each, I still break a sweat against even the weaker foes; I've learned to save a lot, which is always a good habit to get into.
The river makes a good barrier, although the "you will be vulnerable" warning is a bit vague, since you don't actually see the enemies before you first attempt the crossing (and this is a game with, as far as I can tell so far, no Game Over mechanic, so stumbling into the ambush doesn't result in just a quick reset to your last save point, it leaves your character having been abused and possibly corrupted with little warning). However, that is the only such clear distinction I've gotten thus far, and even then, beating the Tainted Witch gives the misleading impression that you can handle the upcoming area, where the difficulty again spikes - and, annoyingly, you have to keep fighting the Tainted Witch every time you go back and forth. That part is the only thing I'd really criticize about this design; getting a couple uniquely tough encounters, and even possibly losing them, is fine, but repeating a tough encounter you've already had twice quickly becomes tedious.
Cunning means more crit power
Wow, that's brilliant. I think I have to steal that as a D&D houserule, especially in 5E where Intelligence is the dump stat for pretty much all non-wizards.
and you take less damage, less often, from magic. Willpower means you do more magic damage and take less damage, less often from tease/mental attacks. Presence means you hit more often with tease attacks and also all of your companions get a damage buff, plus summons are stronger.
Just so I know, is all this laid out in the actual game anywhere? I would argue that it's not great if you have to read the forum for a game in order to be able to understand its basic mechanics. Granted, that's partly me being the kind of grognard who remembers when computer games came in a box with a manual that you actually had to read (often as a deliberate anti-piracy/resale effort).
The stats are very rarely needed for roleplaying
Which I would argue is a bad thing in terms of any tabletop RPG, although I'm not certain what exactly you mean in bringing it up with reference to a computer game. If you describe your character walking with a confident swagger and flexing his muscles a lot, he probably should have decent Strength and Charisma stats (unless the entire point is for him to be a ridiculous poseur).
If you're looking for meaningful choices(Which was how you introduced the point. Not sure why considering that the stats are not related to choices.)
It was mostly in reference to not being clear on the tactical utility of consumable items. For a while I hadn't figured out why anyone would care about an item that gives you extra Resolve, because I hadn't run into any of the enemies that attack it. Likewise, if I had a potion that would give me a boost to Presence, I had no clear indication of whether it would be worth spending my action drinking it, when I had no idea what would happen as a result. The default there is of course "don't", but this makes those items useless, and yet the mere fact that I got an item means I pay attention to it and have to wonder whether I should use it. It'd be nice if the game offered more of this information, even if you have to work for it a little. Eventually I started to notice where some of these answers were, but some of them remain unclear.
well, then look in the actual game. There are several things which are meaningful choices (and also a lot of moments which are just the illusion of choice because the other one shuts out the majority of the content associated with it)
*nods*
