I'm on one of the post-drezen quests
You have to hunt a dragon, find a spot to ambush it and then wound it enough to track it back to its lair.
It fucking sucks. I guess the idea is you have to identify a foe's weakness and exploit that, except the enemy's don't have weaknesses? Like the classic is the insane AC but low touch attack, except all the enemies like that also have gigantic spell resistance so what are you gonna touch attack it with? I don't know. Everything's stats are just so insanely high, and most of the non-SR magic is just no brainer stuff, it doesn't really feel tactical to me. It's just the enemy has insanely high stats so spend a couple minutes buffing your own stats also insanely high and ram shit together until one side breaks.
I dunno. I'm slowly losing the will to push through this. I generally like it, but it's just such a slog. It starts to feel more like work than a game. I also don't like the crusade mechanic. It's just heroes of might and magic grafted onto the regular gameplay, and it also kind of sucks. All the travel and side-mechanics in the pathfinder games just take up time that could be spent on the fun parts, which in this case aren't all that fun.
I miss the simplicity of temple of elemental evil. I've been playing Solasta on the side and it's slowly taking over the time I've been spending on Pathfinder. It's a 5e-based game, and cleaves tight to the rules in the same way TOEE and the pathfinder games do, except 5e's rules are simpler of course. Only four characters, which kind of sucks, but you customize all of them and it has a fun alignment system. Story is almost shockingly quaint, it feels like if somebody made a 50s B movie today with modern technology, that kind of quaint. The party starts in a tavern, everyone has british accents, there's a council and it's all extremely cliche but in a comfy, charming way.
The big innovator with Solasta is verticality. Maps have Z-levels that are very significant, flight is actual flight, stuff like spider climb is powerful. Lighting is also important, you actually get the normal penalties for not using light, and monsters weak to light are properly weak to it. Stealth also a thing, maps are very terrain-heavy with grid-based movement so if you get out of view you can stealth in mid-fight. It's very tactical in a way that most games like this are not.
It's the eternal struggle. I enjoy the pathfinder story but I oscillate between grudging enjoyment and "i hate this shit" on the gameplay, vs solasta which has a terrible story but really good gameplay.
Once again I wish for a simple lofi hexcrawl CRPG using an old-school ruleset. B/X, swords and wizardry, ACKS would also be interesting, not as good for a hexcrawl but a 4e game would be fun. Just please, anything but the bloated nightmares that 3.5 and pathfinder are.