So far I've made 4 characters, 1 made to level 3, 2 made to level 4 and the last level 5.

I've noticed so far with 4 characters, enemies score critical more despite critical fumble less. They also don't suffer from things like going berserk, schizophrenia, etc unless they're the starting mobs. Enemies also cause bleeding on players more than the other way around.

Enemies also tend to go first despite I get 9 agility on my 3 characters. My main had only gone first for once in 4 plays. Only once.

Is the game rigged?

Running away from fights despite not granting you exp also gain angst that further nerf the player.
Drinking "low addiction" alcohol "twice" and you gain alcoholism.

Note there are two different ways to "escape" fights - the second way only appears after doing enough damage, and escaping this way does give XP (and you keep anything you've already looted). That's probably the "proper" way to do combat, since I've noticed that if you don't loot everyone manually and you kill everything, you end up with far less loot than if you loot around half the bodies and then "escape".

The instant-alcoholic thing may or may not be rigged, but it's retarded either way (since addictions don't occur so fast, no matter what the substance is). I can understand making addictions occur faster than "reality" since it's a game and all, but it does seem overly easy to become an addict/alco...

Not sure about the fumbles, but so far even the most basic enemies seem to almost always go first, with only occasionally one of my team getting a first (or early) turn in the round. It could just be that the sequence calculation is ridiculously random...

I've cheated with a new character (all stats perfect 10 and all skills start at 2!)
Found out if you like character to go first, must have 10 agility and 10 sense. (which means dumbing down lots of other stats in a regular play)

Also despite every single stats at 10, my main still gets tired faster than other 2 companions.

There are fights which minions would flee once the boss is killed, and players do NOT gain any exp but still gain angst unless you kill all of them...

At level 5, I'm already at angst lv 3 and penalties are huge. :? I'm kinda bothered with the mechanic and will just try to beat the game asap now.

Don't you still get angst even when defeating all of them? It's been that way for me since most of the time, by the time I get the option to "escape", most of them are dead anyway. I haven't checked the exact angst amounts, and they seem to be at least partially random anyway - but it definitely shouldn't be more when escaping, since I thought at least part of the angst build up was related to how long your guys are exposed to the "horrors" of the enemy or something... It wouldn't surprise me if this is still buggy (and therefore possibly fixed in future).

Didn't realise you don't get XP when the boss gets killed and other enemies escape - but tbh I wasn't really paying attention since I didn't expect the battle to be over at that time so just clicked through the screen without really checking it. That definitely sounds like (yet another) bug though - can't imagine that it's intended for us not to get XP when we effectively "win" the combat...

I'm almost level 4 and have one level of angst penalty, and I'm a bit over half-way to the second level, so will probably hit that by level 5 I reckon. There are definitely some nasty angst penalties all right, but they look to be more annoying than challenging - hopefully they won't make the late game too much of a slog...

So far I've managed to avoid most combat situations via speech/science/occultism checks since I chose the aristocrat, and whenever I expect more enemies I enlist the spanish henchman (so I have four on my team) which definitely helps speed combat up a bit.