I don't see any other faction that is underpowered though. Like Humanists, shraeye, town were on a roughly balanced level, though of course there was a big amount of swinginess. And Dornians - well their win condition varies so wildly that it's difficult to make any kind of judgment.
Just seemed like mafia had it good. I agree that a mafia Alien would have gone a long way to making things more balanced.
And this is not news I think, but I'm generally not a big fan of RNG elements, the random redirection thing was not a fun experience for me. The game could have played out very differently if my N1 action had hit its intended target.
That is all not to say that this wasn't an amazing setup. Like the only reason I keep talking about it is because there was so much going on. I guess I'm just a bit miffed that I got 2 scum lynched and that ended up hurting town.
I think mafia was overpowered only in comparison to the rest. All factions were pretty weak, except mafia didn't have notable weaknesses. Town was gimped by not being the majority, humanists were going in blind and I think Galzria's powers were underwhelming and hard to even reach, and shraeye needed a stroke of luck to land his NK without leaving him powerless.
One more alien would help town, but then humanists would have to be buffed...which they kinda should anyway, as ash said it himself.
Randomization is very polarizing with the amount of 1-shot abilities that were flying around. Ash called it a 1-shot lightning rod, but that has the important feature of not letting you do the NK.
It feels like the whole setup was the ultimate test to see if town knows which third-parties to lynch. In this game, it turns out you should never lynch third-party, as no one wants to kill mafia at night so you have to use the day to do that. But that's nigh impossible for town to know in advance.