Cronstintein

Isn't AI the counter to kiting, not engagement? I never kited in the old IE games anyway, was it still powerful/exploitative with SCS? If they hadn't made weapon switching so time-intensive, that would be reasonable counter to kiting it seems. Running away? I'll start shooting at you with my gun until you stop (maybe some type of hobbling shot).

I think it's a pity Obsidian didn't steal the perk system from their own game, Alpha Protocol. It's been too many years to recall specific examples but the gist of it: You could say something bloodthirsty in a conversation and get a perk "Bloodthirsty" which would give some small buff like +2% damage. In and of themselves the buffs were too small to matter really but at the end of the game you'd have a list of perks that were direct results from the RP decisions you made. Was pretty rad. (The whole game is great except for the part where you actually play it, sad really)

Perilisk-- that idea of soul-reading the items as a way of gettin item lore is actually a really good one. Would have fit really nice thematically.

Clearly troling, but I agree with him >.< The game on hard was a steep difficulty slide after Raedrick's castle (which was cool, btw). ALL of act 2 was a snooze fest for me, combat-wise. And this isn't some e-peen contest thing, I was legitimately disheartened and bored. Some of it was the lack of challenge, some was from the lack of variety of enemy types. All the fights had a feel of 'sameness' that really lessened my enjoyment. The bounties were cool but all the other fights were of little interest. I actually felt required to hack the game with IE mod to change it to PotD difficulty which helped the difficulty if not the blandness. As for OP's mention of itemization. No one is looking for +50 might, that would actually be an example of LAZY itemization (which makes me wonder if you've played a game with good items like bg2). An INTERESTING item does something that you can't already do with spells/talents. So, for example, the figurines are reasonably interesting. The druid dagger that procs lightning touch is a so-so example. It's still a spell from the game, but at least it's more interesting than the boring +15% damage that's on most of the gear. Part of the issue is the enchanting system kind of stole the thunder from items found. W/o enchanting if you found something with +20% damage to Kith, that would seem kinda cool. As it stands it's sorta boring because you could have made that already on whatever item you want.

I agree: the stronghold, as it currently stands, is pretty crappy. But there is potential there to make it good. I was really psyched that having a prison was an option, unfortunately it was apparently made of styrofoam because people I stuck in there all escaped in under a week...

Huh you prefre IWD? I thought the combat was good but that's all there was to it. BG2 has much better story, exploration and characters. The npc companions alone are worth the price of admission. Edwin, Minsc, Korgan... love those guys! And Anomen's character quest is actually compelling and has consequences. PoE could have taken some lessons from that...

Whoah you guys don't like the stash!? I think that's one of the biggest (and only) improvements over the older IE games! Managing individual inventories is fiddly nonsense of no real strategic value. I would also accept removing garbage items from circulation as a solution and replacing them with equivalent coinage.

I don't feel like the crafting is at fault for the poor itemisation but it definitely reduces the percieved value of 90% of the found items in the game since most of them could be crafted instead. And half of the 'special' ones I found didn't even work properly... bonus attack speed % on guns does NOTHING (at least as of v1.3).

BG2 was awful. BG was better. Troll!! Where are my fire arrows... oh wait.. I don't need those anymore

I'm not sure why you put such mythical significance on one statement from Sensuki, it certainly didn't penetrate my conciousness. For you to handwave bad AI as "we ran out of time" is garbage. 80%+ of the time spent in this game is combat, if it's unfinished that's a BIG FREAKING PROBLEM. And we're not talking about a 'hole' in the AI that can be exploited. The AI is basically non-existant other than "Attaaaaaaaack!" BG2 is old, and by no means a perfect game, but playing PoE just made me want to go back and play that instead. A multitude of more interesting npc companions, powerful items, and challenging combat makes a huge difference in a game like this. For me, at least. Now the things PoE did better: +The Stash. I really appreciated the de-emphasis of inventory fiddling. +The text-based adventure things. While I think they could have been better/deeper, it's a cool idea I would like to see built upon. +Speed control. Really like being able to slow down things in combat and run fast to get around. (If anyone here starts BG2EE make sure and unlock console commands so you can teleport around on the map to get a similar experience.) +Improved pathfinding. Not perfect, but better than the old IE games by a large margin (although this was recently improved with a patch). +Art. An improvement is to be expected, but I find it rather fetching. But compared to the negatives... -Less depth in combat (no immunities. DRs can be ignored for the most part) -Less powerful/interesting itemization. -Less powerful/interesting spells. -Weak AI. -Encounter design is uninspired. -Stronghold being a waste of time/money. Debateable, I suppose, but I was left unimpressed. And Raxxor's complaints about the loading screens to get to your inn really make me wonder if anyone playtested that even once, it was super obvious. There should have been a link outside the building that would let you get directly to sleep. Instead we get Load Floor 1. Load floor 2. Sleep. Load floor 1. Load outside. That's freaking mental and hardly worth the +1 to sneak or whatever. (edit: Also the abilities don't stack!? WTF!? Spending thousands of gold to get worse bonuses than those you can get at any other inn... SMH) So in conclusion it really depends on the player. If tactical combat isn't really your jam, PoE might be an improvement. It certainly looks and plays better with some quality of life improvements over the original IE games. But if you're looking for something with meat on the bone for seriously large amounts of playtime... I think you're better off with the classics. To be fair, BG1 wasn't that great either. It's difficult to build an engine and a game at the same time. By the time the engine's done you don't have time to start a game from scratch so they're done concurrently which is hard on the pipeline. Hopefully if there's a PoE2 it's a significant jump in quality the same way BG1->BG2.

Maybe I'm not expressing myself clearly. An interesting build dilemma is when you have 2+ options and are torn between them. This system has none of that. You have 1 good option and several terrible ones. Yeah you CAN build like Aloth, or make an interupt build, but there's no point because they're comparitively awful. Now the game is easy enough that it doesn't MATTER that they're awful, you can still complete. But it doesn't create an interesting choice, hence my comment about gimmick builds (which is what you're talking about with interupt wizard). Now to be fair, the IE games didn't have this either. Basically the only 'build dilemmas' in BG were with regard to weapon proficiencies which gets super-meta since it's so gear dependant. Useful variation within classes is important if you want the character progression to remain interesting. One place where this is (almost) done right is with rogues. You can actually build a very strong gunner rogue or two-weapon rogue. I just wish the other classes had meaningful choices like that. 2 or 3 builds per class and you would have a unique-feeling party. Right now all wizards are basically nukers. If you're going to talk a big game about how all stats are useful for all classes, like they did during PoE development, then don't be surprised to hear complaints when you fail completely..

OP has very few posts, so maybe just started and got his ass handed to him in the temple. Not that surprising, that's actually a pretty hard dungeon if you go to it right away. But 20 hours laters after slogging through a multitude of bland trash mob fights that follow he'll think back on it fondly, I bet.

Ah ok, maybe I misunderstood. If you just want the bestiary entry changed, that's ok I guess! But I definitely don't want the ONLY critter in the game that will actually go for back-line party members to have that ability removed.

Truth is, PoE's attributes is among its greatest achievements: no godly attribute for any class, so you are free to explore the many build possibilities- dmg builds, fast-attacking, interrupt builds, duration builds, tanky ones. This is reinforced by the fact that attributes have less impact, so you are encouraged to try combinations without losing much. In the same time the player who enjoys min-maxing will get sth out of it. ============= I have to strongly disagree with you on this point. A wizard with anything other than maxed might/int is quite clearly sub-optimal in a way that does the opposite of what you suggest. Gimmick builds are possible but not really interesting in a way that a system like this should be. In an ideal world you would have several different builds that would be at least reasonably comparable in usefullness. That is not the case here. You could make a high-deflection wizard, but there is seriously no point. The talents don't lend themselves to building that way and you basically gimp the one thing wizards have going for them: AOE. Honestly non-prime attributes are so useless that I almost wish attributes had been removed entirely and we moved into a completely talent-based system (with more talent points overall) and gotten some build diversity that way.

Didn't read the whole thread (44 pages!) but I thought the review was acutely accurate. It brings up all the major problems I had with the game and discusses them eloquently. We aren't exactly spoiled for choice these days in the RTWP tactical rpg department so I don't fully regret my purchase, but this game is definitely not the pinacle of the genre. It did, however, get me to put another 100 hours into BG2 so thanks for that I guess.

The ONE interesting/challenging mob in the whole game and you want it nerfed. I am disappoint.

The "soul arguments" strike me as very silly. When I throw dirt in someone's eyes I'm attacking their soul? Gimme a break. Blinding oozes strikes me as equally dumb tbh. And you guys, in your rush to defend the game's unrealistic design choices, are missing the greater picture: Removing all special defenses from the enemies has resulted in combat that is completely flat. Every fight is basically the same. The way to change that is to vary the defenses/attacks of the bad guys. By making oozes immune/resistant to many common types of CC and attack, you could have an enemy that actually requires a brain-cell to combat rather than <run tanks in, attack from range> which is EVERY FREAKING FIGHT.

And somehow that didn't stop me from finishing it, interesting...

This makes me wonder if you know what a fact is. I could just as easily say "There are a few locks that can't be picked." See the problem? A FACTUAL statement would be along the lines of 5/48 locks in the game cannot be picked. (numbers are made up in this case). Also you are wrong, the vast majority of locks can be picked. I think bounties are the biggest culprit. Also doing the stronghold basement dungeon will probably skew things to a lesser extent. I was level 9 in act 2 with plenty of quests left, 7th level in the dungeon and 3 bounties under my belt. Not sure what else to tell ya!

Or maybe people just didn't think it was worth finishing, like me. I assure you I have zero problem with the difficulty. I have to say I'm falling into that camp. I'm waiting to see if there are some difficulty patches or mods before I go for the final leg. I'm not in any great rush to finish it right now. I tend not to replay games after I finish them so I'm going to wait and try and have an optimal experience. I haven't even replayed BG2 and that was my favorite game of all time (although a decade later, I'm seriously considering it since PoE has gotten me in the mood).

I thought the only difference between Hard and Path was the stat boost.

I wouldn't have as big a problem with the stealth limitation if they had given rogues some per encounter invisibility abilities. 2/rest might as well be zero as far as I'm concerned. Can't build a class/playstyle off that.

I don't think anyone's in here saying we should move to a AC & THAC0 system

I don't see how immunities make anything impossible unless you make a creature immune to all physical attacks. Then, I suppose, a full fighter army would be unable to proceed (w/o scrolls or what-have-you). Making something immune to fire/blind/sleep/poison/etc is by no means making it impossible for anyone.

I don't have a whole lot to add other than full agreement with the OP's analysis. It's a good game, but there's room for improvement.