lazyman

.. or play Planescape:Torment. It's more of adventure game anyway and is set in one of the most amazing worlds ever designed - Planescape.

This is irrelevant -- the fundamental issue is that the Project Manager (Saywer) simply doesn't believe that the Baldur's Gate games (1 or 2) were very good, and believes that the IWD games are as good as they are despite being saddled with the AD&D ruleset (e.g. they would have been better had a different ruleset been followed). If this had been widely known during the Kickstarter, I suspect that it wouldn't have been as successful as it was. Yeah .. now we have sort-of-IWD-with-different-ruleset and how does it compare to BG1/2 ... Or ToEE if we are talking only about combat ...

On another note, the major reason we lovvvv these games is *nostalgia*. For many many many of us, those experiences where among our greatest moments of gaming. You had all better apply your critique for PoE with that in mind. Sure, there are flaws, but with the feedback of a supportive community (who don't fight and be rude to each other) the game will become better, as it did within the 6 months of beta-testing. Nostalgia only? No sir. These old games overshadow Pillars in ever aspect except graphics (and even that is debatable). Sure, with proper modding tools we could do Total Overhaul mod and rebuild the game from scratch ...

What some people here don't realize (or try to avoid like plague) is that one of major reasons for success of old IE games was RPG system used - AD&D (renamed to just D&D from 3E); system well know among my generation with rich background and varied settings (so many beautiful worlds like DarkSun, Planescape .. all dead & gone now) and most importantly it was _tried and tested on humans_ during myriads of game session all over the world. Something like that is very very hard to even come close to as many who tried to make their own RPG system (and failed) can confirm.

Well, it should, shouldn't it? Look at the time difference between releases of those 2 games. Why are you people so hell bent on trying to pretend that all new(ish) games were made without any history, with no reference, no previous (similar) work to take inspiration from, etc. Was BG perfect? Hell no, but at the _time_ it was made it really breathed fresh air into dying RPG genre (and no, Fallouts didn't have the same impact because of settings that a lot of people didn't like)

Potentially not bad game, but flawed from the beginning (and ultimately doomed to fail) by Obsidian's decision to use their own RPG system instead of some tried and tested ones. Add to that mediocre execution, terrible dialogs, uninspired quests, static world, no consequences for your actions, weak itemization, terrible combat and well, you are better replaying some old masterpiece like BG2 or P:T instead of wasting time on Pillars.

Arguments could be made for 3.5 and Temple of elemental evil.

I have to admit that my troll detector has hard time determining who is trolling and who isn't in this thread, but i'll bite. .. seriously? Maybe you played different game than me and pretty much every other Daggerfall player. It was insane bugfest with incredibly bad dungeons, mechanics, combat, UI, .. I'd play first Arena any time rather than that .. thing. Such a shame, what the genre has degenerated into, that games like Skyrim sell that high, and the insult that they are consindered rpgames. I would be fine with a gaming industry where ES games appealed to a minority of the gamers, but such games being the trend... If I could describe it with 1 word, that would be 'disappointment'. Err what? PoE is for more intelligent people? Which part? Terrible combat? Abysmal story that rivals D3 in stupidity? Incredibly boring/unremarkable quests and NPCs? Dead, empty world? And why the hell shouldn't Skyrim be considered RPG?

PoE will never spawn anything exactly for the reason mentioned here - they didn't use D&D rules (or other well known P'n'P ruleset). Creating your own RPG system is dream of many players, but those few who actually attempt to make one soon realize it's *hard*. And that's why D&D is safe bet - there are entire generations who grew up with D&D of some sort, both in computers games and pen&paper. There there were millions and millions games (as in sessions) played with these rules and all "exploits" (let's call them weak links) of each edition are well known and can be avoided to a degree. PoE would have been vastly more successful with D&D simply because the target audience is/was people who are familiar with D&D or their children.

For me, nothing, PoE is vastly inferior to old IE games. The best thing about it is that it made me dig up BG2 with mods and play it again.

This should shows how limited PoE is compared to old IE games. BG2 could be played in many ways, some of them not intended by developers, but they didn't actively try to block them. With sufficient knowledge of D&D rules and location of some useful items in game (wands, scrolls), you could solo whole game with almost any class if you wanted. My favorite was always solo wizard *without* Staff of Magi. Compared to that, PoE seems like "my way or highway", everything is restricted to one narrow path we have to follow or else ...

Forget about Pillars for few months until there are patches and mods. Get BG2, Planescape: Torment and maybe IWD2.

If you love this... err.. let's say not-so-well-done combat system, you should try RPGs with proper tactical battle systems like ToEE, IWD2/BG2 etc. and then you will understand why are people complaining. But anyway, if you like battles in PoE, good for you

I bought Pillars mostly out of nostalgia, I can't really count hours spent playing all IE games and so I was really excited to try spiritual successor to them. But ... I simply can't get used to this combat system.Not just that,I hate every second of it. It's slow, prevents/hinders any tactical positioning/skill usage (stealth with multiple characters for example) and so on. So I was wondering if anyone plans to mod existing combat system into something more IE-like and if it's even possible.