Combat in PoE1 wasn't difficult in a fun way, it was difficult in a chore-ish way, and did not vary much, the only difficult fights were those that relied on dazing or confusing characters and literally just spammed those effects. And or just bypassing fighters to kill off all off your spellcasters/healers.
Everything else was easy, and even on the next to hardest difficulty level I never had to rely on food/potions/scrolls, my party members just chopped right on through everything all on their own.
I do not find countering dazed effects to be fun in any way, there is no strategy to it, and every single things I've read about how people countered it, relied on cheesing the game mechanics and getting off the confusion or daze effects first yourself..and spamming them to win.
That is exceptionally boring compared to games like BG2, where positioning your characters matters, protecting weak characters actually resulted in them living, and spells/effects had counters that worked in a logical way and for more than a few seconds.
The stench of mmorpg cheese lays far too heavily on this franchise, which as a backer of the original game, I find very disappointing.
