Stun

If there were 10-20 different types of lockpicks, then I'm sure they wouldn't have made lockpicks accessible from the stash, since they'd then need to create a whole new dialogue system to allow you to choose which lockpicks you wanted to use every time you came upon a locked door or chest. But as it happens, Lockpicks in this game have a singular use and a singular effect, and tend to be consumed via mass quantities in a single shot. Unlike Potions. Alternatively, they could have just increased the stack-size of lockpicks from 5 to... say, 20 or 30, thus eliminating the need to make them accessible from stash.

What? This isn't true at all. And it isn't an Either/Or. In reality, the designers would design the encounters how they see fit. Some would end up difficult, and some would end up easy. They then give the player the tools. And then they leave it up to the player to decide how and when to use those tools. The result is that the combat ends up feeling natural, and authentically tactical, without having silly, artificial restrictions placed on the planning process. As it stands, combat in PoE, while being really fun in that instant gratification kind of way, still has this giant one dimensional malaise to it. Everything is Pavlovian reactive. When scouting is the only combat preparation you're allowed to make, the system has a tactical depth problem. Period. But I do find the "balance" argument humorous, in light of something I experienced just this morning with the game. OK, I finally made it to the bottom of the mega dungeon. Faced down the big 'Master'. Yeah. That went well. Couldn't prepare for it. Couldn't even scout (he forces dialogue). And what was the result? A total Party insta-kill. Before we could attack, before we could buff, before we could MOVE...we were dead. Excellent Balance there! Sure glad we didn't have to "tediously pre-buff!"

Since PoE is supposed to be an Infinity engine successor, This doesn't matter in the slightest. Did anyone besides Imoen (and maybe Yoshimo) have any reason whatsoever to follow you in Bg2? Nope. In fact, BG2 rubbed this so-called 'flaw" in your face. Every NPC recruitment dialogue in Bg2 goes like this: You: I must tell you, that I intend to hunt down a powerful wizard NPC: Eh? That's fine. I have nothing better to do. Lead on! Besides, I'm not quite sure how one can say that the NPCs don't have a reason to follow you in PoE. They present you with their personal quests right from the getgo. Isn't that reason enough?

I'm not. My wizard was Aloth. But I dumped him the moment I found Hiravias and discovered how vastly superior his spells were. Multiple summoning spells, multiple CC spells, multiple high damage AOEs, including the two best ally friendly AOE nukes in the game (Returning Storm and Relentless storm), Healing spells! His class simply offered more than any wizard. Period. But to answer your question, I try to play Aloth....normal-like. I open the fight with a nuke, then I disable the survivors (that's where Slicken usually came in), then I assess the situation. If many still live, I fire another Damage AOE. if only a couple remain, then I concentrate on single target spells. With Hiravias though (or any druid) you have many, many more options. Again, you can summon lesser and greater Blights. you can buff and heal your party. If you're surrounded you can cast returning/relentless storm. You can petrify, and paralyze enemies, you can whittle them down with the various CC + damage spells (infestation of maggots and the various 'vine' spells, for example)

And BG1 flooded you with scrolls and wands, so it's not like rest spamming was any sort of necessity due to the 'system' or whatever. If anything, I find myself needing to rest more in PoE, since most of the NPCs they give you in this game have zero points in Athletics and the fatigue penalties are pretty darn harsh (unlike the IE games, where they didn't actually matter at all)

To be fair, no good DM in Pen and paper AD&D is going to throw as many battles at you as the standard CRPG does either. From what I remember of my pen and paper years, the typical Adventurer's work day, was, in fact, just one or two major battles. The rest of the day was usually spent doing non-combat things. Essentially, we sometimes DID rest after one big fight.

lol Also: 1) Grimoire limited to 1 spell per level 2) Endurance/Health ratio for wizards reduced to 1:2 3) Fireball now a single target spell 4) All spells from the "Minoletta" spell line toned down to 1 missile fired 5) Wizard Godlikes (there's your oxymoron!) now lack both a head AND neck slot in the inventory 6) Grimoire swap cooldown increased by 500 seconds.

The story (and the quest) behind Bane's Imprisoned 6 was also top notch writing

Wizards. lol

Or the infinity engine games - where wizards are actually, you know, powerful. Instead of, you know, deliberately designed to be weakest class in the game. They shouldn't even be called Wizards anymore. They should be called "interns" or "Adventurer understudies"

Yep. As intended. The Anti-BG, Wizard castration process is now complete.

Grieving Mother is classic Planescape Torment narrative delivery. The first conversation you have with her isn't a conversation at all, but an ongoing.... description between 2 people. Sorta like when you first meet Vhailor with a 19+ wisdom TNO But unfortunately, in my game, she suffers from the "I found you too late, so, maybe next playthrough I'll use you in my party" thing.

Durance is my favorite. Leave it to Chris Avellone to write the perfect party freak.

^Exhibit A. Now go ahead and counter with: But, Minsc is funny! And: I can Romance Viconia in BG2 fap-fap-fap!

Oh! I guess I just imagined the blood war feud between Yxonnemai and Belhifet. The influence of Crenshinibon. The Drow betrayal of the Elven and Dwarven alliance, and the failed Mythal at the Severed Hand. The Barbarian tribes duped into trying to start a war with the 10 towns, by a dragon who successfully preserved her soul and channeled it into a revered, long dead Barbarian hero of Forgotten Realms lore. A cowardly king who betrayed Helm's chosen and the tortured-to-undeath Bard who witnessed this betrayal then invoked a Curse on the King's castle and subjects. Icewind Dale had a better written (and delivered) Story than Both Baldurs Gates. The people who say otherwise are the same simple-minded demographic that Bioware attracts with their gimmicky, teenage, beat-you-over-the-head-with it narrative style.

But It's not up to you to define metacritic's (or anyone else's) scale parameters. And talk about arrogance. You're bashing people (and calling them fanboys) because they're not using YOUR grading scale? Hey, guess what. I gave Divinity: Original Sin a 10, not because I'm a Larian shill, but because even its flaws were awesome. I haven't yet rated PoE, because I'm not done with it, but I can tell right now that I'll either end up giving it a 10, or else a 9. mainly because it totally nailed what it tried to do. It feels like one of the IE games. Obsidian promised nothing more. And ALL the IE games are 10s.

It's statistically horrific. It inflicts your ranger with -20 accuracy, -4 Might and -20 will. Eh? I hadn't thought about that. I just chose an Aumaua because they can start the game with 21 Might.

PoE has better combat than PS:T. And better exploration. It's nicer looking. It has better Choice and Consequence. And it has a better Pen and Paper feel. Is it a better game? Again, not ready to say.

What's with all the Icewind Dale hate? It had a better Story than BG1. The lore was more interesting. It lived and died on its combat and its dungeons, and it did both of them really really well. Anyway, I'm not done with PoE yet. In fact I'm not even in act 3 yet. And I'm currently only on level 8 of the mega dungeon. So I'm not ready to rank it in light of the IE games. Not specifically at least. But I am comfortable in saying that if someone were to come on here and call it "IE game #6", I wouldn't correct them

That's a weird criteria for replayability, not enough companions. You must have hated Planescape Torment (only 7 in that game). Not to mention the Icewind Dales, which had a grand total of NONE. In any case, to each his own. Though I'm not sure what companion #'s have to do with a game's replayability. Party banter, I presume? Must be. Because the only other thing that companions bring to the equation is their actual class roles, but the Adventurer's hall already covers that.... and it covers it better, since it allows you to create class combinations that the NPCs in this game can't match, like, say, a party of 6 ciphers; or a 5 monk, one wizard party. Or something even more crazy, like 6 Rangers. Yeah. 6 Rangers. That's a permanent 12 member party right there! (Can't do that in Baldur's gate!) I'm contemplating an All Barbarian party on my next playthough. I wanna see how effective Carnage is when 6 people are doing it at once. lol Actually.... Good God. Now that I think about it, PoE has so much replayability that the notion is currently Blowing my mind. Excuse me for a moment.

Oh, it's worse than that. The problem with the ranger class, period, is that the Animal companion is a gigantic liability. If it falls in battle (which is pretty much every other fight unless you manually keep it out of combat) your ranger suffers. Hard. The "Shared Grieving" penalty (or whatever it's called) is cripplingly massive. It turns the ranger from a fairly decent damage dealer to a worthless toon who misses and grazes everything for the rest of the fight. I disagree about the Barbarian, though. It's a surprisingly powerful class. I'm doing a min-maxed Aumaua, who's wielding a super powerful enchanted pike; He's wearing all the +crit multiplying gear; He's taken all the x Damage bonus talents (savage attack etc.) And right now his average damage per hit is in the 40s. He's consistently critting for 70-80 damage. Also, despite the fact that I dumped his constitution to something like 5 or 6, he's got more health than everyone in my party (something like 900, at level 8.)

And he's mis-built! A player who creates a Druid from scratch can make one twice as powerful as Hivervias.

Are we seriously having a discussion about which of the two classes has the better CC spells? Have you looked at even the lower level druid spell list? Druids have AoE paralyze spells. They have Mass Charm spells. If you're using your spell casters for CC, none will be more effective than a druid. And druids have the best Ally friendly AoE nuke in the game: Returning Storm. Not only does it do huge damage every second, but it stuns every second. So lets sum up: Summon Spells, Charm Spells, healing spells, the best CC spells. They can shape shift, and augment their shapeshifts with wild strikes. They have party buffs, and AoE enemy debuffs. They're what Wizards should have been, and would be, had someone other than Josh "I-hate-IE-wizards" Sawyer been in charge of class design for this game.

You're talking about Slicken, right? By level 9, a druid no longer needs CC. At that point he'll have massive AOE spells that nuke the battlefield for 50-100 points of damage, and he'll be able to use them 5 or 6 times a day.

Wizards are.... well, they're ok in this game, but aside from "role playing", why in the world would you create one when you could create a Druid instead? They're NOT equal. They're not even balanced. Not in the slightest. Druids are better in melee. Their single target spells are more diverse and more powerful. Their AoEs do more damage. They have party healing spells, wizards don't. They have summoning spells, wizard's don't. They're not constricted by the grimoire mechanic, wizards are. I can't think of a single area of combat where a wizard does better than a druid in PoE.