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so, been playing all weekend, come to check out the forums in my downtime and the whole board is swarming with complaints, praises are few and far in-between, all the while the game is doing exceptionally well on Steam and with reviewers. so, I'm guessing people who like it are playing the game and not wasting their time on these forums. this thread is a call to action, then. if you like the game, make a thread about it. preferably describing what exactly you like about it. here goes my part of singing praises to Obsidian. first of all, PoE is fantastic. it looks great, plays great, sounds great, not too short, not too long, delivers the proper Black Hound experience and is nominally worse than New Vegas (really, good luck surpassing that game, which is pretty much the greatest RPG of the last decade). anyway, great job, guys! now for details. I'll start with combat, which has been the soar point for a lot of you, fellow forumites. I think it's absolutely fantastic. yes, some of the mechanics it relies on are bugged, but it's still enjoyable, when the encounter design permits it (that's a big caveat, though). a lot of people are bashing the combat based on two things: pathfinding and disengagement attacks. personally, I think they complement each other quite nicely. it's so satisfying to see enemy AI get intercepted by my tanks when the enemy is bee-lining for my back line, it's so cool to see enemies change their mind when they see they're being overwhelmed and switch targets. the whole system just clicks, I don't know how else to explain it. the only downside is lack of diversity in enemy types. most of them are either humanoid or wildlife with no unique abilities that make an encounter unlike previous ones (with a few notable exceptions *waves at Shadows*) it's still miles better than Baldur's Gate. where PoE falls a little short is combat encounters. too many of them (at least on Normal) are easily resolved with nothing but per encounter abilities. which makes them a chore. but, there are quite a few encounters that actually made me consider my choices carefully, it's certainly not IWD level of awesome, not even IWD 2 level (which is what Obsids should've been shooting for, since PoE is such a combat-heavy game), but still fun. really, for me the fact that encounter design is better than Torment's combat is good enough. I'll skip the progression system, because I think it's good at what it's trying to do. next, locations. they're gorgeous, and most of the dungeons have at least two ways of going through them, coupled with the fact that you don't get combat XP and the only incentive to explore the whole thing is PHAT LEWT, this gives me the chance to go straight for the objective, which is a nice change of pace after games like BG 2, where I can't stop myself from killing everything just to squeeze out an extra level up or two. I'm really running out of things to say, because I love just about everything about this game. yeah, there are a few things I'd like to see changed, but I'll post that in another forum (the feedback one).