The game while enjoyed thoroughly has left me very conflicted. There were many things done with love and that love conveyed to me as a player, there were however quite a few moments that made me ask "WHY?". I'll split the things into 2 categories:

 

1. Gameplay, mechanics, bugs, shmugs, etc.

 

I have only one serious complaint - engagement! Sometimes you get eng. attack because of character clipping or a simple misclick if you take the bravery of ordering without pausing. The enemies get eng. attacked too sometimes because of their inability to switch targets. Overall the engagement doesn't seem to fulfill its purpose in a real time combat and leaves an impression of the fifth wheel.

 

Unresponsive consumables. Consumables are effected by the same cooldown as everything else. It wasn't so in BG. Potions had their own CD, you could qwaff them anytime. Since potions are emergency measures, because of 1 cd for every action they don't deliver their emergency role well in PoE.

 

Fast combat. It's completely ok for the combat to flow fast, but i never had the chance to use any chanter incantation.

 

OVERLOAD of everything but never what you need! Why BG was cool? Because every enchanted piece of gear mattered. I still remember where longsword+2 vascona is or which quest results in the aquisition of shield +1, +3 vs missiles, but in PoE you are stuck with unloading your stash and while the shops' selection is over the board too there sometimes just no item that your particular character needs. There comes enchanting, but it doesn't really since there is a clear disproportion in acquired materials. Everything that mobs drop is in abundance, the rest you're always lacking. And near the end the game suddenly floods you with gear and you're just too lazy to care if it's 0,0001% better or worse than yours. I never felt like changing gear mattered, and in BG I did, like always.

 

2. Story, art, etc.

 

Here I'm very conflicted. I never got into why I should antogonize the "evil" guy. The idea of delivering the story through the memories of one of your former selves is great but leaves too many plot holes and is lacking in personal relation to the player's story. There were great parts, like roderic's dilemma (very nicely done!), or defience bay main story arc, but after this I felt like I was playing some other game. The politics were gone, the motivations were forsaken.

 

Endless Paths - an utter disappointment after durlag's tower and watcher's keep.

 

The artstyle was great and very consistent until twin elms. There everything just went down the slope.

 

The game is a mobfest. I remember the demon at the end of BG2 "Why sould I kill this creature? - Because it exists!"

 

While playing I've been remembering Chris Avellone's claim that they didn't have to reset the world now like in DnD but this catastrophic CHANGE THAT WOULD PROCEED never happened.

I think I have the same feeling as you, playing an "half-finished" game, knowing that we were supposed to play a spiritual successor of BG series, I felt like playing an empty shell.

 

Nice shell though