I really dislike the leveling system in this one, AOD was much better. I'm now pretty deep on 2nd playthrough, and while on first one I focused purely on talking so it didn't annoy me that much, now after playing with combat oriented char, it really started bothering me that the game is designed to punish roleplaying your character and push only one extremely specific way each archetype should be going.
If your PC is built for combat, you pretty much have to go murderhobo, and get in every fight whether it logically benefits you and makes sense for your character or not, because the game actively punishes you for avoiding combat, by awarding XP for non combat skills that will be completely useless, since if you didn't invest in them in char creation, you're not going to pass any important checks anyway.
I suspect the reason why we have level-by-using thingy in this game, is purely because Vince was butthurt about people gaming the system and figuring out how to play hybrid characters, by saving up some skillpoints and using them only when they needed to pass a specific check, allowing for exploring much more content in one playthrough that was intended. So the new system is successful, as it's supposed to be doing exactly what it does - funneling players into extremely specific playthroughs.
It's really annoying tho, feels like the only real decision is made at the beginning of the game, then you're just going through one of the pre-approved routes, pure spectator to the show. Well, at least writing is still good, even if the setting is more boring than AOD, so even being heavily railroaded, it's still an enjoyable experience compared to AAA RPGs. But I still hold the opinion I had after my first playthrough, AOD is simply a superior game in nearly every aspect other than graphics.
