It's clear that PoE is not the good, elegant game I was hoping it could be, and it's partially Josh's fault (mostly the fault of others though).
Well, I told you so.
The game (I can't stress this enough) is still great. Look at Fallout/2: They were loaded with bugs even in their final official versions, S.P.E.C.I.A.L. was unbalanced as Hell, 2/3 of the skills and perks were marginal or useless, and while the turn-based combat was serviceable, it left much to be desired—the abysmal companion AI, for a start.
If PoE had been designed as a turn-based game free of Josh's convoluted attempts to rigorously balance stats and abilities, if the companions had been more interesting, and frankly (this is just my opinion) if the economy weren't so obviously choked and throttled and bottlenecked at every turn to ensure you can only eke out a few good things here and there because BALANCE (and because the game is designed by default to curtail min-maxers and cheesers, thus annoying the crap out of people who don't do those things), PoE would be a near-perfect cRPG.