I'm near the end of my torment playthrough (97 hours in and I only have the last main questline to complete). This is probably the best Avernum, in terms of over all design and exploration, I've ever played. If it has a flaw, I think it's that it's also probably the easiest Spiderweb Avernum to play on torment, outside of Avernum 4 (which is notoriously easy). There really haven't been any note worthy boss fights either, which is disappointing, and the combat/battle design, as a whole, really doesn't reach the heights of Avernum 6 (which has the most interesting combat of all the Avernums). The Roach Plague's final mission, which has you outrunning a wall of fire while fighting off hordes of roaches at a point when you are still very under leveled, was probably the hardest, most fun, and most memorable sequence in the entire game. The Golem factory sequences were also memorable, but for all the wrong reasons. They involved tons of incredibly tedious pushing of mirrors across massive maps using the game's completely rudimentary and frequently nonsensical control scheme. You had to use them to reflect deadly laser light to accomplish various things, which sounds cool in theory and I could see how this would have worked great in Exile III's top down engine, but it was a nightmare in the re-remakes' super tiny resolution isometric perspective. The graphics of the mirrors are so badly done that it's complete guesswork which way a mirror will point the laser.
I ended up playing a party of 1 archer, 1 priest, and 2 mages, which might be why it's too easy. I think it would have been much harder had I gone with on two magic casters and a melee character, especially since there is friendly fire on torment.
I also probably built my party too efficiently. I gave all of my magic casters enough melee points to get both 10 points in "hardiness" and adrenaline rush, which means every single one of my characters can start a battle by spamming 3 moves in a row, each, before the enemies even get a turn. Of course, it took a really long time to get to that point, so the first 1/3 of the game was incredibly hard, as I build all my characters as glass cannons with maxed offensive stats, only using traits and skills to build defenses slowly. However, the satisfaction of face-stomping everything the game throws at me in the last 1/3 is worth it.
And holy shit does this game trigger my autism. It probably has more fiddly ways to min-max than any Spiderweb game I've ever played. Not only are there high level skills limited to 10 points that can only be raised after you raise lower level skills, but you can also exceed the 10 point caps by buying trainer levels, using skill-crystals, and via quest rewards. However, you can only do this if you first max out your skills via leveling up before you buy trainers, complete quests with skill rewards, or use crystals. On top of this, there are 50 spells, each with 2 levels that can be bought and a 3rd that has to be found in a spellbook throughout the world---but you can only read the books if you have enough lore points (of which there are 3 varieties, with different books requiring differing amounts of each). Then there are a bunch of set-piece missions to find high-level gear, random crafting of weapons and armor, as well as "blessing stations" that can increase the power of your gear, but only once.....so before you use them you have to be sure that you really want to use the gear long-term.
Of course, if you want to truly min-max, it's very easy to fuck this all up. I actually restarted the game 15 hours in because I realized I fucked up my skill points, and then I fought hard against reverting to a save 10 hours previous when I realized, about 30 hours in, that I fucked up my hardiness skill leveling and screwed all of my characters out of 2 levels (I ended up not doing it and those missing points eat me alive everytime I open my characters' stat screens).
Also, I ended up liking the timer. There is more than enough time to complete everything, but it also kept me on track and kept me from spending hours mopping up quests and overleveling before I went on to the next area. Some of the main quests were way harder than they otherwise would have been because of it.
If this sounds insane it's because it probably is, but this is what really good Spiderweb games do to me. The Avadons didn't do this to me, nor did Queen's Wish or Geneforge 3 or Avernum 5 or even Avernum 4. However, Avernum 3 completely triggered every autistic neuron in my brain, which is the highest praise that I can give an RPG.
Anyhow, I probably won't finish it until this weekend, but wanted to post.
