I don't care about the PoE part, but I highly disagree with what comes before it.
Nostalgia was the last remaining barrier between cynical rejection and adoration for several games that I used to like. Neverwinter Nights, for example, plays poorly and the story is a cavalcade of the worst fantasy clichés, yet it takes itself seriously. I also recently replayed the original Knights of the Old Republic, which was a thoroughly disappointing experience. The gameplay is an awkward abomination of over-the-shoulder shooting and tactical RPG.
NWN and Kotor are terrible and always were.
Other games that still hold up as a whole show cracks where none were visible before.
Citation needed
The combat of the Might & Magic series has very little interesting going on and rarely takes advantage of the game's luxurious spell selection.
Nothing new.
Westwood's 'Lands of Lore' is pretty, but otherwise the game pales when compared to other, better games in its genre.
Not really, Lands of Lore has pretty good level design, it's one of the rare RT blobbers which come close to Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes back. Its combat part was never great.
One such better game is Wizardry 8, but excepting the most fanatic fans, anyone who has played it will admit that this old-school titan has an excessive amount of fights that take needlessly long to complete
Nothing new.
Though it amounts to heresy around these parts, even mighty Fallout has blemishes: simplistic combat and a shallow, unbalanced character system being the worst.
Nonsense, and I'm not particularly a Fallout fanboy. Combat is fine and adapted, and at least for a couple of playthrough the character system is certainly not shallow. I don't know what you exactly mean by unbalanced character system, but for sure you can at least play as a brute, or as a diplomat, and in both cases the game is fun, and many non-combat skills are actually used here and there.
The part of adulthood that is harshest towards enjoyment of video games is developing the curiosity to sample some actual great literature and watch a few of the choicest films. Exposition to actual quality might bring you to the realization that the games industry is stuck in a juvenile rut, and has been since the inception of the medium. These days, I find that nearly no piece of entertainment that I used to enjoy as a kid can withstand the full thrust of adult cynicism.
If you want.
Except, perhaps, the Infinity Engine games.
Wait, what? Everything but the IE games, really?
Excepting Planescape: Torment, none of them certainly constitute art in any sense of the word.
Talking like some random PC gamer journalist won't reinforce you points.
The first Baldur's Gate, for instance, takes you on what might be the closest video games have ever gotten to recreating the immaculate excitement of the earliest D&D adventure modules.
More than Pool of Radiance? Don't make me laugh.
All that is absent is starting the party at an inn.
Yes, and to some extend it kills the game, and it's even truer in Baldur's Gate 2. And the turn-based combat is absent too, of course, combat in BG is fun but not better that what we got before so there's no reason praising it.
That part is delayed until an hour into the game, where you pick up Khalid and Jaheira, whose story around a table filled with character sheets, dice and empty coke cans would most certainly begin with the words "you're sitting in an inn. Gorion's ward enters."
That's the most retarded statement in the review. "You know there's a inn somewhere, and you can even recruit pregenerated characters, so it's exactly like you made your party and started in an inn". No it's not the same.
Bringing up the rear, Planescape: Torment has by far the weakest gameplay but the strongest story and one I was surprised to find, when I replayed it last year, holds up to the scrutiny of a critical adult, now well-versed in media that aspire to more than entertainment.
Playing video games not first and foremost for entertainement is completely stupid.
It also starts to show the path that will ultimately doom BioWare's brand of RPGs, with a few of the companions acting like annoying and whiny teenagers in the middle of a world-shaking conflict.
Yes, and it's a big deal.
In all but Torment's case, the IE games' conceit of coupling modern RTS-like gameplay with the tactical, squad-based combat of traditional D&D succeeds completely, despite the concept being so at odds with itself. The games give you the frantic thrills of StarCraft's rushed micromanagement with greater input required per unit and the tactical control of a pause-button.
And why would I want rushed micromanagement and dumbbed-down input required per unit?
By the way, Darklands is a forgotten gem that any IE-fan should definitely go play.
No, Darklands is pretty good, but players don't play it for its bad rtwp combat, they play it for everything else, which don't belong in the IE games. Recommending Darklands to IE-Fans is nonsense.
Somehow, even the terribly outdated character system – "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd edition" – with its poor balance
Poor balance? Are you serious?
It is impossible to make a concise statement on the vision behind Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, because their simply was none. In the rulebook's foreword, creator Gary Gygax speaks of a creating a consistent framework for games, of adding uniformity to campaigns and of shedding the arbitrary distinctions so often present in rules systems at the time. He even speaks of the need for BALANCE™, which is ironic since it has made the Lead Designer of Pillars of Eternity, Josh Sawyer, so reviled by the same grognards who revere Gygax and who claim system design was perfected with AD&D.
Oh yes, the balance meme, you know they're talking about different things.
To start with, AD&D's biggest sin is that it is arbitrary in the most literal sense of the word: "based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system." The irony that Gygax himself mentions arbitrariness as a hazard to avoid in system design is completely baffling considering the fact that arbitrariness might well be considered the defining trait of AD&D.
Why do all attributes go from 3 to 25 specifically? Why does Strength have a special 01-100 sub-attribute only if you are a specific class and only if you have a score of exactly 18? What is the reasoning behind the reversal of the to-hit roll, asking you to go backwards on the number line instead of forward? Why do Clerics only have access to seven spell levels while Wizards have access to nine? Why do you roll for hit points until level 10 at which point you gain minor, static increases? Why does a Ranger need 150,000 experience points to progress from level 8 to 9, while a Wizard needs 45,000? Why must an Illusionist have a minimum Dexterity of 16? Why do Clerics gain bonus spells for high Wisdom, while a Wizard gains no similar bonus for high Intelligence? Why is it easier to save against the same spell cast from a rod or wand rather than if a mage cast it? Why is the difficulty of resisting a spell based solely on the target's level and not on the caster's? Why are certain combinations of multi-classing restricted from certain races? Why does dual-classing work on an entirely separate system, and how do you forget everything you learned about shooting a bow and arrow because you decide after 10 years of rangering to pick up clericing? Why is there a specific attribute for "bending bars" and why is it handled by a percentile roll when "Open Doors" is not? Why do thieving-abilities work on a completely different, percentile-based system compared to other skills and class features?
Why, why, why, why, why?
Because it works.
Most of the very best tactical cRPGs of the past are great despite the shackles of AD&D, not because of them.
No, you're wrong. They're good because of very good balance and decent variety, thanks to AD&D.
The fact is, though, that AD&D is massively inferior to nearly every rules system that has followed it.
No it's not.
