Ok I'll take a stab at this!
Many of them are indistiguishable from their D&D counterparts.
I don't see a con here.
- There are clear dump stats, despite the game's intentions.
- Might & Intellect seem more useful than the rest, while Constitution and Perception fare poorly.
There are clear dump stats if you want to munchkin your way through the game sure. For those of us who like to experiment with more adventurous characters, the attribute system is a blessing.
Skills
Some skills (athletics, mechanics) are essential, while the rest (stealth, lore and survival) are far less useful. Skills also present few (if any) meaningful options during dialogue and other interactive sequences. When skills ARE used in dialogue, the outcomes are often underwhelming, like skipping a very minor fight.
The stealth system is pretty dumb, yes, but I would argue that lore is one of the most useful skills in the game. Give your tank 2 lore and they'll be able to cast fan of flames and jolting touch amongst others. Give them 4 for even more flexibility and it still won't ruin your character. More than worth it. As far as dialogue choices, I don't know what that dude is expecting, one of each skill dialogue check per conversation?
Talents
Utility talents are mostly useless with a few exceptions.
Hence the label 'utility'. Take them if you feel they will benefit your character. Don't if you don't.
Defensive talents are not useful to party-members who aren't on the front line.
Hyperbole, but really, no shit.
And offensive talents contain certain talents that are head-and-shoulders better than the rest.
Not counting OSA, they all have their advantages and disadvantages.
Abilities
- The abilites for each class are not properly balanced, leading to 1-2 abilties that get used heavily while the rest are rarely seen.
- Additionally, each character gets a per-encounter ability which they have no incentive NOT to use every fight, further encouraging them to hoard their per-rest abilities.
This one I actually agree with to a point. The paladin is a mess, and a few of the rogue's 'per rest' abilities should probably be 'per encounter.'
Attack/Defense
Beyond stat allocation during chargen, the player is not given many meaningful ways to improve his attack and defense stats. According to the author, a passive level gain will grant you more benefits than talents, items or buffs.
I don't see a con here.
Health/Endurance
- Having characters "pass out" when they lose their endurance encourages careless fights, as there are no penalties for "dying" during combat, and because ill effects end after every fight.
- Having healing spells heal endurance (rather than health) just means characters will take more long-term (health) damage in the fight.
It encourages careless fights until you're out of campfires and your tanks are in the red and your priest is about to all out die and you're mid-dungeon and there's a big fight coming up. Bonus points if you're playing on one save mode.
Spellcasting
- The magic system in the game closely resembles Vancian casting from D&D, spell slots per level and everything.
- According to the author, the druid overshadows both wizards and priests, who have their own issues. Druids can heal, cause damage, cast buff/debuffs, use crowd control, and use summons. A druid can also shapeshift in the middle of a fight.
- Priests have underwhelming damage spells, are not geared for frontline combat, and aren't even effective healers because healing endurance just means giving characters a chance to lose more health in combat.
- Wizards either have underwhelming spells, or 1-2 per level that are broken compared to the rest. As a result, you wind up casting the same 1-2 spells from every level.
I don't know what Vancian casting is, but I don't see a problem with it. The second point: I don't see a con here. Priests having underwhelming damage spells is just plain wrong. The Seal and Pillar spells are fantastic. Of course they're not geared for frontline combat, and that last part about healing I have no idea what he's trying to get at. Isn't giving players the ability to lose more health, if necessary, the point of healing them? I think maybe he's a bit too hung up on the Health/Endurance system.
Itemisation
- The armor system is underwhelming because it's a simple linear progression, affecting only damage reduction and recovery rate, which leads to tanks wearing the heaviest armor available, and all non-front line characters wearing the lightest possible.
Some more hyperbole here, but again, I don't see a con.
- Magic items are underwhelming and do not feel unique. There are no unique effects to be had, à la Mace of Disruption from BG2, Axe of the Jester from PS:T or the Messenger of Sseth from IWD.
First of all the examples he gave must have been made through rose tinted glasses because they're really not all that crazy unique. Secondly: Cloudpiercer War Bow, Good Friend Crossbow, St. Guaram's Spark Pistol, Mosquito Rapier, Azurieth's Stiletto, Bleak Fang Stiletto, Blesca's Labor Club, Starcaller Flail, Ritezzi's Thorn Spear, Sheathed in Autumn Sword, Rimecutter Axe, The Flames of Fair Rian Sabre, The White Spire Estoc, Wend-Walker Quarterstaff, Mabec's Morning Star -- all of these are pretty unique and fun weapons. Also if they don't feel unique enough, you can add your own stats to them via crafting.
- Crafting is uninspired and underwhelming, offering only banal options like quality, elemental damage, or stat boosts. Compare that to BG2 where when you killed the red dragon, you could make a suit of armor out of its scales that both offered a unique form of protection (vs. fire) and that was competitive with other similar armors.
He's being pretty contradictory here. It's banal and underwhelming to add a form of protection to your armor in PoE but it's unique to do so in BG. More rose tinted glasses.
Combat
Engagement
The engagement mechanic is just a retooled form of opportunity attacks. It also causes its own set of problems:
- There is no margin of error for moving while engaged, meaning that repositioning or maneuvering your tank once battle commences is challenging, and punishing.
- Engagement promotes what the author calls "MMO tactics"--namely, party roles where one character pulls attentino and aggro, while DPS-characters stand back and nuke the target.
- Enemy AI is limited, and hamstrung by engagement. Enemies will almost never bypass your tank and beeline for your vulnerable ranged characters, shadows and fampyrs excepted. Otherwise, enemies will fruitless fling themselves against your tank while they're picked off by your backline casters.
- All of this leads to a repetitive combat system, where you almost always approach battles in the exact same way.
I'm not the biggest fan of engagement either but it's not 'challenging.' 'Punishing' yes. And I don't know about that guy but when I played the old IE games I also put my fighters out front to catch the attention of the enemy frontline and let my rogues and wizards and priests hangout in mid and backfield.
Party AI
According to the author, the NPCs have terrible pathfinding, and will easily become stuck. Due to how the game processes "enemies," friendly party-members will auto-attack charmed/confused party-members if witing range
This is true and is absolutely enraging.
- Buffs
- According to the author, it is not effective to cast buffs during combat as they typically guard against the enemy's alpha strike.
- Also, the opportunity cost of casting them is frequently outweighed by the damage one could have been doing instead.
- Buffs also suffer from poor range, small AoEs, and barely-noticeable effects. Part of this is because even a buffed character must still succeed on an accuracy roll, which has a constant chance of a miss or graze.
- Wizard buffs in particular provide underwhelming benefits.
All of this is just nonsense.
- Experience
Even though you only gain experience through questing, the bulk of the game is spent fighting, which gives you diminishing returns. Because of this, it's very easy to become overleveled if you pursue sidequests.
True, but you could always skip the quests that you don't want to do your next time through the game to cut down on the overleveling.
- Dungeon design
- There is very little incentive to fully exploring maps, as there is often no compelling content (especially in the wildnerness areas), a lot of trash mobs, and lacklustre "secrets" like a chest with 150 gold coins.
- Od Nua is too formulaic. It is, as the author puts it, "a series of banal fights that stretch on for 15 floors." There is no variety in the form of a puzzle level, or an interesting underground ecosystem, and the enemies all feel copy/pasted in.
More hyperbole, but that's par for the course so far I guess. I guess I'm not sure what he is expecting here. There are plenty of instances where fully exploring will get you a nice reward. One off the top of my head is the wizardry ring you get off the side of the cliff that you go to for Sagani's questline.
- The stronghold
It is underwhelming.
True, but you do get some decent rewards as far as crafting materials and a nice 'base' for your delve into Od Nua. The quest system is a nice solution for characters that are not in your party but you want to keep on par as far as leveling goes. If the Stronghold wasn't so far away travel-wise I'd like it a lot more.
The Story
- The setting is still generic european high fantasy.
- The much-vaunted languages are either silly (ducs, erls, guls, and fampyrs instead of dukes, earls, ghouls, and vampires), while the rest of the apostrophed and accented terms all jumble together.
- The souls don't wind up feeling that unique of a focus. Souls are a catchall explanation for many things in the game.
- The quality of writing in general is underwhelming.
Again, what was he expecting the setting to be? And were the languages really 'much vaunted?' The focus on souls and how they work and what to do with them is the entire point of the game, so I don't know what he's getting at here. Also about the quality of writing, what was he expecting? The Chinese Room-level pretensiousness?
PROS
- The weapons fare well, and are decently varied.
- The encounter with the Adra dragon.
- Raedric's hold.
First point: But he just said magic items were underwhelming and did not feel unique! Second point: A spell-check encounter as a pro. Ok. Third point: I agree Raedric's Hold was a cool area/quest.[/quote][/quote]