I'm going to address the magic system section.
The issue is not just the scarcity of hard counters and the lack of distinction between high-level and low-level spells, but *diversity* in magic. The bulk of the arsenal in Pillars of Eternity is stat buffs, stat debuffs, movement buffs, movement debuffs, and damage spells. Had AD&D's magic system been comprised of stat buffs, stat debuffs, movement buffs, movement debuffs, and damage spells, then it also would've sucked ass. But that was not the case. AD&D had classes of spells that PoE doesn't even begin to match:
Summons: where in the world are PoE's summoning spells? I think druids have one? Contrast that to the AD&D system in which you get to summon monsters, floating swords, undead, elementals, demons, djinn, angels, versions of yourself, etc.
Shapeshifts: in Pillars of Eternity, druids have the ability to shapeshift into a few classes of animals, none of which scale to late game. In AD&D, casters are able to shapeshift into tons of different monsters, all of which have their own unique abilities, and a few of which do scale into the late game.
Special spells: Limited Wish/Wish, Timestop, Maze/Imprison, Knock, Invisibility, Wizard's Eye, Find Traps, etc.
Meta-spells: this was mentioned in the review, but it isn't just a case of 'there are no sequencers and contingencies that allow you to blow your wad 3-4 spells at a time.' Consider Spell Trap: this isn't a sequencer, but it's an unique spell that breaks the rules. Breaking rules is fun.
In addition, the hard counters issue is not about the presence of *counters*, but the presence of *high-impact spells*. Spells eg Finger of Death, Flesh to Stone, Sphere of Annihilation, Absolute Immunity, Dominate, etc. are cool not because they have hard counters, but because they have such devastating effects that they *need* hard counters.
Indeed, it's when these spells *aren't* hard countered that they are fun to use. An ancient dragon that has immunity to basically everything is a painful fight for a wizard and isn't at all fun. Blowing up a group of giants with an instant-kill AoE spell, on the other hand, *that's* fun.
Thus, hard counters exist *because* of all-powerful spells, not the other way around. No one wants a hard counter to Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment and Arkemyr's Capricious Hex because who the fuck cares? The few spells in Pillars of Eternity that are actually worth hard countering - for example the old Gaze of the Adragan - all managed to get nerfed. It's the *philosophy* of Sawyerism whereby mages have to be balanced with fighters that is the problem, not the absence of hard counters.
Lastly, while the Pillars of Eternity magic system was obviously designed for intricate combos, you have to think about how such a system works in RtWP. RtWP stands for "real time with pause" not "turn based with unpause." RtWP is designed for fast-paced, low actions/round gameplay that requires extra attention now and then, not slow-paced, high actions/round gameplay that requires pausing every three seconds to play correctly.
Trash encounters in BG 2 and other RtWP games were dealt with by grouping your characters together and "attack moving" through, not micro managing your characters every turn to ensure that they don't get engaged to death. The same applies to the spell system. Combos eg "have your wizard cast this AoE spell that causes Hobbles, then have your rogue disengage and sneak attack the opponents that were Hobbled, while your priest does X, and your fighter does Y, and your bard does Z" are not executable without pausing every round and in that case, you're not playing a RtWP game but a TBwUP game, and that's fucking annoying given what Pillars of Eternity sacrificed, in terms of turn-based mechanics, to have RtWP in the first place.
It's been said already - Pillars of Eternity's magic system falls too deep into "is it balanced?" Sawyerism and fails to capture the wonder that magic ought to have been. Magic is about breaking the rules, it's about making the player jizz in his pants when he wipes out a room of ogres with a single spell, it's about creating unique and fantastic situations and effects. It's not about -10 accuracy, -5 intelligence, -3 defense.
