Theoclymenus: 1. Is the Royal Edition worth the extra money ? It contains the huge 512 page Prima guide, right ? Or wrong ? I read the manual last night and the game sounds amazing, but the rules and the way combat works are not explained very thoroughly there. Does the guide provide more specific and in-depth explanation ?
Kardwill: No idea. I have the hero ed., and it's already very nice (and the in game encyclopaedia does a decent job explaining most combat mecanics.)
Theoclymenus: 2. The level cap (12 for the vanilla game, 14 for the expanded game) is putting me off somewhat. I don't like the idea of character development coming to an end well before the end of the game, since that's half the fun of an RPG in my book. The IE games were very well paced and balanced in this regard. Has this spoilt the game for anyone ?
Kardwill: I'm near the end, and I just hit level 12. Note that I'm somewhat a completionist regarding side quest (meaning I do all those that don't conflict with my character concept. No pillage-and-murder quests for my goody-two-shoes Eothasian priest, for example, but I still did 90% of them.), but I only played 5 of the 15 levels of the optional mega-dungeon, so a real hardcore completionist that does the mega-dungeon before ending the main quest will hit lvl 12 far sooner than me.
Still, the leveling is slow. So if you are not sure, I would advise to wait before buying the expansion. No sense to pay to unlock level 13-14 if you get bored of it before lvl 8. By the time you hit level 6, you should know if you like the game or not (for me, it was a very loud "YES!!!").
Theoclymenus: 3. D&D fans (especially 2nd edition ruleset) : do you like the combat ? I personally loved the combat in the IE games, partly because I just like the way D&D rules work, but partly also because having six party members with very different strengths and weaknesses made for tactically complex and very absorbing battles. In PoE the party of six is back (yay !) but is the combat anything like D&D combat ? If it's more like the combat in Dragon Age I think I'll pass.
Kardwill: The game really "feels" like some D&D3 (the mage gains spells from scrolls and must prepare a pool of them, while the priest has access to all of them, there is an "armor class" of sorts, characters gain both general "feats" and character class special abilities when they level up, the warrior can specialize in some weapons far more than other classes, etc...) mixed with some D&D4, but the combat mecanics underneath are very different from D&D.
I would say they are more complicated than D&D (4 different AC, 6 different DR, 2 different HP gauges,
many special attacks and abilities, many different status alterations), although they've been done so that IE players would be in familiar territory. Learning those mecanics has been quite fun for me, and they allow for some nice tactics.
Add to this a story that starts slow, but takes up steam and becomes quite epic, and VERY good dialogues and NPCs, and overall, it's really good stuff. You should enjoy it :)
Thanks for more info on the game itself. I certainly like the sound of the game itself and will buy it at some point, but inc09ito's (and others') post has persuaded me against buying it just yet I think, unless i have a sudden change of heart in the next hour or so.
