Well, started the game up now that A.I. is in, and noticed something odd, Defend self has the same text as defensive, so I turn to you, community, to tell me the difference.

The character will not move to attack unless they are Engaged by an enemy.
vs
The character will actively seek out nearby enemies for combat regardless of whether or not they are being directly attacked.

but the second one doesn't sound defensive at all, sounds aggressive.

It does doesn't it. Well that's the original description.
The A.I, whatever the setting, is quite bad anyways, i would not rely on it too much. Although i have a bit of a dilemma here, i don't think i would want the A.I to play the game for me, so maybe basic is all we need.

That's rather sad, that it is so bad, as actually leaving the A.i. to handle my party while I focus on my character is what I was hoping for,

It's not that bad as far as game combat AI goes, actually. I don't usually like to rely on AI, but I've been using this to see how it compares to other games. It really is quite good. That is until you become vastly outnumbered. In a scenario like that you will need to don your tactical hat, which is how it should be.

*shrug*
I spent hours scripting DA: O AI, and even then it kept doing mindboggingly stupid things, so much that I ended up playing with AI disabled trough the entire game.

Meanwhile I generally kept the default A.I. and never had problems, I like games with a party, but I don't want to have to micro that party, personal preference I guess, either way PoE still a good game, just not as much as I had hoped.