Roxor basically went Roguey on PoE -- most of his points are valid, but he also exaggerates a lot, doesn't hide the pleasure he takes in being contrarian, and finishes with a statement that is guaranteed to get a rise out of people even thought it's in fact a matter of personal preference that you can't really argue against. This has been his general tone for quite some time now, the somewhat obvious downside being that a lot of people are not going to pay attention to what he says at all and simply dismiss him as a troll. Which is a pity, because his criticism is ultimately more constructive than that of any of the 9/10 reviews I've seen.
Despite having many of the same complaints as Roxor (and quite a few he didn't even mention), my impression was "this isn't too bad, but could be so much better if..." rather than "this is pretty horrible, I'd rather be playing Descent to Undermountain". The lack of more interesting combat encounters was what I thought really hurt the game the most (and it's hard to defend, too -- if you know your combat system is not exactly fine-tuned yet, tends to encourage stereotypical strategy, and the AI is pretty weak, I'm not sure what exactly is supposed to be your excuse for not trying to include at least a dozen or so special encounters that mix things up a bit). The half-baked and/or superfluous features (crafting, enchanting, text adventures, stronghold, major quests that lack just a little more branching and/or logical options to be actually good) were not too pleasant, either, but at least a lot easier to ignore or pass over. If they can improve on PoE with the expansion like HBS improved on Shadowrun Returns with Dragonfall, I'd say it's pretty much all good.
