Exactly the thing I was talking about. There are hundreds of reviews like this and they are all equally dull to read.
But nothing in review explains what exactly makes it so. There is "a story with your Main Character". So original, of much importance. And companions, they have quests! No going into depth about the main theme of the game even (Souls). I'm surprised the only spoiler in paragraph about act 3 wasn't edited out.
Excellent character creation
But reviewer hand waves the paragraph with "there are so many classes, would take too long to explain". "Every build is viable, there are no dump stats" - just repeats main design goal as stated by JS, with no breaking down on system whatsoever. Compare it to angry troll Roxor who talked about every attribute and why he thought there were good or bad.
Not a single example of a quest from the game, just generic "you can sometimes talk your way out of fighting". But guess what - sometimes you can't, if you judge by his opinion on combat, so... er.
Based on the old IE games
Well, that we can get from looking on a single screenshot.
Never explains why it is so mechanically, just "6 characters are hard". Really, the game is combat oriented and there is a lot of unavoidable trash combat but there is like one paragraph about combat which doesn't tell you anything about it, yet states that it was "the most frustrating thing in the game" for the reviewer.
You could more or less stitch together and it would mostly be about no kill xp and poor encounters and healing... but not about combat system itself.
Little or no XP for combat
This one is all over the place, mixed in with his opinions on encounters, plot, acts 2 & 3, mega dungeon, so it seems like the most important and critical part, but reviewer jumps from topic to topic. Still it's explained why it's a flaw. Unleash DraQ.
Some good ideas poorly implemented
Okay.
Last part of game gets tedious
Doesn't really go indepth on the plot and why it so, yet review says it is still "enjoyable experience".
So what did we learn from this review? We learned there are *things* in this game. That it's necessary to read the fucking manual *gasp*. And there are like main plot & companions. And some dungeons. Crafting, too... even if reviewer never bothered to explain what it's even about. And that combat xp is good, but listening to Minsc is bad.
This is not important, that is not essential, this might be a spoiler, and that is just my opinion. Four out of five stars, would sleep again.
P.S. Angry Joe did better criticism of PoE in his review than monocled gent from Watch.
