[xopherdavis]

I agree with the original post - this is not whining. Do you guys seriously think that NWN2 and any of the recent CRPG are as good as the BG series? I realize that this is a matter of opinion but all of the reviews, polls, and forum discussions clearly indicate that most people find the newer games to be not as good as the "golden age" of RPG's. This trend also seems to be continuing down (I hope it bounces back) with games in the last couple of years.

The reasons why is where I think the reply's are disagreeing with the Escapist. I understand his point of complexity taking away from the original appeal of CRPG's but if you get too simple then you have something like Diablo or an Action-RPG (which to me is just an action game). I don't think anybody ever enjoyed manually calculating all the possible modifiers to determine damage - but if these modifiers (from weapons, armor, and most importantly the character that you worked so hard to develop) didn't exist then the game wouldn't be anywhere near as appealing.

The people who replied are also wrong about not having to make a choice when presented with all the new exotic races and specialties. If you see it in the list, or even in the game documentation, then the option is there so you ARE having to make the choice. Unless the game has some switch or option to hide all this extraneous stuff, then it is adding complexity. This complexity is obviously unwanted by many (but not all) gamers.

I also wonder if part of what the Escapist may not like in the newer games is the nostalgia factor. BG I and II implemented more or less the same D&D game that some of us played in the early 80's, while the latest games don't bring back any memeories. If you never played pnp D&D in the 80's, which I suspect a large percentage of current CRPG players haven't, then you can't really miss "the old days" of simple classes and races (and THACO and negative armor class, etc.). That's the reason I would rather make another pass through BG2 instead of getting the latest, unfamiliar and perplexing, game - the newer games just don't feel like playing Dungeons and Dragons to me.