It will probably be even more dumbed down with even worse writing.

Reading the manual is generally considered a good starter for real RPGs...

Word from the wise (because they've been burned): the Steam Edition is the same kind of mess as MMXII. i.e. Weapons crumble if they touch an angry ant. Too few repair kits. Questitem inventory bug not fixed. Inferior class system compared to Collector's Edition.

I feel as well that the Shaman is pretty weak. The Druid's spell list isn't the best one to start with and the summons don't scale, AFAIK, which will severely limit them in SoA & ToB.

Mine works perfectly. Remember that the savegames are in your My Documents folder.

Whichever version you use, it's fully modable. If you want a fully standalone version, go for GoG.

a) I'm sure you can use the old forum, but honestly, I have to recommend the Beamdog fora. (The creators of the EE.) Sadly, The GB forum is a bit quite nowadays. b) No clue, as I haven't used any of the new classes, but I can see Barbarians & Monks working well in the higher levels. Also, it's n...

Armour damage DOES reduce its protection. Armour skills never grow "naturally". Only Weapon skills & castable Magic Skills grow naturally.

Not true: I have a Fighter/Mage/Valkyrie/Sorcerer, with a fifth "slot" being accessible obviously for the 3rd tier. It IS the (inferior to CE) MMXII game, though, might want to keep that in mind. It comes with tooltips on most menu's and stats, so that helps. Spells now show appropriate da...

I got this version and it looks a lot more polished. Just a couple of questions: What's the benefit of using the Bash skill? Easier to learn or something? Does non-metal armour still fall to pieces after a couple of hits? If I want to learn as much types of Magic as possible AND use heavy armour &am...

That's good news, that the skill system is more akin to CE/Original than to MMXII. I'm probably getting this version as well...

How good/bad is it this time? Which changes have been made, gameplay-wise? From what I've gathered, they've made changes to the class system? (MMXII's system still does not reach the great standards of the Collector's Edition, though...)

I recommend SPERG, which changes the perktrees for the better and allows changing of the leveling rate. It also adds more ways to level smithing, which is a pain otherwise.

I'm pretty sure you can get off the horse whenever you want. It's just there as an option, given the distances. (And Geralt frequently rides a horse in the book. It's always called "Roach".)

MSGO, IIRC. It makes Morrowind look really good, especially combined with the prettier face/Better Bodies mod.

ME1 just has bad party AI/control. (Not that 2 and 3 are any better.) Nothing you can do that you aren't doing already. You can pause, or at least severely slowdown time, by bringing up the Power menu. I don't know the controls for ME1 by heart anymore, but I'm leaning towards SHIFT or CONTROL.

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/?

That's a premier source of mods, as is the Steam Workshops.

As to which mods to get, that's entirely up to you. What do you want out of your game? One of my favourite mods is the one that disables weapon/armour degradation.

This answer is so irrelevant I'm suspecting it being placed by a bot.

Personally, I don't see the benefits either. There's the fact that with every spell they cast, there's a 5% chance one of the effects listed in the table occurs and the Dweomer Shield (Not sure about the name) spell line increases the odds of a good effect happening. For me, this is all too random, ...