I couldn't agree less with kiya. One thing I've noticed about European games is that they overemphasize Challenge over Fun (German games are particularly bad in this respect). Whereas Japanese and North American games tend to balance Fun and Challenge fairly well.
If Larian's intended audience is a few hardcore gamers, then sure: provide the bare minimum of skill points, force the player to replay the game 20 times to try all the skill paths, require countless trial & error trap deaths etc. Most gamers are not going to put up with this.
This is definately not a slam against Larian. I think they were forced to push the game out prematurely (almost every game is nowadays), but they're doing a great job fixing the problems. Pretending that balance problems don't exist is NOT helping Larian.
Tom
