Alrik: being an avid fan of retro PC games, I know where you're coming from. More and more games are starting to mimic the World of Warcraft system - even in games that really don't need such a system. The use of skills can be very good and add a lot of depth to combat, but it should not come at the detriment of the actual depth of the base combat itself. I want to block, punch, kick, dodge, etc. on top of having special combat moves. There's a reason one of the first mods for Oblivion was to add more depth to melee combat. When a game has a certain degree of combat, keeping it interesting should be the first priority.
Having said all this, it doesn't mean the game is bad - far from. The above is mainly criticism on how the actual game combat is getting dominated by button presses and cool down periods instead of the skill of combat which is the way it should be. The truth is that hardcore RPGs don't reach the same large public as other games and publishers often push developers into adding or removing features to try and make it easier for this larger public to get into the game. Ironically, this doesn't have that big an impact yet alienates the original audience the game would be targeting.
Case in point: Drakensang did really well for a low budget RPG and why? Because it wasn't afraid to be hardcore. You had to understand the Dark Eye rules at least partially to play the game well but this didn't make the game get poor reviews, now did it? I think publishers need to start realising that they can't keep both the hardcore audience and the more mainstream audience at the same time. By placing games in the middle (which is where Divinity II really is), you don't hit either target well enough to make a big dent in sales but you end up with a game that is simply not as good as it could have been by doing so. That's my opinion at least. Divinity II strikes what it's aiming for rather well but I can only wonder "what if" because, like the original, the combat is still lacking some fleshing out.
