I fully agree with most of what Raze has written, except that first person perspective sucks for RPGs. I liked it in SW:KotOR – however, this game often had relatively narrow levels that were easy to explore. If Larian creates a big world in its next RPG, I'd also prefer not having to look left and right all of the time just to make sure I don't miss some detail.
To the proponents of an "active combat" system: In <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" />, warriors could e.g. use their special attack, boomerang weapon throws, poisoned weapons, shadow warriors, jumps in front of their enemies, and several special arrows. That's not as many options as a mage had (though attack spells weren't that numerous, either), and you could win without using any of those options, but some variation during combat was possible, if you were willing to learn and use it.
Wouldn't some more special attacks along that line be better than having to initiate every single block and quicker or mightier blows with a click (or even several clicks)? Especially if some enemies were resistant to some special attacks or clever enough to counter them? They might also be vulnerable to some attacks, just like they are to some kinds of magic, and of course the better ones would also use those special attacks to their advantage. If your character was good enough, you could still win by just starting combat with a click (and maybe healing yourself), but using the special attacks cleverly could give you quite an advantage, so that combat ended faster or you won fights that you still couldn't win without using special skills.
To me, this sounds much more interesting than the "active combat" systems proposed above. And if some useful special attacks are only available at higher levels, there's an incentive to change your tactics now and then, resulting in a lower chance of combat becoming repetitive.
