It's hard to tell if a game's combat system is a make-or-break factor for its financial success. An RPG should be more than just the sum of its parts. What killed PoE for me was the lack of an engaging narrative and scarcity of interesting characters. The latter felt like a gaggle of hitchhikers to me who were only along for the ride and tried to display interest in your quest merely out of courtesy. The story wasn't much I could relate to either. Siege of Dragonspear gets a lot of flak for being political at times but overall I enjoyed it more because the developers attempted to capture the mood of the times as they saw fit. Nods to real-world issues shouldn't be a no-go for entertainment media in my view but you run the risk of being preachy or propaganda if you're not careful.
