Blogpost about POE. Where do I even start with this game, you could write a book just trying to describe what it stands for artistically, the awkward time for RPGs during which it was released... The good, the bad, the janky...
I actually liked it quite a bit, for the most part. I think.

- It's the best interpretation of RTWP combat that I have seen so far. (Haven't finished the sequel yet) The combat overall is very good with how frequently you need to pay attention to your party positioning, strategy and tactics, weapon kit selections, ability management... The variety in encounter design keeps your sharp, you can't usually win with the exact same strategy, combat requires micro management.

- To complement combat, POE has a very interesting take on character builds. The "Balance Man" Sawyer who I usually criticize did a very interesting job in regards to the many ways in which you can build characters. Tanky casters and rogues, glass cannons, jacks of many trades... And they all work. That was their goal, almost anything you can think of is actually viable. Even for the highest difficulty, you'd really have to try and make a trash party build that can't beat the game.

But the writing... As good and deep as the lore of this game actually is, and it's actually pretty fucking interesting when you pull up the wiki and read about it, the game is as bad as they say when it comes to the overwriting, word salading etc... It was insufferable in this regard. And you can clearly see that I actually like it. Character companions were okay, even good for cRPG standards.

Overall based off what I've seen for the last couple of years on 4chan, most people don't really like this game much. It's one of those I'd describe as "over hated", I think it's just misunderstood.