A little more about Realms of Arkania:
this is such a unique CRPG...a big departure from accepted norms. I have found that Encumbrance rules the day. Don't waste your money on heavy armor, at least in the first part of the game. It weighs you down so much that your movement points drop (meaning less flexibility during combat) and reduces the amount of loot you can haul out of dungeons. Leather armor is the best combination of protection and weight. Also, heavier weapons/armor tend to have worse attack/parry penalties. The game is really geared for lightweight, agile combat. There's a lot of spells, but most of them are esoteric and useless, at least for the first part of the game. The best spells are Lightning (blinds your opponent preventing them from attacking or defending for 3 rounds), Iron Rust (destroys their weapon, forcing them to fight unarmed for the entire battle), Sleep, and Dance (forces opponent to dance til exhausted). Healing potions are not as good as herbs: they are heavier and can't be stacked in inventory slots. If you come across healing potions, you're better off selling them and using the money to buy the Whirlweed herb, which is lighter, stackable, and heals as much as the potion. And when you camp during travel, always have your best Herb Lore character search for herbs before turning in for the night. They usually can find more than enough to keep your party healthy, plus you can sell off the rest for a good profit. Same with your best Tracker/Animal Lore/Survival character: have them search for water and hunt before sleeping and you should have enough food and water to not have to buy any rations in towns. Combat is on a grid and turn-based. It's a bit limited (no diagonal attacks), but SOOOO satisfying. It compares to Gold Box game combat. In Realms of Arkania II they fix the diagonal combat limitation, so looking forward to that. Lastly, leveling up is much more satisfying. From what I've read, your characters won't progress past level 5 by endgame. It takes a long time to level, but when you do, it's such a treat, and can take 15 minutes of happy OCD to distribute points exactly how you want in all the various skills. There's lots of options for spellcasters to convert life points (hitpoint) to astral points (spellpoints) too. And the way the game is geared, it's usually pretty easy to keep your spellcaster out of trouble during combat (hiding/guarding), so having fewer hitpoints isn't such a big penalty.
Oh, there's another unique feature: in some places your party can become separated. For example, half of them fall down a pit while the other half save themselves. You can control both groups separately on each level they are on, then when you reunite, you can reform back into one big party. This is turning into a favorite quickly. Dare I say, better than Baldur's Gate?? I guess that's up to the individual.
