Actually I looked at gameplay videos, and:
Story seems decent.
Amount of text is fine.
Combat is crap.
RPG system is disaster.
Having not kept up with this whole project well myself, what have you seen that gives you such a strong reaction?
One of reason for RPG system is to simulate difficult things in a few simple calculations. It's not about muscle tonus, amount of nutrient, previous stress, and several other factors, it's only test of your STR score, possibly lowered by the current level of endurance. It's not about calculation of CEP and air resistance tables, it's about rolling hit by comparing agility, or dexterity, skill, weapon handling, and distance. Simple elegant efficient and crisp calculations, which worked well in PnP, and could work well in computer simulation when needed and when used smartly.
Well this system looks like they first made computer game, then they said, but we need to have also a RPG system when it's a RPG game. And they slapped a RPG system on it as an afterthought.
If you know why percentage based systems are so rare in RPGs (they have two large disadvantages), you can see easily the problem they did when they are using ability score bonuses as they do. A simple increase in percentage isn't entirely cunning way how to do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0amg-znoZrg#t=570 In real live combat, the difference in 1/10 more in STR, for example in Judo, means opponent is flying over the floor. Or for example in Risen, the difference in STR between main character and goblins basically meant goblin flew half meter into the air when he was squarely hit. Which was the reason why they tried to dodge hard any nonglancing hit. And it was the reason why they attacked in groups. Which was the reason why goblins were such PITA in Risen.
Even Drakensang had bit more crisp system, instead of a flat percentage, weapons had: 1. normal damage range. 2. minimum strength value 3. how much stronger must the person be above min strength value to get one bonus point of damage. This allowed to simulate difference between weapons that had easy handling, but an increase in STR didn't increased damage much, and weapons that required high STR to be used efficiently and really high STR allowed to do massively more damage. Aka a system wasn't a lipstick on the pig. It has been fully integrated system where attributes had clear and nonlinear way how to interact with combat resolution.
(Also considering the stats are semi permanent and basically defined for whole play, these stats have fairly minor impact on the PoE. With exception of dialogue checks.)
Which also brings me the problem called combat. When I remember on Risen, or Dark Souls, combat and compare it to PoE there is a massive gap. Combat in Risen and Dark Souls was either highly tactical, or the main character clearly overpowered enemy and his only concern was how to avoid being swarmed. The combat in PoE is jab jab jab. It kinda reminds me of combat in Kult heretic kingdoms, but they added shadowplane, thus it become a dance of dodging too high level beasts on shadowplane by appearing behind overleveled robbers on normal plane, running a bit then moving on shadowplane and casting ice spray before beasts can run to your position two hit kill you, then run a bit to create some distance between these robbers on normal plane while beasts are dealing with ice shards, and switch to normal plane few milimeters away from being hit by these beasts. It required timing, brainpower, and using correct spells. (And wondering about aversion from minmaxing, and wondering if the main character shouldn't do these sidequests before going into that area.) PoE doesn't have shadowplane, and the fight is rather simplistic on a normal map. IE games were manageable by disabling AI, and forcing engine to pause each round to allow planning actions. Combat in this game feels bit bland. One of reasons is ability to shoot into combat without worrying about line of sight. Another problem is it's too easy to run away from area of effect.
Well the difference between Risen, Dark Souls, and Kult, and PoE is controlling multiple characters which requires some kind of planning interface or AI. PoE lacks that interface, and it also lacks details of ToEE.
