Originally Posted by Elel
I have an additional question about difficulty. Generally people say older games were harder and required more thinking. I'm all for that, but I can't quite imagine what that means and would be happy to hear a clarification.

Generally what I think tactics is comes down to three approaches.

I´d say the difference is in the extent of general hand holding, not just combat.
Difficult puzzles, complicated map layouts, resource management, no quest markers, etc.

When it comes to "new" cRPGs, combat is actually very, very often the only aspect where developers attempt to challenge players (picking "utterly impossible!" difficulty is usually required).