Dhruin
SasqWatch
Gear Diary has a review of Avernum 6, written by Mike Anderson. He describes the game as "wonderful" and here's a snip:
More information.Jeff Vogel has spoken quite a bit about reducing the ‘trash collection’ – those filler battles that provide much less in rewards than the effort they seem to take. Too often that ‘grinding’ is to get you pumped up with enough skills and experience to face the cool boss battles everyone wants to experience. His goal was to keep combat as a main element of the game, but not have it so frequent that it becomes a tedious grind.
With the last Geneforge game he made a step in the right direction with pacing and balancing, but it is really in Avernum 6 that we finally see the realization of that goal. One thing he knew was that he beta testers were generally experienced hardcore gamers, and that he needed to ratchet the game down to where they started complaining about it being a bit too easy in order to hit the right level for most folks to play at ‘normal’ difficulty.
There are a few other ways ways that balancing is enhanced: the most obvious is making sure that every skill is useful from start to finish, and nothing becomes too overpowered. Many games start you off getting chased by kittens and ends you up taking down elder dragons with a single hit. Vogel makes the game challenging from start to finish. And, in a tactic that has been used effectively in recent years by games such as Neverwinter Nights 2, you will often find yourself as part of larger battles obviously beyond your ability to handle as a group of four adventurers. These provide tension and excitement without forcing you into a die-and-retry grinding loop.