+1 to your post.
I've been playing games since the eighties, RPG's came a bit later. I was quite happy with Baldur's Gate/ Icewind Dale and so on. Got quite dissappointed with Dragon Age, and Dragon Age II is looking even worse (they've dropped the strategic topdown view alltogether...!). I mean, it's all nice and dandy those flashy graphics/ effects, but to me it's looking more and more like a fastfoodrecipe. Bioware is certainly aiming at younger generations, and they want as much money as possible, not necessarily making a good RPG. Units sold does not equal quality IMHO.
So, I started looking elsewhere. Had to look for Indies or so it seemed, don't even know how I got here.... (via RPGwatch I guess). Anyways, tried the demo, loved it, bought Book II yesterday.
It seems to me the wheel of time is turning again, where the early RPG games were also made by small companies, and they were a labor of love, they then growed into larger and larger companies, forgetting at the same time the origin they came from. More aiming at sales numbers than producing a good RPG. And so here we are again, thirty years later, where apparently the best RPG's are made by small companies, again.
Having said all this praise, I too think this game, or Book III, could need a graphic update. I mean 1024x768 as a native resolution... I mean, that's more than 10 years ago for me
And it certainly could use *less* mouse clicking, more use of the wheel mouse, scrollable map, fast reload last save (eg continue). But all this can wait till the next patch/ next game.
For the moment I'm quite happy with Book II and I salute it's maker.