This card system is for the birds

Just to be clear I was not saying combat in UUW or U7 were superior. Just watching RG play the prototype filled me with nostalgia for how much I loved playing those games.

 

I've been playing Ultima Underworld for the first time recently, and I really like the combat system in that because it strikes a really good balance between being real time on the one hand, but still working OK with all the slowness and clunkiness inherent in a really old 3d game. That's exactly the feeling I don't get from SoA, which just kind of moves too fast for that kind of menu driven combat to mesh with its real time component.

I particularly like building spells from runes rather than just activating them and paying the garlic tax. That's the sort of thing where I would really see a great niche for a random draw system, and I'm honestly kind of annoyed that this sort of Words of Power or Logos thing has been a staple of Richard Garriott's games for so long and now that we're getting one where in depth knowledge of runes would actually pay off it has disappeared on us.