Hey There Spiderweb Fans,
I'd like to share some of my thoughts about A2:CS, hopefully for the benefit of all. As a note, I've been playing Spiderweb games since the 90s when the exile series was out. I've been totally stoked about the Avernum remakes, and am really looking forward to Avernum 3, particularly the Golem Factory, because I believe that's where I left off back in the day...
Overall, it was a great experience. I finished everything except killing one of the dragons. I played on Torment, 'cause I'm hardcore like that. My party consisted of all humans: a dual-melee fighter, a pole fighter/priest, a full priest, and a full mage. A lot of the first half of the game was quite difficult: the Dark Waters chapter in particlar forced me to make many difficult choices with regards to resource utilization. After I got back to Avernum, it was a bit tricky figuring out what areas were appropriate for my level, but once I figured this out the rest of the game got progressively easier. My the time my characters were level 28ish or so I could blow up pretty much anything thrown at me with a frenzy of adrenaline rushed divine retributions, fire blasts, and dual wield smackdowns. Out of all of the game-winning quests, I found the portal to be the trickiest and most satisfying due to the variety of enemies and puzzles it presented me with. Garzy was a pushover, and the ten (?) of Angierach (sp?) were total wusses due to the overwhelming might of my party at that point.
I saw on the forums that the min/maxers were recommending primarily magic-user parties. I tried this at first with a dual wielding tank, mage/priest, priest, and mage but soon found that I would way too often get bum rushed. I switched to the above party and found it to be a good balance overall: the two fighters really helped for survivability, and for much of the difficult early game my pole fighter actually seemed to be carrying the day. By the end, the dual-wielder and particularly the magic users were absolutely destroying enemies but the pole fighter had taken on more of a support role due to learning priest spells, which worked well.
I did find that the pole weapons were not nearly as good as the swords: smite, spear of the fens, etc don't create the same devastation that the flaming and freezing swords do, although the molten halberd was a good weapon for a lot of the early game. Numerically, halberds seemed to be significantly better than spears due to the cleave ability, but there weren't any that really stood out after the molten halberd.
Some of the repeats from Avernum 1 such as the Spiral Pit were a bit disappointing (I wanted something different...) but overall it was a great experience, in particular with tying up loose ends such as the hot springs inn.
I can't wait for Avernum 3: Ruined World! Thanks to Jeff for bringing these excellent games into the 21st century.