It seems like a good game for sure, but I have trouble playing it past the first few areas. Maybe it's too old-school and complex? I never played those CRPG's; Diablo was my entry into PC RPGs. The combat in PoE is pretty slow and I had a hard time against those black shadow mobs in the early ruins.
It's always one of those to go back to later titles, which I tried playing PoE a couple times so far.
*I did enjoy Divinity: Original Sin and Planescape Torment (extremely LTTP on this one, but it was still great).
PoE's problem lies in that it does a poor job making you know which quests are beyond your party's level, and which are fine.
Also, know that your characters become amazingly more powerful with each level up they get, even though it's not obvious at first glance. A boss and her mooks would kill me in twenty seconds when my party was lvl 5, yet when I returned at lvl 7, I killed her and her mooks in the same time she would kill me. Karma at its finest.
Also, read the bestiary and check out which spectre/shade enemies are the mooks and which are the harder ones - by killing off the weaker foes, you can quickly turn the tide in your favor and focus your firepower on the remaining 1-2 tougher foes.
A couple of PCs have summon monster as an ability - this is invaluable in giving you mooks to help you overwhelm your foes by numbers.
ALWAYS take out the enemy spellcaster first - not only do they have spells which can cripple your party, they are also the easiest to die due to low hit points. A fave tactic of mine was to immediately target an enemy spellcaster with magic missile spells of my own to break his concentration and before he could re-cast a spell, my fighters would be upon him, killing him in seconds.
I suggest you follow the main quest until you reach the large city which is divided in 5-6 hub areas. Then, start doing side quests from NPCs of that which have to do within the city itself. Hopefully you'll gain a couple of levels which will make all the difference in the main quest.
Also, make sure to complete your party roster of 6 heroes as soon as possible - one extra fighter can make all the difference in battle by keeping the enemy occupied while your mage character(s) do his/their thing.
If an area or quest seems to hard for you, ignore it and do other easier quests until you level up. Then try again.
In the end, if you find it too hard, tone down the difficulty.
