The Bard from Bard's Tale is very different from the one in Wizardry 8. The one in Bard's Tale sings outside of battle to give your party minor combat bonuses and breathes fire for massive damage during battle. The one in Wizardry 8 uses special items that allow her* to cast spells using her stamina, which is easier to recover than spell points. (The one in Wizardry 6-7 is a thief/mage hybrid with instrument use really a side thing; note that in W8, Bards lost their mage spells in favor of there being more varied and powerful instruments.)

* In Wizardry 8, Bards and Gadgeteers should be female because of an item available early on (and you get 2 of them) that gives stamina regen and can only be used by female characters.

I played my first game in about 12 hours (just the Dragaonspear part)... was in no rush.

the diff-bug was an issue for me twice then I figgured out how to kill it... I would expect Beamdog to catch up soon so thats a non-issue as far as I'm thinking.

IMO the game is worth having just for the sharman; think Druid that casts like a Sorcerer and fights like a Bard but it's your money mate.

Wooo W8 specialist? Or you have a dam good memory, or played it recently. :-)

So let say you have one clear example of well balanced party CRPG... for 99 that will end be very easy if you focus on min/max and use all resources.

The only chance for most party CRPG is give yourself challenges like start with a weird party setup for witch min/max will take more time to break the difficulty. I already explained why it's a problem inherent to the genre.
12H that's pretty short and not encouraging get the game, some other games play time reference would help, players have sometime very different pace of play.

Actually, I am in the middle of a Wizardry 8 playthrough right now, and I have played that game a lot. It's one of my favorites. (I especially like the fact that you can raise your skills without having to gain levels.)

There are other games I am very familiar with, like Final Fantasy 5.
One good exception I can think of: Elminage Gothic. Even at triple digit levels, some of the enemies in the final bonus dungeon are incredibly dangerous. The game starts easy (especially if you get Turn Recovery on everyone), but gets harder as you progress.

Thats odd... I play with Viconia and her turn does work.

are we talking the gog (with no mods) ... in what way does your "turn" not work i.e, not at all or just the level looks low?

GOG SoD. Player character. Cleric. No mods. Turn Undead does nothing. Oh, wait... it makes a noise when first activated. That's it. It has zero effect, and zero aura on undead enemies. It does not work. I just started a new BG2 game with the 2.0 patch (no mods) and it does not work there, either. The 2.0 game is a complete mess.

Maybe command undead isn't broken the way turn undead is? Some more testing is in order.

(I don't have the EE, so I can't test here.)

Turn undead defintely works in Siege of Dragonspear. It might not work perfectly, but I did manage to turn undead in the tutorial dungeon.

One thing I noticed is the AI will override it, if the character is standing in melee range even if the AI is disabled.

Well I don't like much JRPG, played some FF but never the 5 or I forgot it and certainly not Elminage Gothic.

With JRPG often one aspect behind an apparent better balancing is an excessive grinding and the second element is it's not classes like Western JRPG it's classes with very few choices hence it's not the same balancing difficulty of more Western like CRPG.
I got the v2 of BG1 EE and didn't played since some time the previous version but this Dragonspear compatible version seems has more problems and little nuisances.

But beside one bizarre crash plus tutorial NPCs totally broken at start of the game it was playable stuff, a "total mess" looks to me very exaggerated that is from my play try and with BG1 EE v2.

But players that can't bear games that aren't fully perfectly polished, should better not play the v2 versions and wait a bit they are cleaned, and instead use the previous EE version and wait a bit for the new DLC.

Elminage Gothic is really what would have happened had Wizardry 6 not happened and the series had continued in the same style as Wizardry 5 (though minus the NPCs in the dungeon). You don't make many choices per character; just a class and an EX skill. (Class changing, monster recruitment, and item customization via alchemy are options, however.)

One interesting thing I noticed about Elminage Gothic is that some enemies seem to be designed to be vulnerable to a specific setup. For instance, I noticed an enemy with lots of HP and Dark resistance, but no Beheading resistance, allowing Ninjas to be particularly effective against that particular enemy. Another enemy has very high magic resistance, Swallow Return (making physical attacks dangerous to use), but very little status resistance, meaning somebody who can cast Mage spells with the EX skill Magic Essence (spells ignore magic resistance) very effective; just petrify them and they are no longer a threat.

Also, Elminage Gothic, like many WRPGs, is a game where status ailments are useful, even against bosses.

Speaking of status ailments, Final Fantasy 5 is also interesting in that respect. Many bosses have holes in their list of status immunities; sometimes bosses are not immune to petrification or instant death! There's even one particularly annoying boss that can even be killed with the Odin summon.

One characteristic of Final Fantasy 5 is that you can easily change your party setup, allowing you to experiment with different setups and choose the one that works best in any given situation, and there is a huge amount of viable setups.

CRPG is a lot of things, and then CRPG players can have very different preferences. I agree that I simplified a little by pinpointing many JRPG has a class design that remove many choices unlike do most Western CRPG. Often roster approach and some alternate choices but important anyway make a party building relatively complex.

But I don't think anyway it's the same balance challenge than with class style design of Western CRPG.

EDIT: Moreover D&D design for BG1 and even for BG2 is a lot more like JRPG that is with not much building choices. It started change more with later D&D. And it's not the current trend of class design for Western CRPG.

Don't make recommendations on something you have not experienced for yourself. It's a mess.

Somewhat related question, did BG2EE get the same bugs as BG1EE's bugs upon version 2.0?

I just retested this on a freshly made cleric and can confirm again that ‘turn undead’ works in gog Dragonspear… perhaps your script overrode it or you had a level drain?

http://www.nibbit.net/assets/turningtest.png

No, it does not. I played through the entire game and was completely ineffective against undead in this respect. I played some BG2 with the same issue. Turn Undead does not work. It is not a script fault; I don't use them -- walking amongst undead with Turn Undead active has no effect at all. I can't explain why it works for you but doesn't for me, but I can assure you that it does not.