Of course there is a reason for such a drastic transformation console players would no more enjoy playing a 600-hour beardathon in front of a 32-inch TV than a PC gamer would take delight from guiding a hyperactive monkey through a supermarket. Even so, we’re sure there are thousands of people grinding their battleaxes that the mighty Gate has been 'cheapened’. In fact, I preferred the PS2 game to its big PC brother, since I’m not big on dice-rolling anyway. Nowt much of a to-do about that as far as I’m concerned. Yet on PlayStation 2 Baldur's Gate is known not as an RPG, but as an action game - almost a 21 st century version of the classic Gauntlet.
A heavier stat-based experience would be hard to locate, even with a level 14 Detection spell. Have you noticed how once-proud hardcore PC games have been defecting to consoles? Take Bioware’s life-sapping RPG series Baldur's Gate for instance.