The best combat in an RPG is easily from Baldur's Gate 2. There is no deeper, harder, and more party dependent combat than BG2's. It has literally hundreds of spells and skills, an extreme amount of costumization, and each NPC in your party must be worth it's weight in gold or else he will only slow you down.
Since the dificulty in Baldur's Gate 2 is insanely high, you will die ALOT, you will fight near-certain death battles ALOT. If your character and your party aren't perfectly-tuned, you will have a bad, bad time in combat.
| The Lurker said: Despite critical bemoaning of it, I think the "battle system" in Fallout 3 is well done, and just as balanced as the previous two iterations' combat systems were. Take that as you will: an endictment on the poor state of combat in earlier Fallouts or praise of Fallout 3. |
Both Fallout 3 and it's predecessors have broken combat systems. On one hand, Fallout 3 is way too easy, the melee and shooting systems are beyond broken on consoles, and there is no inventory penalty in midcombat (in FO1&2, if you used items or opened your inventory while in combat you would lose Action Points). In Fallout 1 & 2, for a Turn-based system there is almost no tactics and it's a pain in the ass if there's alot of enemies. I still prefer Fallout 1 & 2 combat though.
