THEY CHEATED AND RUINED THE GAME.
Having the initiative order in the top right is a good idea as long as you show that the enemies are gonna get a dozen hardcore attacks - this is poorly represented by one icon. Or then we have it showing a hero getting multiple goes but really gets only one - makes the whole initiative list useless. Yes my characters have thousands of hit points, several shields, double hitpoints (LightMagic) and autorevive whilst fighting the Mumakil still all useless if one doesnt get to act after the first 1 or 2 actions. An elephant attack + arrows from its back in one action is realistic, but an elephant breathing, stomping, arrows, tusk sweep, stomping, thrusting, stomping, breathing for one initiative action is where realist quickly becomes pathetic; and when there are 2 of these Mumakils at once have fun watching the Xbox play by itself.
Surely EA Games has enough creative minds to be able to make it a challenge without deliberate cheat programming - larger creatures are slower than smaller creatures, thats why the large beasties do more damage when they hit and have more hit points. It's simple game mechanics, logic or even simple physics really - something EA Games must have forgotten. ( Eye of the Beholder 2 on the C64/Amiga had better game mechanics!)
Further cheat programming is evidenced by the 9999 Action Points the average grunt gets - makes you really feel like youre controlling a hero when you only have one tenth the APs as a LVL50+ character ! Very Sad.
Great game up until this point - a shame I wasted so many hours of play getting to a point in the game where creativity lapses in exchange for blatant unrealistic cheating. What happened to waves of numerous enemies from earlier levels - that was a challenge. Sorry to say a real dissappointment at this point - take some lessons from Final Fantasie from 10 years ago EA Games.