This is something I found interesting about the types of games that I really enjoy and if I'm honest the games that I find myself keep coming back to are those games that are easy to learn and hard to master. Or if they do have complexity it's more to do with story choices and interesting level design etc. than whatever stats you pick for your character at the beginning.
Particularly with RPGs, A great example of this comparison would be Fable 1 and Diablo 2. There are enough options in the game to keep you occupied gameplay wise and find a style you like. However it's not so overwhelming and pants on head retarded that you could be an autist and end up making an excel spreadsheet comparing all the miniscule amounts of stats to find out which is the 'best' class or stats setup.
I'm also thinking about this in terms of appearance customisation and all that nonsense. I wonder if the RPG development cycle overall for an indie dev especially wouldn't end up benefiting by deliberately restricting the options you're going to have so that you can focus more on the depth of the classes you have and the gameplay. As opposed to having 30+ different builds with nothing to show for it which is what most modern RPGs are now.
As an example instead of the usual 'le modern RPG' setup where you've inevitably got 30+ options in the character selection I'd potentially just have Warrior/Thief/Mage/Cleric. Something I really appreciated for example even though BG2 has quite a few class options is stuff like class oriented storylines and quests.
It's always a massive balancing act, it does depend on my mood what game I choose. Sometimes I like complexity but even when I'm in the mood I can find it way too overwhelming and annoying to deal with if there are just options vomited in my face constantly. There's also sometimes no way for you to skip it even if you find the game fairly enjoyable. You're expected to trawl through through the options you're given or gtfo.
The post below I pointed to BG2 as an example of a game that's complex and it's one of my favourite RPG. However it is a pain in the arse to get through the myriad of options thanks to it's D&D ruleset. As an example of what I think is done right Fallout New Vegas handles the skills and levelling up well but I think part of that is the way it presents the options you pick to you. There's not as much hidden rules going on in the background compared to BG2 as well.
To be honest, BG2 and NWN2 had great balance. BG2 however becomes way to easy after the first run.
Did you play DOS2? I found that one to be overwhelming first time and I ended up restarting it a few times and then it was kind of simplistic.
Funny you call DOS2 overwhelming, yeah I played that game to death, for me that was the exact sort of balance I look for in an RPG. It was it's own whole system for PC so it didn't have a ton of tabletop nonsense maths shoved into it for the sake of making it more like tabletop. Combat was very straightforward.
Having so many things to put points in was the part that was overwhelming and I wanted to have the best build :) Combat was turned based and I like that but I also like the pseudo turn based from BG1 and 2.