One of the things I'm going to point out in my review is that Pillars does a really great job of avoiding that D&D-ism-- your abilities are often 'per encounter' instead of 'per rest (although there are some of those too),' and resting is tied to a finite resource, so there's more of a strategy to when you use abilities-- and because you have greater access, you're doing more with more of your characters. There are also just more abilities per class, so warriors don't just hit things in the face all day, they have knockdown strikes, sweep attacks, etc.
The older games were great, but the combat is definitely better in this.