Every single damned battle was a white-knuckled, balls-to-the-wall fight to the death. I want my gear, leveling and rewards to actually mean something, so that just for a while, after finding a particularly awesome sword or armor, I can breeze through and have a sense of power, destroying enemies for a while. It was always that was in Baldur's Gate. It was *NEVER* like that in D:OS.
BG would reward your extensive and thorough searches with a spectacularly cool artifact or piece of gear - and the game was significantly easier for a level or two. On the other hand, I literally almost-died in every single trash-mob battle in D:OS2.
I get where you're coming from. Remember the very intro fight in DOS1, in front of the tutorial dungeon? If you pick two characters with plenty of AoE cc's, you can breeze through that fight just fine. But if you don't, that intro fight can be one of the toughest fights in the whole game. At one point, I tried returning to DOS EE, made a rogue and a geo/pyro mage, and legit COULDN'T beat the intro fight. It was possible, but it was so tough I just gave up. That said, it was on highest difficulty. As much of a masochist as I am, it did feel a bit rough at times for me, playing the two OS games.
For BG3 though, we *probably* don't have to worry, because, hopefully, the strict DnD rules will keep character/equipment stats in check. There won't be a difference of thousands of points in HP and damage output between early game and late game. Item stats should be static now. So BASICALLY, you can totally beat the end game fight with a party using equipment picked up from chapter 1, if your strategy is solid. That said, I don't know much about 5e, so we'll see.
