I think there is use and benefit of both, and none of straight up better then another. Larian uses 3D engine and takes an advantage of it, well worth dealing with some of it's frustrations.
Isn't what is to come in BG3 kind of both? DOS2 was a hybrid of isometric and 3D (though more isometric IMO). BG3 looks like the camera can come down even lower, giving more of a 3D feel when wanted. How locking the camera at distance and at a certain angle with no ability to rotate can be seen as better than this is perplexing.
BG3 is a fully-3D modelled environment as far as I can see, that has an adaptive camera system that can visualise in third person behind a character, or draw back to a high angle. It's obviously not new as many RPG and FPS games have had similar capabilities, but you do need to work out how to deal with moving the camera through the environment so you are seeing what you need to without occlusion. If you look back at the beginning of the PAX East reveal after Astarion tries to pick the lock, the camera gets temporarily caught up in the door. That can be particularly difficult in third person perspective when the character is in a confined space, and the camera system can find anywhere "behind" the character that isn't stuck in the scenery.
If you keep a fixed camera orientation, view distance and perspective, even with a 3D environment as D:OS had, you don't need to worry about about coding the logic for camera pathing in the environment, because you can pre-validate how the camera sees the entire map by moving around it in a simple play-test. That usually means there are many parts of a real 3D environment that you can't see directly, which are usually "visualised" in some other way - for example if characters move behind a wall ( from the fixed camera perspective ) you might show them in outline form. If you use a 2D axonometric perspective painted backdrop, as in BG1/2, then you need to use this sort of fixed camera.
I can understand the "getting lost in the environment" problem when play areas get large, but this can usually be resolved by having a command to re-orient to a standard high-angle camera in a known orientation to allow the player to re-familiarise themselves with their position in the overall environment.
