Personally I don't think you can measure difficulty in terms of "core rules" usefully 'cos video games and table top games work very differently; for example monsters are controlled by stupid AIs rather than evil DMs so they need to be buffed significantly to afford any sort of challenge, there is no perma-death so encounters need to be balanced so key encounters are more likely than not to result in party wipe on first attempt or the game will have no tension or sense of danger (you have to be scared your whole party will perish in a video game adaptation, not just your own character).
It would be extremely unwise of Larian to tone the difficulty so high that every single encounter is designed to be a party wipe.
That's why I said "
key encounters" not "
all encounters". And obviously "more likely than not" does not mean the same thing as "always".
So for example in DOS2 it is IMO unlikely that a player will defeat both the crocodiles and the frogs first attempt on Tactician difficulty. I know I didn't. IMO that is hitting just the right spot.
