I wish I could show people my shelf of 3/3.5 books and my much smaller collection of 5e books when I say this: 5e is by far my favourite edition of D&D. First of all it's not really a fair comparison of the rule systems, NWN2 is like the core books + material picked from a couple of dozen sources. BG3 EA is more like starter edition + some race options. The core classes, fully implemented with multi classing will make a massive difference.
I get that some people love the character building aspect of 3E, that was me. But going to 5E was like realising I had Stockholm Syndrome. The hundreds of prestige classes, thousands of spells and feats aren't 3's greatest strength, they are its worst excess. They don't really let you make more character concepts, they just make building those character concepts more works and act as a barrier for entry. You can run super optimised builds in 5e and you have a lot more latitude within the classes, but because you aren't chasing TAB/AC hyper inflation you have a lot more options for what is viable.
I dont mind giving it a better try and see in the future but between lvl 1-4 there is soo little you can customize to make it your UNIQUE character. Just to give you an example: If I ask 10 people to make 10 warrior class on this EA build. I bet all 10 will be exactly the same or very similar except maybe the race but still.
