D&D has mutated and changed a great deal over the years, originally there were only three classes: fighters, magic users, and clerics. Is any game with other classes therefore not D&D? Did you know that in one edition being an elf was your character class? BG3 is just as much D&D as any other edition or interpretation that has come before. At some point we will see a new version of D&D come along and silly children will jump up and down and stamp their feet and tell everyone that version is the only proper version of the game.
The problem here isn't that they changed so many of the rules per se, it's that they changed them
badly. Tweaking the rules to make it fit a video game depiction is to be expected, and tweaking other things to make them play better is welcomed. But they did it so badly that it feels like they more or less just tried reskinning their previous game, which is not what was promised. We were promised an adaption of D&D 5e rules as faithfully as possible, and instead they flipped them on their head and basically said "sike, we're playing Divinity now bitches!". A few touches of the Divinity series were obviously expected, but I didn't buy this game expecting a Divinity game with a few touches of D&D in it because that's not what was marketed and sold to me.
Basically this game is starting to feel more and more like a bait and switch.
Seems basically D&D to me-
-D&D classes instead of DOS classless system.
-D&D move, action and bonus action system instead of APs.
-D&D rolls to hit (and crit) instead of DOS almost always hitting (always for spells and skills)
-D&D weapon and spell damage dice (mostly)
-D&D armour system to reduce hit chance instead of stripping physical and magical armour.
-Status effects resisted by saving throws instead of armour.
-D&D spells and skills (mostly)
-Spell slots and skills per rest instead of cool downs.
-No weapon and armour levelling.
-Advantage snd disadvantage system.
-Rolling for initiative.
Outside of combat there are a lot of proficiency and speech checks which DOS didn’t have, and you don’t have to spend half the game trying to keep your equipment leveled up.
In terms of rules, it’s waaayyyy more D&D than DOS. There’s a few things that make it seem a bit more Divinity, such as the overuse of surface effects, but they aren’t fundamental to the gameplay and given the reaction, I’m confident they’ll be toned down a lot.
Most of the rest of the DOS feel seems to be either engine related (which there’s nothing much to be done about) and interface (which could use some work both for quality of life and to help differentiate the games).
Did you not watch any of gameplay demos before buying it? What were you expecting from the first few days of early access if not the game pretty much as presented in the videos leading up to it?
