Just for demographics sake, I'm 40. Started my crpg games with Ultima 3, 4, and 6. Played the old AD&D Gold box games, did "not" play BG1&2 or Icewind Dale, "did" play Neverwinter Nights (not the gold box one, the one in 2000s), but not NWN 2, I played the Witcher series, the first Dragon Age and Divinity Original Sin 2. Then went back and bought DoS 1, but never played the rest of the Divinity series. I am not a huge fan of the Elderscrolls but I did play Oblivion and Skyrim. As well I played Fallout 3 and 4 (just a generalized layout of my gaming experience in this genre, not going into everything).

So started from what I would consider the beginning and saw the parts of the golden age and the revival of crpg gaming is what I'm trying to say. I did not however have an extensive experience playing tabletop D&D. I have played maybe 3 games in recent years. Read the monster manual and dm books when I was around 13 for what ever edition of D&D it was at that time, but never played an organized game (I wanted to play but for such an antisocial nerd thing at the time, I didn't have enough friends to play D&D with, lol!).

I did "not" like Solasta. Combat was ancillary to me, the atmosphere felt generic, the story (not the actual script of words and voice acting, just generalized story) felt amateurish and a lot of lore dump at the beginning was off putting (you can avoid it by skipping those conversation trees).

The UI was too large and in my face. Cumbersome and inflexible is how I would describe it. I did not get good tooltip information or combat feedback in the log, just raw numbers and generalized action descriptions (you hit for x damage vs your attack rolls was 15 (11 on d20 +2 proficiency + 2 str modifier) you hit on AC 10 doing 8 dmg (4 on 1d6 + 2 str mod))

User controls were very restricting as far as camera rotation and zooming in an out (BG3 was also annoying but now I am less frustrated after playing Solasta).

As far as actual combat, that was fine. I understand the general rules and mechanics of D&D though, so it is not difficult. It is very much so restrictive on what you can do per a turn and shows how much bg3 is breaking those rules by allowing you to attack, disengage, push, eat/drink potion, offhand attack, throw an object or persion, hide, help a downed ally.

The ruleset of skills also seemed less buggy, for example offhand wpn getting proficiency on every character in BG3 when it states you shouldn't, or devil's sight not working in magical darkness, silence not working on harpies. This may be due to EA and they have to adjust the divinity engine to do these things still, or just completely ignoring the rules and they are going to leave it that way. We will have to wait to see how they adjust the game to the feedback.

So I think what people like is there are less bugs and inconsistencies in Solasta, but it is also less ambitious and just a 1:1 game development on an engine that was built for mass use by any developer.

I would think I am the demographic that would be heralding Solasta with you guys, but I actually find it dated and boring.

Wondering how I differ from the rest of you. Younger crowd? More table top experience? Or are we the same demographic but I just like different things.