Also there are very few games where the point is to please a hardcore audience, most games aim for a wide audience and that's who most game journalists also aim their content to.
Definitively not the case with STRATEGY, RPG and similar genres.
And wide audience is more often, lowest common denominator.
The point of any product is to please the target audience, not to please people who failed into game journalism and can't even pass the cuphead tutorial. That said, who Larian is aiming to please? DOS2 and modern RPG's fans. Baldur's Gate Fans, D&D fans and old school D&D fans. All of this target audiences has completely different demands. Larian should try to please then, not critics.
Minor quibble: from what I've seen, the BG1 and 2 fans who are upset with BG3 are upset because it's too accurate to D&D. They don't actually like the current D&D rules and the current D&D setting.
Ideally, BG3 would be more 2e like not dos2 like... But between 5e like and dos2 like, 5e like is better.
I dunno why you're bringing up reviews from the 90's too as if the industry hasn't grown and changed substantially since then, video games nowadays is the largest entertainment industry in the world and reviews are going to adapt to that.
Changed for the worse.
Any product should be rated and reviewed according to his proposal. You don't see food critics complaining about gourmet food cuz "it is too expensive and fancy", when is the point of the gourmet food. Nor a ski magazine complaining that an track for Skiing on Bariloche is too hard and dangerous for people who don't dedicate themselves a lot on the hobby of ski. But you see retarded game journos(redundancy) demanding easy mode on souls series which has the difficulty as the main selling point. Complaining that PFKM is too much old school when being old school is the main selling point of the game and other retarded nonsense, like criticizing the lack of AfroPolish on The Witcher.
If every ski magazine/website only rated family friendly novice friendly tracks positively, would't be surprised that most people who dedicate a lot of money and time into the ski hobby would't consider their opinion valid. Same with gourmet reviewers if they only ranked good fast food.
----------------
If game journos are rating BG3 poorly, is cuz BG3 is good.
