Two games stick out to me when I think of cheese and difficulty
I've watched someone who is VERY good at XCOM go through missions without getting touched. It never feels like cheese, but rather looks like they're actually commanding a group of elite soldiers.
With BG3, watching someone who is very good often ends with me thinking "are you serious, that actually worked"? or just laughing at how ridiculous it is. It's closer to watching a TAS speedrun (tool-assisted-speedrun if you don't know the term). It looks fake and silly.
I wish BG3 had more of an XCOM feel to encounters instead of the feeling that someone is exploiting the game. Just my opinion though.
Although I LOVE XCOM 2, and am playing it right now in fact, there is no way that game would transfer to this game. First, there are some people here that complain this game is too difficult, if they think this game is difficult, there is no way they would last in XCOM. Second, there is people that complain about "save scumming" in this game, and that is basically all XCOM is. You make one mistake, or have a bad RNG roll in XCOM and you are quite literally done. Not to mention, your team is dead, and in that game when you lose your soldiers, it hurts, bad. Especially if they are SGT or higher.
There is a lot of stuff in XCOM I do wish they would integrate in this game though. A way to possibly build our camp up for certain abilities or bonuses. More random encounters. A better sense of urgency and such just to name a few. I also see why they integrate "cheese" into this game. You have game "journalists" (God I don't even want to call them that nowadays) that complain about any game that isn't just cake walk, with no challenge or risk. Complaining about gatekeeping if there is any type of barrier to see the story. So they integrate the barrelmancy into the game for people like that I think. But honestly, you DON't have to use them. I have never used barrels, hardly any scrolls in any of my play throughs, and I have not had much difficulty with the battles. So I doubt very much Larian is EVER going to remove them.
