You can't compare the number of slots and ignore how many options a game has ...
Did you computed spells, scrolls, consumables, arrows, potions, throwables, etc. in Pathfinder?
I bet the answer is no.
You can in Pathfinder, actually. Pathfinder has a hybrid hotbar/sorting system. It sorts by spells, martial abilities and class features, and belt slots for equipping consumables. It also gives you a large hotbar for the sole purpose of ease of access to your most used spells and abilities. And that’s a game that can potentially go up to level 20.
And that’s the major difference between Pathfinder and BG3’s current system. Pathfinder’s hotbar is again only for ease of access. BG3’s hotbar is used for literally everything but the common actions to the left that you have to manually organize.
Maybe actually play all three games first before declaring that a giant hotbar is the end solution, because there’s a big reason why literally no other cRPG agrees. People seem to forget that Larian is relatively new at this, but at the same time, the Solasta devs and Owlcat are even newer and even they have far more functional UI.
BG3 has zero excuse besides hoping that the UI is just a placeholder carryover from DOS2 at this point. Like a lot of other problematic things in regards to everything but the cinematography and dialogue.
