I am a bit tired and rambly so bear with my terrible typing.
In my eyes, I see each aspect as a different thing they need to pass the class (make a good game).
Presentation would be like powerpoints and artsy stuff, clearly important to the grade but most people just do the bare minimum. With this kind of game you mostly get top down, characters not emoting and all emotions done through text. The writing has to carry you. This would be older titles like the original Baldur's Gate and newer titles like Pillars of Eternity or Pathfinder. When you do get more in the way of visuals with an RPG like this, it is often more limited in someway. It can be limited in facial and body movements, like say Fallout which allowed you to see the face of a lot of characters but they were not exactly animated, continuing up to New Vegas which had some stuff (but honestly the most emotive characters had computer screens for faces or was a flying robot, so generally the custom characters, other NPCs were flat potatoes). And then when you get more, dynamic faces showing emotion and the body moving in different ways that are not just 2 or 3 universal animations, often times that comes with another limitation. You can see that with Dragon Age Inquisition and Fallout 4 which emote fairly well, but the dialogue becomes limited and thus does the player choice. Inquisition still has a lot, but compared to Origins the amount of options feels like a straight downgrade to me, while the animation and voiceacting has only gotten better over time. Alternatively, you get more action RPGs like Witcher who have great animation but you have a preset character with preset dialogue, there isn't extensive trees and variations. BG3 however has taken on the challenge of emoting everyone that isn't the player character while maintaining choice and the ability to affect conversations in many ways. That is very challenging, and represents them going for quantity and quality. And to me their ambition seems to be paying off in that front so as a teacher I'd give them an A. You have to account for Spells and different effects in dialogue. You things moving in a scene like say DAO, but characters also have lots of facial and body movement. There are some graphical glitches but Larian has been very on point to fixing them and other than small jankiness in some cutscenes, and the glitch where two people inhabit the same body, cutscenes look reallllllllly really good considering the scope of the game, and by looking at companions like Astarion I can see that budget is definitely being used on this. Perhaps too much if mechanical problems remain unaddressed...
However in other categories I would not be as generous.
Story/Writing (which would be like essays): I would give a B right now. There is potential and I still don't quite know where things are heading, which is good, but there are issues with the writing. For example, tying into presentation a little, Shadowheart doesn't hide her secret enough. She is almost too open with it, and you can even see that in the presentation. I would rewrite her a little bit more so she is a bit more secretive, even outright lying about what god she worships until she actually trusts you and the party. Other than that, most everyone has potential and characters like Gale and Astarion have some interesting layers to them. On that somewhere above I saw someone complaining that Astarion is written too effeminately and honestly I don't see it. He isn't written as a super strong guy, but I think he was written well as a rogue and vampire. He doesn't exercise his strength like a fighter but instead of using his charm or his dexterity to end someone's life. He also is walking the fine line between human and monster, which I like.
Mechanics (which would be the tests in my eyes): D. They would get a D. There are some things they got extra right like Speak With Dead, which again is presented and done really well. But they were tested on their ability to adapt 5e mechanics to a video game format, and they have practically failed on many of them. I posit it is cause they are very incomplete, 5e has a lot of things to work out, but still remains that mechanics are borderline failing to me.
Others might be grading it based on DOS2, which one can argue as being on a curve. But I am not really letting my opinions of DOS2 impact my opinions of BG3 that much except for one thing (I hate the killing off of companions to limit party size like DOS2 did so i really want them to not do that here). Heck, personally, a lot of the things that worked for DOS2 do not work for BG3 at all cause mechanically and presentation wise they are very different. DOS2 would get something like B A- B+ (Summoning in DOS2 gets A+ though, Summoning in BG3 gets a C) from me. If I was to give grades to other cRPGs rn I think it'd be as follows (keeping in mind year they came out): Dragon Age Origins would get B+ (docked points for always being drenched in blood) A A-, Wasteland 3 would get B B B, Fallout Series would get B+ A- A, BG1+2 would get C (even considering age I feel like they could have done more with what they had, sometimes characters would cast a spell or such in dialogue but eh, I just remember instances of it saying Person X does Y and his model is just stagnant. Fallout 2 came out the same year and has way better presentation imo) B+ A. How I view things is my own opinion and my own arbitrary ratings, but I tend to not curve things, at least not by only looking at a company's past games, I do look at other games but typically those that somewhat match the one I am looking at.
Random edit: C in my eyes is passing, the ones I listed are good games. I tend to not play bad RPGs, or rather I tend to enjoy most RPGs. It has to be something real special for me to consider a game failing, and so far (luckily) it has only been a few JRPGs that have "failed" for me (cause I avoided some of the really bad western ones) and even then that is a feat cause I am one of those who really likes Last Remnant. For a game to get all Fs/Es it'd have to be something the equivalent of Sonic '06 in its genre, as in presentation that worse than nothing and is frustrating (like extremely long load times for you to read a line of text that doesn't matter), a nonsensical story that is not enjoyable (worse than plotholes), and is mechanically bad enough that it is unplayable in some regards (not just a few glitches but entire mechanics being flawed to their core).
