I forget where it came from but I think Mike Merles corroborated the concept of the character arc in D&D being broken up into four quartiles, with each one being it's own genre of fantasy. (1-5) grimdark (5-10) heroic (11-15) high fantasy and (16-20) superheroic/demigod heroic

I also think the other Baldur's Gate games had encounters that often were all or nothing, they were the most frustrating and fun parts of the combat in that game.

I personally enjoyed having a game that would grind to a halt as the wizards constantly tried to find the magic combination of debuffs that would allow the grunts to finally do the 10 hp that would kill him. but especially the final fights and ToB it got kind of messy, especially with masses of mobs spawning in.

dumb, pseudo-intellectual and polite homophobe