If 9 times out of 10 when I play a battle I have to save scum it, that's too hard. A game should be challenging but not frustrating; especially for battles that aren't end quest battles. So yes, I beat it multiple times, but each time I beat it, I had to basically prep first. By this, I mean that I had to know what was coming and do a ton of stuff to basically prepare for it in advance as if I had gone to the future and learned the moves of my enemies prior to facing them.
That's bad RPGing. You see, I think our differences about BG3 have to do with different perspectives. You come from a "This is a Video Game so it should behave like a Video Game and players should save scum the crap out of the game in order to get through it" perspective. From this perspective, a battle is not fun unless you have to learn the gimmick necessary to defeat it. So, it is natural for you to view the encounter from the perspective that you should have to play through it multiple times in order to figure out how you need to position yourself beforehand in order to win.
My perspective is from a true RPG experience perspective. From my perspective, a DM/GM should NEVER put the players into a scenario where they will all die. Why? Because in an RPG the entire concept is that you, the player, are ACTUALLY the person you are roleplaying. If you die in the game, that's it. Game over. Period. There is no continuing. You can't reload and try again. So the whole point of a true RPG is that players should feel like heroes who can overcome any challenge thrown at them on the first attempt. They are supposed to win every time. Again, the idea is that if you die even once, there is no coming back. No save scumming.
So when I play an RPG video game, I expect something at least similar. I recognize that there is no DM to manage the game to ensure that players don't permanently die during an encounter. If I suck up the encounter, I expect in a video game that I will die and have to reload from my last save.
This said, I would still expect that the creators of the game will at least try to make each encounter winable on the first try without having to learn and exploit some sort of gimmicks they've created. Again, I shouldn't have to save scum at all. Encounters should be hard and challenging and fun but not so difficult that I can't win on my first playthrough.
I get that they are trying to make the game replayable. That's great. I like replayability. But I also like immersion. When I play an RPG, and my character is constantly dying and I have to reload my last save file, that isn't fun for me. It completely destroys the experience. If I want to play a game where I have to replay a boss fight over and over again, I'll play a game like Mario Brothers or something where I can accumulate lives and keep replaying the same level until I win. RPGs are not those types of games and shouldn't be built like that.
But, before you pick apart my comments, again, this is MY perspective. You have yours. I have mine. I'm just trying to explain where I'm coming from to you.
Oh, and btw, Tabletop IS relevant. I wish people would stop saying it isn't. This game is based on the Tabletop RPG. It is the source material. You can't expect us to NOT site the Tabletop when you are using the Tabletop as the source. If they created the game based on their own rule system, I'd not mention Tabletop at all. They could build it however they want. But the fact that they built it on 5e rules and said it was built on 5e rules, that gives me grounds to mention Tabletop and say that regardless of whether you are talking about the video game or the Tabletop, the encounter is too difficult.
So please stop saying Tabletop is irrelevant.
