And therefore it is beneficial for the game to break more polished version of DnD for no reason, and implement half-baked homebrew?
Maybe Larian is just using the same approach as Bioware? All these bugs and exploits didn't stop BG1&2 from becoming very popular, even though the devs never bothered to address them. And now the games are quoted as a positive example, so it shows perception changes with time.
To start with I don't like that any criticism leveled at BG3 is being countered "but in 20 years old games". Whatever those games did, it doesn't bypass issues that current game is encountering.
And there is always the issue of old games being old, and being able to get away with more. I will praise (and still prefer to play) OG UFO: Enemy Unknown (also known as XCOM: UFO Defence) over Firaxis XCOM reboot. But in no way I would tolerate UFO's bad UI, horrible mid-late game balancing, and many awkward spikes in difficulty in a modern title. Gaming is just a bit more mature and professional then it was 20 years ago.
Older BG games had a huge number of exploits, most of which are fairly easy to exploit.
Staking exploding skulls to kill a dragon in seconds, or maybe the famous immortality exploit that is even easier to use.
Neither of these exploits was related to 2e
That, and the illusion clones copying thief traps and ignoring the trap limits. And the time stop traps...
I don't know if it means anything, but even though I played through BG1&2 many times most of those are new to me. On the other hand I can have a playthrough of BG3 without encountering a broken feature. Bg3s issue isn't that some spell combination or character builds are OP - it's that basic systems, like stealth or action economy, just don't work well.
And things that I was aware of in BG2 (enemy AI being dumb and dragons not reacting to hostile AoE attacks, or traps being OP) arent things that made BG1&2 good. Those are enjoyable games in spite of their issues. A bit like Deus Ex's shooting and stealth are really not very good, but game is still a classic due to other factors.
I think it is also a mistake to ignore a different focus of a BG3 - as a game it is drawing far more attention to it's mechanics and sacrifices a lot of "immersions", quality of storytelling and world building for the sake of gameplay. It's gameplay not really being good is a bigger problem, then in BG1&2 where world and story were at the forefront. Like yeah, KOTOR's combat is garbage, but it's means to an end, rather then the main feature of the game.
