Ok let's go back to the topic then from my past experience.
There was a fight I remembered which is, I think, a good example of what's wrong with BG3 system.
It was against duergar in the underground,at a moment a mushroom could follow you. There was really really high ground, they encounter was triggered when you arrive at a certain point and duergar just appeared out of nowhere (why not). The point is, the first time I encoutered them, I, obsvisouly, wasn't prepared. So in one or two turn they had push half of my team over the edge. So, I reload and tried to have a better placement (which is, with this system of chainlock really inconvenient). But the duergar focus on ONE thing, shoving my team. So after some tries, I finally played the shoving game too and that's it. I forgot about spells, skills, I just focus on placement and shove. So this game which was ridiculously hard became ridiculously easy. The point is, the ennemy are too aware of the shove's might.
I'm not a bad nor a pro gamer, I'm a casual gamer, a casual but massive RPG gamer. And I never played a game this uninteresting. I had fights with spells and skills and some "strategy" but at the end, everytime there is a really massive challenge, I feel the shove tentation cause it's the only skill who could even kill a dragon with the good high !
For the comparison, I remembered clearly BG1 and 2. There was a lot of fights, some easy, some harder. I remembered the lich, the drake-child, the giant or the siren. There was hard fights, in different ways, but I managed to succeed it byt different ways and it was, at the end, pretty fun, cause I could imagine different ways. In BG3, when I encounter the redhat after the witch disappearance, they just killed my team in no time ! So I tried again and again but it was uselesss, they was just too strong.... so I ended up on the highest place of the hut to shove and shot.
So, I have no doubt there is people outside who find lot of ways to deal with this encounters, but if a casual but experience gamers like me didn't, I think there is a probleme in the balance and even the system.
Of course, it's just my opinion and maybe Larian is doing an RPG for hardcore gamer, but I think it will be... a bad idea.
By the way, and again to compare, Pathfinder is hard, like damn hard !, but it's way more understandable and approachable. I suffer playing Pathfinder but I enjoyed it cause I could get where the difficulty came for each fights and I feel relieved when I find the way to beat the game. It's a feeling BG3 hardly give. Maybe at the beginnin, but once you understand "shove" is the answer to everything, it's disappointing. And, no, it's not the player responsibility to not use a feature of the game in order to enjoy the game more. It's the Game Designer responsibility to design his game in order for the player to enjoy it.
To conclude, I think the system is more a problem than the monsters themself. But it's just my opinion.
