"Hard" is such a vague statement though. There are games that are hard, sometimes unfairly so but are still entertaining, even for low skill players. Somehow I found 5 hours to watch this Noah's Dark Souls 1-3 essay. What I found fascinating is seeing how somehow with completely different skillset he approached and enjoyed the game. I am mentioning it because he "butchered" quite a few enocunters by cheesing them, and had a jolly good time doing that in most cases. Those were also encounters I enjoyed really much fighting "honorably".
I don't think having hard encounters that feel overwhelming is bad, and I don't think an ability to cheese encounters is bad. Where BG3 struggles compared to DS is that it doesn't have solid core experience. BG3 doesn't have a well balanced and designed core, so it can't really engage player in an interesting way - "mastery" of the system is unenjoyable.
That's also, I think, where the BG1&2 cheese differs from BG3. I did cloud kill to death dragons off screen, or combed time stop with multiple dragon breaths and rest between encounters etc. but I did that because I didn't want to engage with the content, not because I felt the game demands me. I knew there was encounter I could engage with and figure out, but I just coundn't be bothered. BG3 just isn't there (yet?). When it gets hard, it gets hard unfairly so - it gets hard in the way that limits valid tools at players disposal, rather then encouraging them to make most of what they have.
