The overall mood of the sword coast surely draws inspiration from the DOS games. However, the level design itself is far more complex with a fully developed vertical level design system. I don't remember the multi-leveled design with wooden beam walking in DOS2. Don't recall complexity In approaching a location either - there are a lot of interactive environment pieces like mushrooms you can jump on, protected barriers that require conditions to break, several ways to infiltrate locations. What is fundamentally wrong with improving on an already strong base of the original ideas?
And that's why I think calling BG3 a "clone" or "reskin" is very unfair. Why I personally dislike this is this, to requote myself:
That they choose to repeat that much from their highly acclaimed D:OS2 I think it tells something about Larian priorities - I think it goes in line with how little they think of importance of the narrative. Mario games often repeate same level theming but they are clearly not copies. I suspect Larian might be thinking the same way - "We did D:OS2, how can we make it better?", rather then thinking of a new story to tell.
BG3 is a cRPG - as such first and foremost I see it as an interactive, story-driven medium. That's definitely how I saw BG1&2 and most of Bioware catalogue, with gameplay being secondary. Mario games have been using pretty much same plot and world theming for many of their games, but it doesn't matter because story is not something one plays Mario game for (at least I don't).
Seeing the story being reused is a far bigger crime for me in an RPG, then it is in most other genres. It is even less welcome as I thought story in D:OS2 was rather poor, so seeing story beats that remind me of that game is not welcome, and I see issues I had with that game bleed into BG3 already.
On top of that, it adds to the frustration that in spite of a new setting and new ruleset BG3 shares a lot of design principles of D:OS2 - which is understandable as both were made by Larian, building on the same tech, but it is still unwelcome by me. Similar story beats only reinforce that earie similarity. I mean even Bethesda didn't start you in Fallout3 as a prisoner again.
