Read this article about the combat balancing philosophy in Midnight Suns, and it is a design choice I like a lot! Everything is fun but not perfectly balanced. Seems like it might be BG3's philosophy as well!
Yeah, I saw the article. Solomon games are still balanced well enough for the first playthrough and maybe 2nd playthrough to hold well, while BG3 is more on the broken side. It has more fundamental problem than having "a meta".
To quote the article: "If you're never going to take this ability, it feels like it breaks the entire hero. You really want the player to say these are all so good, I want to use this ability, I want to use that ability…"
That's where BG3 falls short to me. Too many potential choices just feel underwhelming. The EA has gotten better, so I still hope for a major rebalance for 1.0.
Edit. On further point, BG3 has additional challenge of using same mechanic for players and the enemies. Both XCOMs and Midnight Suns are highly asymmetrical with player character and enemies working of a different ruleset. It is not quite so in BG3, and unbalanced abilities are significantly less fun if one is on a receiving end of one.
