I find the combat extremely easy or at least much less complex. It's simply a matter of understanding how to position your companions and how to utilize terrain and heights. Furthermore, since it's based on D&D 5E, which is a simplified version, the combat is much easier compared to what happened in BG2 (when enemies had many defensive spells to neutralize and, most importantly, you had no idea what defenses or immunities they had, whereas in BG3, you can simply hover the mouse cursor over to find out everything).
It depends on what you are used to I guess. I'm not a big Larian fan, finished DOS1, played a lot of DOS2 with a mate, and they're OK, but I don't really enjoy the terrain / surfaces / height interactions - I actually much prefer thinking about how spells and skills interact than about positioning my characters. Personal preference I guess, and I have to say BG3 is much better than DOS2 in this regard anyway for me.
The combat in EA is certainly not easy for me, but it's also not really that hard. Certainly much better than DOS2 which seemed lke pulling teeth sometimes. It's in the mids for the most part and I'm ok with that, it just takes way too long I think.
With that in mind, I positively hate the golem encounter in the forge. Those kind of puzzle combat scenarios annoy me to no end. Again, maybe I didn't get it, but making the guy stand over the hammer and having to do that multiple times was tedious as hell and required multiple reloads, even mid-fight - which I really try to avoid normally.
