Nah. Pathfinder shows that nostalgia and 'crunchy dnd' does work. BG3 does show this as well. I have issues with it but comapred to many rpgs, BG3 will be 'nostalgic' and 'crunchy'.
Also, PE was pretty successful. PE2 on the other hand.
The key is the devs have to care. Obsidian big wigs no longer care. They became lazy just like Bioware. Hence why both are now trash.
Pathfinder is an example of it not working though. It's not even in the top hundred right now, while multiple older rpgs are.
PoE sold on hype. By PoE 2 people know the game wasn't their thing.
That was definitely my experience with PoE. I was quite excited for it leading up to launch, but after beating it and looking back all I could say was that “it was fine, I guess.” Combat wasn’t very fun and story was pretty forgettable. I hoped both of these would be improved in PoE2 but Obsidian somehow managed to make both of these so much worse. It makes sense to me why so many people who bought PoE1 avoided that game.
