Absolutely. In terms of the much-touted reactivity, Larian fixated very strongly on all the 'little' stuff in terms of reactivity-what if X character is dead when you are doing this quest, what if such and such an item is stolen from someone's inventory. There's a lot of variables effecting 'small' things in regards to the outcomes of events, that I suspect ballooned out the complexity of the game, but conversely there is often a dearth of 'big' decisions at times where it feels like there should be big decisions-and I feel like a lot of major decisions, repercussions, that lauded 'reactivity' got cut because of all those little variables. Look at the lists of cut content and it's like a graveyard of important plot stuff that got left out. But nowhere is it more obvious than if you decide to play an evil character in this game, particularly a custom, non-Dark Urge one. As you can read about on a lot of threads here and on the subreddit, many major 'evil' decisions just sorta dead-end with no follow up and you just sorta end up like that meme of confused Travolta from Pulp fiction.
There's no doubt that the multiplayer element made the singleplayer experience worse off with the weird real time world/turn-based bubble.
The overarching plot of the game though is probably where this approach hurt the most. The plot is just going in way too many directions at once and the evidence of huge rewrites even late into development is everywhere. Any one of the major elements would have been enough to carry a game, but it shouldered way too much for its own good-just consider some of the elements, we have (Endgame/cut content spoilers):
1) The involvement of the Nine Hells-We got Karlach, Wyll, Raphiel, Zariel. But it ends up being rather...ancillary to the main plot. Soul coins utility was cut, Avernus was cut, Raphael's ability to cure the tadpole was cut, Gale's deal with Raphael was cut....etc.
2) The Dead Three. Seriously, even one of these would be enough to carry a game. the Original Saga was centered around Bhaal, NWN2: MoTB was about Myrkul. But here none of them really get a chance to shine. Orin and Gortash ended up with a ton of cut content.
3) Shar/Selune. Huge amount of presence in half the game, for something with only tertiary relevance to the story.
4) Githyanki civil war. I can see this being woven into a mindflayer-centric plot pretty well, but it's obvous such a grand story did not have the room to stretch its legs and really get told the way it could have been. The whole thing with Gith's son has some major rewrites around him and feels very sloppy. There's quite a lot of cut content involved and weirdly the Githzerai are barely a thing in this game considering this particular theme.
5) Mindflayers. Obviously had quite a lot of cut content and rewrites. The shift from Daisy to Guardian feels very awkward, many liberties(retcons) were taken with Mindflayer lore, and as many have pointed out, the major driving focus of this plot (and the game itself)-removing/using the tadpoles, was basically cut out and turned into a gamified powerup.
6)Mystra/Karsus. One of the biggest events in the history of the setting basically reduced to a plot mcGuffin.
7) Ancient vampire mass blood sacrifice thing. Barely relevent and lost in the crowd of other apocalyptic things going on, despite being casually referred to in-game as a bigger deal than the entire plot of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2
Larian really should have focused on one or two of these elements. About the time when they considered adding freaking
Larian should have considered pumping the breaks a little bit. It's all just so overwhelming. Sure It's engaging for the player when you get all this stuff thrown at you one after the other, but after it's al lsaid and done and you have time to process it, the spectacle of it all starts to wear off and the shortcomings start to be more visible.
