There's something that bothers me about BG3's '5E kitchen sink' approach but I don't think I'm versed enough in game design lingo to explain it. Basically, it's similar to the idea of breadth versus depth. BG3 has great hand-crafted encounters and I appreciate that none of the combat feels like a random encounter. I appreciate that the game is generally better than it's predecessors when it comes to loot and such -- no longer are there no good magical weapons for particular classes, for example. If you want to build your character a certain way, you can probably make it work.
But there's something that bothers me about how, I suppose, because a player can do just about anything and potentially have any type of classes in their party, it's like all the encounters lack anything too surprising or astounding. I think I've seen people say that Spore Druids have issues in Act 2 because their damage types and unique gimmicks just don't work on various enemies in that section of the game, and that feels bad. People have pointed out that Unstoppable is just not fun to play against. And that's sort of where my thinking is, but I suppose the best way of pointing it out is...
When I hit Act 3, there was no challenge. Actually, there was one challenging fight: the interesting gauntlet with the Power Word: Kill guy. But every other fight, I 'solved' it the same way: barbarian Karlach rages to grant advantage to hasted battlemaster Lae'zel, who promptly knocks the target prone and then beats them to death, doubling her attacks if necessary. I don't think there was a single fight beyond maybe Raphael that took more than two rounds. Well, excepting the slog toward the netherbrain and then its incredible collapsing platforms. But Sarevok, Yugir (in Act 2), the Avatar of Myrkul, Orin, Gortash, the Steelwatch Titan... It was the same strategy each time.
And while it's great that martial classes are still relevant, for example, it feels like the sheer breadth of possibilities that Larian had to prepare for resulted in encounters that you could thwart pretty easily without needing to engage with much of the systems underneath. Admittedly, I haven't played on tactician, and maybe that's just what 5E is like, but it just felt... strange.
Admittedly, probably better than BG2 where you had to buff and pre-buff and whatever else, but it just stood out to me that I don't think there were many times where I had to think on my feet or otherwise adapt to a new foe.
I suppose that's the combat version of how many of the [CLASS] dialogue options just exist to do fundamentally the same thing as each other, and often just the same thing as a charisma check (but without rolling, or rolling with advantage.)
