Depth? Questionable. Reactivity? Sure, but it's very shallow reactivity. It's really awesome that it acknowledges your class, sometimes race, etc. But often times those options lead to the same place, and some of those options are really unbalanced (for example, Barbarian -- those dialogue options are almost always made with advantage, whereas I can't recall a single Monk option having any, and Barbarian had a whole lot more to boot), and it's the same with choices. Voice work, animations, and graphics are all stellar.
I've felt the Eurogamer review that summed up BG3's approach to choice and reactivity as working extremely well providing you don't really try to fight what it's offering you (the 'yes, and' aspect they talk about) but it's not remotely comparable to, say, Disco Elysium as far as player agency goes which it's seemingly compared to by critics and audience. Pillars 2 is probably the game I'd put it up against, honestly.
Agreed, it has a lot of shallow reactivity. In contrast, Wrath of the Righteous has relatively little shallow reactivity and many quests have just one way to solve them, but at the same time your mythic path choice, your companion choices and some key quests heavily influence outcomes down to the road and affect both gameplay and story in a more substantial manner.
Yes, WoR is a game that while I'd say I liked it overall less than BG3, it's a game that genuinely wowed me with its reactivity. I did multiple playthroughs just to see how other paths went, other romances, etc.
Another thing that bothers me about the various ways and choices you can to resolve encounters, the solutions and niche applications of skills that Wormerine mentions, is that... how much of it do players really do without meta-knowledge?
Two things that come to mind immediately, both in Act 1. Priestess Gut meets you in her chambers and gives you a sleeping potion. If you don't drink it, or can't be drugged, she calls the guards. People talk up how great it is that you can cast silence on the room before that happens, and so no one can hear her call for help. And that is cool, it's a great use of a spell. But how many people are going to do that first time around, versus being told they can do it, or save-scumming various ideas and strategies? And don't get me wrong, that's fine, but I don't find that particularly engaging. To me, what was missing, was for my half-elf to note that it's a sleeping potion (she did) and then realize, oh, I should fake being asleep or something like that. Instead, she drinks it and Gut flips out (why, exactly?) and it's a fight.
The Minthara siege is another one. Sure, it's fun and awesome to lace the battlefield in barrels and blow Minthara's little army off the face of Faerun... but it's something that feels like it's there so players can go, haha, wow, can you believe what you can do in this game? And it is awesome, I think I've done it every playthrough -- but, like, come on... Minthara just leads her forces into this little clearing filled with explosive barrels?
