For something that Larian was absolutely adamant in not conceding, with the excuse that they would "leave it up as an option to modders".
Let's put aside for a second the atrocious default control system and the baffling lack of "drag to select", the game is RIDDEN of "bottlenecks" where activating a larger party brings game-stopping bugs.
That's why I tend to be annoyed by "modders will fix this" rhetoric some folks default to when faced with criticism. It shouldn't come a surprised that a party size that the game was not designed to support creates issues. Larian hasn't designed BG3 to be played with more than 4 party members, so it is natural that some of it's aspects break when the party size is increased.
That said, with small companion pool, clunky maintenance heavy UI, general lack of tactical depth in BG3s combat I personally don't see an increased party size as something I would want to experience. With final patch being out, I will probably go for my 2nd BG3 playthrough, and the first thing I will be looking for is if any modder managed to solve a mess that is the hotbar. My hardcore playthrough ended quite early when I got bored of sorting UIs. Games from 90s have better UX then BG3.
