I've uninstalled the game and won't waste the SSD space on it until official release, or changes to the mechanics during EA that bring it significantly closer to the core 5e rules.
I enjoyed the game for the first 2 or 3 playthroughs, soaking in the story, graphics and voice acting. But once I started to really think about combat tactics, I couldn't ignore how much backstab and high ground cheese dominate combat to its detriment.
For me, and most of the posters here who are asking for closer 5e rules implementation, homebrews aren't bad just because they are homebrews. The Larian homebrews, such as backstab, high ground Advantage, barrelmancy, proliferation of surface effects etc, are detested because they are so much more powerful and easy to perform than the cost to execute them. These cheesy homebrews are so much more powerful than the native DnD spells and abilities that combat revolves around them. Why even use Faerie Fire to give your team Advantage against the targeted enemies? 1. It costs a spell slot, 2. requires the enemies to fail their Dex saving throw, and 3. can even affect friendlies within the area of effect, when all it takes to gain Advantage is to walk/jump behind enemies to backstab them or climb to a high ground?
These cheesy changes by Larian make combat too dumbed down, since the player, whatever class he is playing, just needs to know two mechanics: 1. backstab with melee characters, and 2. high ground with ranged characters. All combat in the game is balanced around these two homebrews. The player can throw out the majority of class abilities and spells and just use a small handful of them, since the rest are rendered largely useless thanks to Larian's cheesy changes to the rules and mechanics.
