Echoing the sentiments about it being 'mmorpg-esque'. I think I liked the design philosophy of some of the magic items earlier in EA much better. Right now it feels like item design is getting pushed with far too much emphasis leaning in the direction of equipment sets and builds around equipment gimmicks. This newer stuff does feel a lot more like MMO equipment. I like equipment feeling special, I don't want to feel like I'll be tossing stuff because it doesn't synergize with my 'momentum build' or whatever.
As a further point on that comparison, I really don't like the way quest rewards are being given out in newer content-the 'here's three items, pick one'. Feels artificial. These items are also only obtainable via the quests, so unlike the reward philosophy of some of the earlier quests where you could pickpocket zevlor's gloves, or just kill the paladin for his sword, they are discouraging players from going 'off the rails' in regards to quest design.
In some regards, I think the magic item design in BGIII is starting to show the limitations of making items unique in 5e. In 3rd you had all sorts of modifiers that made every piece of armor or weaponry unique. The Masterwork property, different materials (ie adamantine, mithral, etc), or the masterwork attribute system Dragon Magazine introduced that made sure there was always something you could do to make one dagger different from another before you even looked at that edition's robust system for magic enchantments. And that's not even getting into the variety of equipment options that were present or how stuff like max dex bonuses for armor or crit ranges and crit multipliers for weapons made equipment so much more unique. Hence why Larian is here giving weapons special attacks and going full-in on giving equipment all these gimmicky mechanics-because 5e weapons and armor just don't have that much going for them.
I do think Larian could do the game a big favor if they tuned down the MMORPG-influenced aspects though. That's a big turn off for me personally as someone who has never liked many of the aspects of that style of gameplay and would not like to see it replicated in my D&D games-tabletop or otherwise.
