Divinity Original Sin 2 if you don’t know the acronym.
My biggest problem with DOS2 is that it each battle felt a little too punishing and always ended up needed cheesing. I never got off the first island. At level 5 I thought I was soft locked out of progressing because my build choices couldn’t get through a battle. Every fight felt like the whole kitchen sink is thrown at me and I don’t have the tools necessary to survive any of it. As hard as I tried to like the game I ended up giving up on it.
My biggest blocks were Radeka and Gareth. Radeka I cheese off to the side but ended up getting chewed apart by the zombies and spit to death by the beetles. Trying to save Gareth is just futile as it’s too many men who can whittle me down to one party member in a matter of a few turns while I struggle to do anything. Don’t even get me started on the ambush battle that just wipes the floor with me by turn 4. I even went back to Fort Joy and finished off some battles that I left there. I really felt like I needed to kill every last NPC on the island to gain any progression in that game though. The sad part is, I like a challenge. But try after try after try after try after try of the same battle over and over again made the game go from a challenge to it’s just cheap. So I gave up.
Is the combat on that same level in BG3?
I think I agree with you here. I’ll add the caveat that I refrained from playing the Early Access at all, and have only played 6ish hours of BG3 at this point.
Divinity combat felt more puzzle-like, and while it could get ridiculous (everyone teleporting all over the field constantly with all the movement abilities) it also felt like it offered endless possibilities and even though some encounters were hard, it felt like there was always some interaction you could find as a solution if you just dug hard enough.
I also think BG3 is hamstrung a little by following 5e rules. I am personally not a fan of this edition (for multiple reasons), but we’ll see if Larian has adjusted the rules enough to make the game interesting.
The addition of weapon based attack abilities has at least added some nuance, but I feel I have a lot fewer options, combos and interactions available to me than in D:OS2 (thus far).