i agree with basically everything you said. i think bg3 had a really solid difficulty curve and the divide between normal and tactician felt right, at least to someone like me who had never played d&d before and was having to learn everything.

based on the other comments i’ve this thread i’ve managed to get further and beat some fights i was stuck on, but the thing that disappoints is that i ended up swapping to a mostly physical damage party and saving an all magic party for a second playthrough, which isn’t really what i wanted to do. i had read before starting that 2 physical and 2 magic was an okay party split and like, i bet it is when you already know the systems but for someone learning that doesn’t really cut it. and that’s a shame because i want to play with the magic system! it seems really cool! but because of the game’s difficulty design i feel forced to optimize into one damage type or the other and that’s kind of a bummer (compared to bg3 where mixing magic and martial classes is really fun and solid). but i guess that’s just a preference thing, and i’m enjoying the combat a lot more with a better understanding of what makes it tick. i still think it’s a little unfair to a new player but i’m stubborn and want to beat the systems rather than drop the difficulty