The last time I used the power toys was on W10 but can’t you choose which components you install? Surely you can disable the autostart for the ones you are not using?

Sure, the presentation is better than 20 years ago, but that is true for basically all games.

I found all companions to be painfully one dimensional, they all have exactly one gimmick and that’s all they ever talk about.
So the game never managed to make me care about their emotions, but I get where you are coming from.

For me the retcons aren’t even the worst part. There were zero logical reasons to name that game Baldurs Gate 3. It doesn’t continue the story and the mechanics are completely different. They just misused the big name, to get people hype up, and sadly, it seemed to have worked.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s an absolutely reasonable game, if you haven’t tried any other CRPGs. But there is a nearly endless number of CRPGs that are better than BG3 in every way, including all the points you listed. Except maybe for the cinematic part, I’ll grant you that, mostly because I don’t know what makes a game cinematic or why you’d want a CRPG to be cinematic.

Baldurs Gate 3: people hype it up as the best CRPG ever. When in fact it’s not even close. It loses in every category that matters to several dozen contenders (including Baldurs Gate 1 & 2): build diversity, story, writing, the UI.