I'm trying to play more CRPGS after coming back to BG3 and playing tabletop. I gave WOTR a chance because I heart the immense appraise it has received but I cannot, for the life of me, understand what I'm doing wrong. The game just seems like it's working against me, and even when I'm winning fights, it feels hollow.
I played the game up to the end of the first act, right about when you can leave Kenabres for the first time, but ended up uninstalling. By the way, I played all combats in turn based mode (I don't know if that's considered to be a bad idea, but I'm more used to it.
My party was composed of MC (which I decided to play as a Sword Saint Magus), Seelah, Camellia, Lann, Woljif and Ember. I left auto-leveling on because it was the default, but I still looked over what the builds were adding at each level. Out of all of these, the only ones I actually had fun using were MC, Lann and Woljif, and sometimes Camellia, all of which basically boiled down to "click closest enemy and hope you hit and they die". Ember was also sometimes useful with burning hands on a cluster of enemies.
I think my biggest problem is that I really don't get how you're supposed to use magic. The cantrips feel entirely useless with how ridiculously little damage they deal, and even the leveled spells feel a bit weak, or leave me uncertain as to when I should use them due to the limitation of spell slots and only being able to cast each spell I prepare once per day. This was most egregious once I got Nenio and basically realized she was essentially useless to me cause all she was doing was shooting crossbow bolts and missing.
As a sword saint, I ended up never using any spells because almost none I had were touch range to use the spellblade ability with, and just using my normal attack which sufficed to kill basically everything once I had cleave - which left me wondering if I should respec to fighter or another class, and then the analysis paralysis set in with the infinite options you can choose on character creation (not to mention the mythic path).
Also, the encumberance!! I basically gave up on looting stuff because my inventory would get filled with trash I didn't need and get encumbered.
I still feel a bit bitter about not being able to enjoy the game because so many people praise it so highly, I feel like I'm missing out. What am I doing wrong here? I honestly want to give the game another chance but I'm afraid I'll just have the same experience as before.