First, I'm glad that Baldur's Gate 3 have basically reignited D&D in Japan, alongside the WotC's new promotions and the Honor Among Thieves movie. That said, the developers didn't seem to have any input from players completely new to D&D itself.
In an interview found online (
『バルダーズ・ゲート3』開発者インタビュー。世界で絶賛されるRPGに秘められたこだわりとは), your developers have said new players shouldn't be worried about the Forgotten Realms lore even if you're unfamiliar with it. But the reality is, in most cases,
they had no idea what they're doing mechanically.
Current Japanese video game market have become utterly detached from table game/TTRPG side and had not much of cross-pollinations, unlike how Baldur's Gate 3 is. To most of them, BG3 and D&D in general was a game that runs on a completely alien set of mechanics. Then the game's poor tutorial kicks in.
I've heard many words about mechanics being not clear and poorly explained. Some have left characters encumbered all the time or kept using weapons and armors not proficient with just because they could equip it. Of course, Spell Slots might've thrown many off too.
Throwing players into character creation before teaching them the mechanics looked like a bad idea too (like d20 rolls or actions in combat.) As a DM myself, I always do that with monster-esque stat blocks that explain itself.
Even beyond that, tutorials and UIs in general felt severely underexplained.
Your friends over Spike Chunsoft have included early game guides, but that was only for early adopters on PS5, which ended up becoming way less of whole.
Back to the lore: not being familiar with the source material didn't just mean not knowing what to expect in gameplay, but also in mechanics and lore. I've heard words about that starting from a Mind Flayer ship with heavy sci-fi vibes threw people off the loop for whoever expected classic high fantasy vibes. Having a Western origin makes a fantasy work look "genuine" to them, not expecting the wild and wacky side of D&D.
(Sidenote: the "isekai" thing your rep have mentioned in the interview might've been a bit out of date. Isekai have gone out of fashion a little bit: now people are reignited with what a classical fantasy (without isekai) can offer and we are exploring what's beyond that without the cheap power fantasy. In recent years,
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End and
Delicious in Dungeon have gotten anime adaptations, both of which builds on the RPG archetype we have built even after the first decline of D&D in mid-90s. Even the author of
Delicious in Dungeon is a huge fan of D&D, have played the
Planescape: Torment which we never got a Japanese version.)
Despite everything, it's not like we're completely clueless, though: I've seen some community content creators (especially the few D&D content creators that existed before BG3) and trashy curation media (that just curates X/Twitter or message board posts and reposts them to get views) have caught on to the game. Still, the game did not do enough explaining on itself. That's where we were blaming for.
I just thought the detriments might've been out of your expectations and I wanted to tell.