Grim Dawn was completed before the devs started releasing DLC. Last Epoch, apparently, still has severe bugs and unfinished content.
Additionally 2 of 3 DLCs in Grim Dawn are more akin to olden timey expansions rather than modern cash-grab DLC.
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.
Well you do defeat the big bad at the end. The fate of that NPC doesn’t constitute a cliffhanger for me.
More importantly: all features were done. Personally I don’t really care about the story in ARPGs anyway.