Buggy like most ambitious open world games, but still perfectly playable. It certainly lived up to expectations, it was one of the most praised games of its time, more than what I’ve seen about BG3. Granted I don’t follow the industry as closely as I did back then.
Just because you didn’t like 1 and 2 doesn’t mean they didn’t live up to expectations. CDPR was nobody before witcher 1 and a small studio before 2, so I really don’t get how they didn’t live up to expectations for those two games.