I wasn't looking forward to this at all because I never played the originals and after BG3 I felt like any other similar games would be a step back and I don't want to waste my time, but this shit is not okay.
It's not really comparable to BG3 imo, the original was all about the action gameplay with the story being so bad it may as well not have existed in the first place. Much closer to a dark souls.
I'm not at all a fan of Soulslikes, and I'm really enjoying this one. It's not punishing or unfair in the way Souls games are. It's also very much not like BG3, though. You're right that it's action first. Closest I've played is maybe Greedfall, but it's really it's own thing. Fun though.
I can sort of see the Skyrim angle, but only in the sense that the game really incentivizes just picking a direction and heading out exploring. Skyrim was the first game a lot of people played in which it was just as much fun to wander off as it was to do what the game was telling you to do. DD 2 does that better than Skyrim, in my opinion.