It's personal preference for me, but having played almost every D&D CRPG in the past, from the previous Baldur's Gate entries to Icewind Dale and Neverwinter (and even the old "gold box" AD&D titles such as Pool of Radiance), I've found that I am bored and sick and tired of Illithids whenever they show up. They don't do anything for me and games that have them as a plot point have often been a tiresome slog where I have to get past the part with them in it before I can start having fun again.
For me it's a WOTC/Hasbro property flex they seem to need to keep flexing over and over again because they own it and so I was hoping BG3 had stories and settings and maps that don't feature yet more psionic slavery brainvore fuckery.
That's making me hesitate about my purchase, because I don't know how much of it to expect but the trailers and basic plot pitch on Steam made me worry. 
If you just groan when you have to deal with them, maybe give it a chance.
That's what I've done in previous games. When even freaking Icewind Dale wandered into related Underdark cliches, I groaned loud enough to alert my cat. Then I trudged past it and continued playing.
If you're curious if Larian can make you tolerate them better
Larian's been pretty good to me.
That doesn't really answer my question; even something free may not be worth my time if it isn't what I would find entertaining overall.
You will play the game, you will fuck the bear and be happy.
spoilers for act 1
the game starts with a mindflayer putting a psionic parasite in your eye in order to turn you into a mindflayer. it adds some dialogue options but you dont have to use them and i think there's a parasite skill tree if you interact with it a bunch. im not sure how the rest of the game is going to go (im only partially through act 1) but yeah it seems like mindflayers play a pretty big role in the main story, im guessing that they'll feature prominently in the later stages of the game and will probably be the big boss battle at the end. at the moment my party's main quest is about trying to find a cure for the parasite but there's also a bunch of cool side story stuff going on. each of the origin characters has their own fleshed out backstory too.
Thank you for the information.
I'm still on the fence about buying the game; I enjoyed the two Pathfinder games (Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous) but if BG3 is just "sort of that, but with a lot of added proprietary WOTC Mind Flayers(tm) and maybe some visually assisted
" I'm not sure if I should.Take it for a test drive. Our lady fitgirl is working on a repack.
I've played it since it was pre-released. Intro bits got the most of the illithid stuff in it and after you hit solid ground and can explore the world it takes a pretty big step to the backburners for a while, beyond some dice roll choices that you can optionally take in some conversations.
I know anyone's free to choose how they want to play, but I suggest trying Bard out. Although I hear paladin is a lot more popular among the normies.
