I just played and finished Baldur's Gate 1 for the first time, here's my thoughts as someone who's never really played CRPGs before this (excluding like, a few hours into Pathfinder WotR before this and getting kinda tired of it):
Game was alright. I'd give it a high 7 or a low 8 out of 10.
The sudden plot escalation of the last 2 chapters after so many prior chapters of buildup (which would lull you into a false sense of security) was definitely intriguing and exciting, but unfortunately too short, sudden, not enough done with it, and too conveniently/quickly resolved.
I liked the presentation, the bits with narration and images were cool, the setting was... interesting enough (though pretty low fantasy compared to what I was expecting). Made some funny stories for myself. I played as a paladin and basically helped everyone I came across. NPCs were generally entertaining and interesting, quests were simple but that was usually fine by me. The map did seem somewhat limited though and the overall world area felt a bit small all things considered. I felt like most exploration didn't lead to anything too crazy, so I left some of the southern part of the map unexplored.
Combat was alright, not incredible at first but as my group got stronger, it got more fun to do. Durlag's tower was a bitch and made the rest of the game feel like a cakewalk by comparison, I ended up enjoying it in some masochistic way (but I would never do something like that again). Inventory management and shit took up *way* too much of my time, and at least on normal difficulty, it felt like your power levels by mid to end game could clear most everything without much effort (which was probably for the best, I had gotten exhausted of killing so many meaningless monsters and people by then). Things like charm, fear, confusion and hold were so fucking annoying to deal with from enemies but it didn't end up mattering too much by the end. It was nice to get so much powerful gear on my characters and just shred apart mobs of enemies. Spells like haste just broke the game after a certain point (until the enemy dispelled them, then that was fucking annoying and probably something hard to deal with).
Party members... were practically nonexistent in terms of dialogue in general and also value to the story. I thought taking Jaheira and Khalid would give me more WRT to the plot information, but nope, nothing. Otherwise I took Viconia, Imoen, and Neera too. It was okay, I generally liked them regardless (imoen was fucking annoying though but sunk costs)
The weird sequence breaking you could unintentionally do made some of the writing incongruous-feeling (e.g. a plot character saying you've got to go prevent something that you just took care of), I guess that comes with the territory of player freedom, but still.
Chapter 6 and 7 were definitely the highlights of the game imo. Its a game that grew on me as time went on, but I still felt it could've been a lot better.
Also: the weapon imbalance in this game is just comical. There's a lot of weapon options that just don't have great weapons. It seems like if you want good weapon combat, you'd want to use 2H swords, long swords, and longbows. Everything else was pretty crap by comparison. I wanted some good axes but I didn't get any decent ones until endgame (a fucking battleaxe +1 was my use for most of the game), and even then the 2H swords clearly outclassed them by bounds and leaps. Spells are just broken, I could've breezed through the game if I had just used more of my resources but I hoarded them because I didn't know how crazy the game would get.
One thing that was irritating that I wish I knew beforehand is how your stats worked, I put my strength and constitution to 16 when making my character, which was basically almost the worst thing I could do, 17 and 18 literally make a world of difference whereas with 16 you basically wasted stat points and get nothing for it. The only saving grace was tomes I used to get them to 17 at least, but that took a while and I basically gimped myself in the early game for no fucking reason. Wisdom was also nearly fucking worthless in that game for paladins apparently and I wasted points on that for no good reason. I'm probably gonna check a guide before continuing much in the sequel in case there's more bullshit they hide behind this stuff.
I just started Baldur's Gate 2 shortly afterwards and I already kinda want to drop it, being stuck in a tedious random mage's dungeon to start with feels fucking gay, especially since I was basically one of the strongest beings in the previous game so how the fuck would that happen? (and no, I'm really not that interested in the mystery of some annoying mage). Plus the VAs for Jaheira and Imoen *really* aged by 2 and you can hear it, and the voices for the male protagonist kinda suck. I dunno why they didn't include some of the previous voice lines from 1 but oh well. People say the plot writing and companions get a lot better in 2, so that's part of the reason I wanted to try it, but damn being forced into shit like this is exhausting.