In many ways yes.
Back around 1990 these Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games just appeared out of no where and on my Amiga (with 1MB ram!) there was not a lot to compare them to. I had a couple of RPG games like Bards Tale, Faery Tale, but nothing with turn based tactical combat. Genres were less, or kinda not at all, defined back then. Games were just games to me. Initialisations like RTS, FPS, RPG didn't come until I finally got a Pentium with titles like Warcraft, Doom. But I never came across any PC RPGs. The Dark Sun games were probably around but its just not what the kids were swapping on the playground. In my life there were only a tiny amount of people who liked ADND games and they were very much special, almost secret games, for me.
Anyway, the thing about these games was you could take your party from the first game to the next. Pools of Radiance would let you import to Curse of the Azure bonds to Secret of the silver Blades. Champions of Krynn to Deathknights of Krynn to Dark Queen of Krynn. And they were really fucking hard! I had to borrow a Hintbook from a friend to get through Curse!
Pools was in Forgotten Realms setting, like BG is. So was Gateway to the Savage Frontier. Champions was in Dragonlance setting and I always liked those games the best.
Baldurs Gate was the last, the "ultimate", party based AD&D game which let you import your party… Even if it was just you main character.
When you wake up in BG2 a few of the "canon" party are caged with you and you're in a tutorial dungeon which feels very different to the open forests of birdcalls and hobgoblins in BG1. When you leave the dungeon you're back in a city, like the end of BG1, and could spend hours exploring it before you are given area maps by NPCs, but it's also kind of mentally draining. Overwhelming. You can't just exit a map on the east to discover a new area to the east any more, which changes the feeling of the game from new adventurers exploring and making their name to that of an experienced party who is in demand going on quests given to them. If they can find the time!
By the time you finish BG2 and its expansion your main character will be around level 40 with all manner of epic feats like whirlwind attacks and smites and that kinda left no room for a trilogy. There was nothing left in the old tabletop Monster Manual that you couldn't easily defeat.
BG3 was going to go back to early levels again but, tragically, it never got made.
And honourable mention should go to Neverwinter Nights which got a lot of play from me but it wasn't party based and felt like an entirely different game with its 3rd edition ruleset where BG games used the old pools/champions 2nd edition rules. And also it was sort of easy and nothing even scared you.
And on that note, Neverwinter Nights 2 was one of the most disappointing games I ever waited for.
I think little things about the 2nd edition rules, like clerics only using blunt weapons, were D&D to me and when 3rd edition let a cleric use any old weapon, if they got feats in it, the feeling of the game was changed. It really wasn't D&D anymore. And again while playing 4th edition rules in Neverwinter Online its just 100% not D&D. Not like it was. Dungeons and Dragons was dead.
But the "essence" of those early games, the feeling I got while playing them, did reappear for me eventually. Clerics armed with maces, Knights picking up their Longsword +1 and shield. The challenge, the exploration and discovery, the unique treasure with its own lore, the despair when evil clerics would cast Slay Living on your character and make the DC instantly killing you, the confusion of where to go next (without using the Hintbook!).
Dark Souls!
Such as going from "goldbox" to BG1 recaptured that feeling of oldschool RPG gaming, which I thought was lost forever, and after the decline going from NWN to NWN2 to the pits of Neverwinter Online, Dark Souls brought back the old D&D magic that even D&D itself had forgotten.
If there ever was a game which topped the BG series this would be it.
