Baldur's Gate (Enhanced Edition)
Note that this was my first BG play-through so there'll be little useful EE feedback. I've caught a bit of flak in the past in this thread for somewhat ignoring the date and the context in which a game was released and judging it by rather modern standards. I feel this line of criticism will be much more valid in this case since it concerns a genre, of which the developments I'm much more familiar with. To put it simply, I've played a number of Bioware and Bioware-style RPGs that their grandpa ended up looking rather unremarkable.
To start off on a positive note both the gameplay and the visuals haven't aged to any significant degree. Obviously part of the reason is the EE or more accurately the BG2 engine, as a few 1999 screenshots look significantly worse, but the core of the gameplay could hardly have been meaningfully altered.
The game plays quite well and while I was hardly enamored with fiddling with the AD&D rules or the RTwP/big party/isometric aspect of it, it was enough fun to keep me engaged and going through the rest of the RPG stuff. I guess a combat deserves a special mention as even with not being too fond of the ruleset the IE certainly allowed
the hard fights to be more tactical than the 3D RTwP RPGs I've played.
Structure-wise the I found BG to be very different from the formula applied to modern Bioware games which was a pleasant surprise and would have been significant to my view of it had the actual content been better. That is, as a matter of fact, my main criticism of the game. The main quest/story, characters, quest-arcs and generally the gameworld was, with a number of exceptions like Durlag's tower, Ulgoth's Beard (curiously both provided by the expansion) at best serviceable and at worst generic, in places cliché and largely unmemorable.
As their take on the genre developed, Bioware went on to refine its delivery of the content, for example contrast the big revelation about the PC in BG1 (letter) and KotOR1 (entire abduction), the companions and their frankly, useless, banter and more notably the quantity and quality of the dialogue involved in major plot-points. Usually a minor point but the villain of BG1 was easily one of the least interesting villains I've had to fight in an RPG. As far as I'm concerned, I definitely prefer a more fleshed out approach so the game loses some few points on that front. One slight positive note that impressed me about BG's plot was how the economy of a region was a major part of it. Usually games use much weaker personal-political events to further their plot. I wonder if those responsible for that plot-point had more of a history/social-sciences background rather than being professional writers.
It is fair to say that Bioware's focus was more on exploration and allowing the player enough freedom to enjoy his own D&D adventure. On that account it succeeded as BG packs an incredible amount of content (much bigger than DA:O, took me ~60 hours to fully go through) that is to be enjoyed in a non-linear fashion. Some of that traditional adventuring is great, Durlag's tower was the fist proper dungeon I've played in years. It, however, does not feature important amounts of reactivity or C&C and thus isn't as strong as Fallout 1 or 2 was. The focus on exploration does not quite work for me due to this type of exploration being better delivered in less restrictive systems and isometric not being as good as full 3d for exploring gameworlds for me.
I think the city of Baldur's Gate probably best summarizes how the game is different to later RPGs. It's by far the biggest city I've encountered in the genre, and while its style works for a big city it ultimately lacks focus and content to fully realize its size. The same can be said about the utter mind-numbing number of recruitable NPCs who can I guess be attributed to the need for party-class experimentation.
As a final though, I wanted to mention the thing that most struck me despite happening too many game-hours ago. I guess it could have been intentional but it seemed at the time as accidental introspection. I was trying to do a quest regarding some Xvarts which were a menace to a farming area. I went to the area where I expected their camp to be, found the guards, who were already aggressive and attacked me as soon as I approached. I started slicing through the population of their camp/village and at that point
the leader of the village ran up to me and said:
"You monster! You kill us when we do nothin' to you. Well, Ursa kill you. Ursa protect us because Ursa kind."
Shortly before Minsc hacked him to pieces.