Bard's Tale 1 - Tales of Unknown - Transferring Characters

So I just finished Bard's Tale 1 in Legacy Mode in the new remastered trilogy. (Played BT2 some as a kid but it had been a long time...) BT1 was far worse than Might and Magic I, which I also played this year. The challenge was much more about the mapping in BT than the combat. I don't think I'll rush to play BT2 right away, but here is my question:

Does anyone remember how character transfer worked from BT1 to BT2? Could you really transfer your overpowered characters and the game would just let you, or would it level you down like most games? The new trilogy lets you choose to import without leveling down or you can reduce your characters to a reasonable level as part of the transfer. I am trying to play these like the original games, so I am curious how the original BT2 handled import from BT1. Thanks! And please no spoilers about BT2 and BT3...

I finished Bard's Tale One a few days ago, and immediately jumped right into the second game. If I remember right, you're given three choices: move your seriously overpowered characters to the new game as they are, or take a half-way hit in power before moving over, or simply transferring over at level one. I can tell you the first dungeon in Bard's Tale two in no way required any over-powering, and if you take a fully leveled team from Bard's Tale One in there, you are going to be bored to tears.

So did you choose the "half way hit"? If no one has any information about how the original game worked, I assume that is what I would choose. Thanks for your input.

No, I fully reset my guys to level one. Even then I retained some of my heightened stats, and it didn't take long at all to redo my two mages and get them a bit leveled up. I just got to Oscon's Fortress yesterday, and I'm lingering on the first level a bit, trying to get my mages a few more levels before hitting the puzzle area in this new dungeon.