best gaem ever

Still one of the best RPGs ever made, in my opinion.

It ticked all the right boxes for me - great story, fleshed out world and lore, meaningful and challenging battles, and beautiful (for its time) graphics. BG and AoE were the two games that drew me fully into PC gaming.

gameplay

Quite deep, with a lot of options for character customization, party tactics and all that good stuff. It does suffer from poor balance though, with some classes being too strong and other too weak. The fact that the game actually gets easier and easier after ~level 3 when you're playing a mage is a big balancing issue. Games should not start hard and end easy. But when it works, it's good fun!

accessibility

Low. The game assumes that you're familiar with the AD&D ruleset, and if you're not, well, sucks to be you. It's very easy to shoot yourself in the foot at an early stage, and make the game a lot harder than it should be, just because you don't know all the rules. And the rules are not exactly clear & intuitive either.

story

As the game relies on an established setting, there's a lot of things that the developers got for free when making the game. I do feel that the story is not particularly well paced though, an issue that was fixed in later Infinity engine games. And very characters feel fleshed out. Most of your party members have very little in the way of personalities or backstory.

overall

Not a bad first step for Bioware, but it had a lot of room for improvement. But they clearly learnt a lot from BG1 (although BG2 does suffer from major balancing issues as well).

Gameplay is trying a bit too much to be a perfect adaptation of the D&D 2.5 system. It works decent enough, but unless you read the entire game manual first, it is incredibly difficult to understand. Heck, it is borderline impossible to explain what Thac0 is to anyone who started with D&D 3.x…
Still, there are tons of small little nuances that can make the game memorable. Like having a thief and getting the Nymph cloak for the first time, discovering that it has an infinite amount of charges of the charm spell. Or saving up those two available wands of summoning to defeat the entire entourage of the end boss without taking a single scratch.

The story is a fairly standard "you random hero, go on epic quest following these breadcrumbs", but the writing and the characters make it memorable, even if technically over three quarters of the quests are simple two-stage fetch quests. Although it has a ton of companions, most people probably remember a few, and it seems to always include Minsc. :)

Overall, I still think it is among the best games made by BioWare. In some regards, I think it is better than BGII, because BG1 captures the classic PnP adventure module feeling a lot better.

In its time it was fantastic. Today, although graphically it ages well (those 2D games age better than the early 3D ones), it would be pretty difficult going back to the ridiculous AD&D rules. Very glad that Obsidian is picking up the mantle and making BG-like games (Pillars of Eternity) but without the silly AD&D stuff.

Pretty good, though not without flaws. I rate it somewhere between 7 and 8. In itself it's an alright game, but it's mostly notable for its impact on later games (its sequel, Planescape Torment or Pillars of Eternity).

Gameplay: Great (8). Lots of different combat options between classes and party members provide good replayability. Quests sometimes provide choice and consequence, which also provides replayability. Some balance and progression issues that Fnord already pointed out. Inventory is terrible (why do gems take as much space as full sets of armor?).

Accessibility: Atrocious (3). AD&D rules are just a bunch of stuff thrown together randomly with no rhyme nor reason. The game adapts them pretty well, but someone who's not familiar with them is guaranteed to facepalm (as is someone who's familiar with actually good pnp rulesets).

Story: OK (7). Standard fantasy stuff. The setting is cliche hell, but the writing is good, and most of the characters are memorable. The french translation is terrible (the french dub being among the worst things I've ever heard) and was such a trauma that since playing this game I now avoid french verions in videogames like a plague.

For its time, it was very very good. Remember, many people were declaring the death of RPGs back in 1997/8, so this game was quite a RPG resurgence.

Gameplay: very good, based on D&D, of course, well implemented. One of the first games to have the option to choose between real-time combat or turn-based strategy (which is essentially what happens if you pause the action often enough). Myriads of spells to choose, some loot variety. (P.S.: yeah, inventory was terrible!)

Accessibility: I guess it was ok, but I was already a CRPG and D&D player, so it was very natural to me.

Story: very good, memorable characters (Boo!) which spoke with each other (wow!). I really enjoyed it, but somehow I did not get very excited about the ending (maybe because I dislike the gameplay of the final battle, which put me in the "let me just finish this thing" mode, and took me away from the story).

Graphics/Sound: both very good. The backgrounds were very pretty, hand drawn if I remember right. Music was also quite epic, I still remember the main theme.

Overall: quite good, 8.8/10.

Suggestion: Deus Ex.

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Well... I happened to play BG1 after BG2 and it seemed... lacking in comparison to the sequel. At times it unnecessarily dragged on, the storyline was inconsistent, a few locations felt empty and companion interactions weren't on the same level as in BG2 either. It was a decent game I think, but needed some polishing (and in BG2 the devs pretty much eradicated all the flaws of the first game).
I'm an avid RPG player, but I wouldn't even put BG1 in my top 10 of RPG's... probably somewhere in top 20 perhaps.

Oh and yes, Imoen is awesome. Even more awesome in the sequel though (although I'm probably in the minority on that one). :) Probably one of the 5 greatest female game characters ever.

pretty boring due to old dnd mechanics and lots of combat (you need to rest every 5 minutes) and low level characters.
the story was ok but i prefer baldur's gate 2.

I never played the original. Do you suggest to play the enhanced edition or does it changes too much?

Planescape Torment was better

Never got beyond the start. I bought it at release but found the screen door transparency grating and the game didn't grab me. I played the BGEE tutorial on Android, and found it okay, but I no longer have the patience for long games. Started Final Fantasy IV instead, got to a difficult boss battle and hasn't continued since. BG would probably have been better, FF is a little too childish for my taste.

My first real RPG i have played on PC. It was love at first sight!

I only played Baldur's Gate 2 Shadows of Amn, so I can't give input on the first one. Also played the console games (Dark Alliance 1 and 2), and although people didn't like that those changed lore some and went more Diablo style gameplay, I quite enjoyed them as well.

Game to discuss 2morow? Lemmings :o

In my opinion, the whole Bioware D&D games series(I've yet to play Icewind Dale but it's pretty much the same thing) is extremely boring gameplay wise. The only thing that can get me to play them these days is mods. The story barely even attracts me to them anymore because, well, y'know... It's pretty straight forward and, for me, boring. No idea why, either. It just hits my head like a brick wall and bounces away unnoticed. I beat #1, got to the city under siege in #2's throne of bhaal and... I stopped playing. It's just so monotonous and boring.

I'd explain more but I feel like it's self explanatory if you see it in action, and very RNG-based(dice rolls) as well as, well, boring and plain. I'm also very tired.

Best RPG ever made, just noticed this and had to post.

Not read through the post but highlights for me are; telling Imoen to wait for you at the Friendly Arm Inn and never returning to hear "Heya, its me Imoen." Meeting the Bioware space travelling hamster boo. Trying to descend Durlags tower too early and getting trapped into oblivion. Regretting the dialogue I have to sit through to get XP off Noober(Polymorph other used to glitch him back in the day I believe). Laughing at the spoilers: Serevok/Koveros name change plot point, for a Bhaal Spawn with his intricate plot which has driven nations to war, fooled the Red Wizards and cut the entire nations iron supply, his identity is hidden by reversing his name. The first time I heard "you must gather your party before centuring forth". Hating the glitchy unkillable werewolf who is harder than Johnny Irenicus, the amount of shit you kill before you get to him, then a pretty bog standard werewolf king is stronger than an actual deity, hate that guy but its better in EE. The first time I got m/p working with my friend and I convinced him to put on the gender changing cursed belt near the start of the game. "I serve the Flaming Fist" is the worst voice acted anything ever, but I live it.

There's so much more! Basically one of my favourite games of all time and it paved the way for the genre.