It's one of those great games that makes it easy to see what the fuss is about.
The characters, dialogue and quests are all of the highest quality. Sure this game happens to have been created in the olden days where there wasn't much voice acting but the voice acting that does show up is of good quality. The different part members all have their own personalities and motivations and they aren't shy from bickering or pestering other characters in the game. Certain personal side quests from these characters can actually dictate when and if a character leaves your group; put a knight's errand behind your own plans and goals for too long and you'll see that very knight storm away from your party.
Dialogue usually has numerous answers and retorts for any given situation and they're not always situated in a good, neutral, bad response format which adds a little bit of suspense when choosing your responses. The best part of the dialogue is that it enables your character to talk his or her way out of situations which is something that most modern day RPG's don't have enough of. Sometimes it's nice to actually play as a thief and not always have to engage in fighting to solve a quest.
Speaking of quests, I honestly believe that the dozens of side quests often overshadow the main plot of the story. Of course some of these quests are nothing more than little errands that can be solved in less than five minutes but others are amazing plotlines that would put most modern RPG's to shame. In the line of duty you might find yourself on a magical spaceship, in a planar prison, or just running into numerous dragons and demons all willing to deal with you or kill you. The majority of these are optional but there are others, especially during the second chapter that are pretty much forced upon you artificially lengthening the playtime of the game.
I have to say something about the main villain; he doesn't blabber about his plot in front of your character leaving his story slowly unfolding throughout the chapters until the final conclusion. Too often do games hand the player the plot on a silver platter during the first hour of the game leaving out all questions as to what the antagonist is up to and why.
The graphics are actually pretty good even by today's standards. There aren't many 2d isometric RPG's left but everything is animated smoothly and easily identifiable right off the bat. Well almost everything. The 'tab' key is often utilized to highlight items or doors that can be opened seeing as some doors that are drawn are there merely for decoration.
As mentioned before, the voices are adequate and the sounds for the attacks and spells are also what one would expect. The music does have a nice sound to it and seems to spring up at the perfect times with the perfect sounds. It's one of those types of in-game music that I wouldn't mind having on soundtrack.
As for gameplay, it's not as varied as more recent games such as Neverwinter Nights but it's easy to see that the NWN franchise is just an evolution of the BG series. Most of the good stuff is there like the most important races, classes and spells. There are even spells that have mysteriously vanished from later D&D games that I think would have been an excellent addition like the "Summon Nishru" spell that only attacks mages.
Unfortunately the AI in the game shows its age as the scripts for party members are rarely as good as the scripts say. I set one fighter as a mage killer and he instead kills anything on the way to the mage, my mage set as a summoner uses the one summon spell and then stands their not attacking or summoning new creatures when the old ones pass. I really don't like to micromanage party members and control six characters but for Baldur's Gate II, it's a necessary evil.
Another small gripe is that, as for most RPG's, gold really doesn't have much value. In the early stages of the game it's nice to have and you might find something you'd like to purchase but as the game goes on and all sorts of magical goodies are tossed into your lap, money really becomes just a high score type deal. I rarely found anything in a shop that I needed to splurge on and I was constantly offloading acquired goods so by the time it was all said and done, not only was my character one of the most powerful characters in the game, he was also the richest.
Anyways Baldur's Gate II will fall into my list of games with quality you don't see much of anymore. I actually wanted to just rush through this game and get it out of the way but found myself enveloped in the side quests more than anything else. It's one of those great games that makes it easy to see what the fuss is about and one that has been added to my great RPG list.