As long as it has lots of stats like D&D rpgs have. I remember playing the BG1 demo loads of times, exporting and importing my character until he hit max level before leaving candlekeep. Then I went around killing all the NPCs until I found the wizards who have protection of the Gods who killed me instantly. My claim to fame though is that I killed Gorion!(I used 6 * summon skeletons and shot him with a bow)
Sure, KOTOR is sorta linear, but it’s a really, really wide line.
Just the fact that you could have such drastically different endings that didn’t depend on any single action showed, to me at least, the depth of the game.
I loved Baldurs Gate 2 - it was a monster of a game.
Neverwinter Nights, hmm… the moment the story got interesting it started to run reaalll - l - lylyly slow. Too bad, need to upgrade my PC. 
I loved Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 too. I played them both to death in fact. BioWare screwed a few things up in Baldur’s Gate 2 (like the lack of proper dual wielding for thieves with high dexterity) but I played it for months and months almost non-stop. It was one of those games that consumes your life. Even after completing the game I couldn’t stop myself from playing it. The different classes, weapons, routes through the game and NPC party combinations lent the game almost endless replay value.
I would’ve liked the version of Baldur’s Gate 2 that BioWare envisioned before they had to cut so much content due to time constraints. Some of the content they had planned would’ve breathed even more life into the game (Minsc’s sidequest was cut in which we discover that Boo is or isn’t an ordinary hamster depending on how you complete it. Haer’dalis’s two sidequests were cut, as was a third route through the game).
This might sound strange but the exact same thing happened to me…
When you travle and you encounter that black guy (forgot his name) … my computer started saying “no”…
Thats a shame, Minsc(&Boo) were my favorite characters. Any idea why they killed off Khalid for the 2nd one? He was pretty whiny and annoying but still his death didnt seem to acheive much except villify the bad guy(who was already perceived as pretty evil after the catpure and torture thing). Maybe it was to produce Jaheria as another love interest but that seems pretty cheap to me.
KOTOR was good but for me it doesnt compare to BG 1 & 2, BG1 was probably the first RPG that I found really had an immersive world and it will probably allways remain one of my favorite games.
Khalid was killed off because players complained that he kept getting himself killed in the original game. When his hit points reached a point near death he runs from battle shouting the words: “discretion is the better part of valor!”
When you see Khalid’s corpse, one of the dialogue options allows you to say “it looks like he finally got himself killed”, which I found hilarious. Of course, if you say this in front of Jaheria she goes out of her mind.
I suppose Jeheira never really loved Khalid if she was so quick to forget about him. BioWare, David Gaider in particular, chose to bring Jeheira back for Baldur’s Gate 2 because everyone hated her. I personally can’t stand her and her misguided Harper allies.
Minsc’s quest involved someone stealing Boo. You could solve the quest by buying Minsc another hamster (which was the evil way of finishing the quest), or tracking down the real Boo, which wasn’t the real Boo anyway because Minsc has owned several Boos. Poor Minsc; when he speaks to Boo he’s just speaking to himself (the part of him that was buried beneath all those head wounds). It’s funny though because when you track down the real Boo you’re led to believe that his new owner has been receiving some lucrative advice… from someone.
The BG2 modding community has restored some of these cut quests, but I haven’t had a chance to try them out yet.
Finally been getting back into BGII. Started it a while back, but got distracted after the first dungeon, and never continued.
SPOILERS
In the estate that was taken over by trolls, those damn Golems are a FRIGGIN’ PAIN. I had to use my wand of Cloudkill to aggro the Golems so the Iron Golem would charge and block the door. Then, I had Minsc (who was my only character with a +3 weapon) stand just out of range of the gas attack, and slowly chip away at his health. Man, that took forever.
I’ve stopped myself from playing Baldur’s Gate 2 again simply because it’s so time consuming. Some of the new mods available for download have tempted me to play through the game again, however. One mod in particular restores many of the quests/items/scenes that were cut from the game.
It’s a shame BioWare screwed up thieves. I’m glad they were better balanced in Neverwinter Nights.
One thing i liked about thieves on pen and paper when i used to play that at school years ago was that they gained xp for just finding gold. If that was the case in BG/NWN then thieves would rocket ahead even faster than they usually do. That said I dont like thieves, pickpocketing is cool but too risky and I cant be bothered with all the quicksaving and loading to make sure you dont get an entire town trying to kill you.
Geoff, that’s funny what you say about Jeheira and Khalid. It reminds of what I did when I played through BG1.
Of the pair of them I kept Khalid, but I wanted to ditch Jeheira in favor of Viconia (why deal with a half-assed druid when you can get a full on cleric?). I’m a relatively nice player so I didn’t have the heart to kill her myself. So what I did was I send her by herself into the spider house in Beregost and then kicked her out of my party. 
What happened to her after that the world will never know. But since I never wound up on the same screen with her again she wouldn’t rejoin.
What I hated was that the most powerful mage in Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 was evil to the core. The only way you can recruit the services of Edwin is by killing a less-powerful yet good aligned mage, or by finding her first and then recruiting Edwin. Even then, you risk losing him if you gain a good reputation. I never found Dynaheir useful but I wanted to keep Minsc, her bodyguard, so I trapped her in a room too because I couldn’t bring myself to kill her. This was why BioWare got rid of the paired NPCs in Baldur’s Gate 2.
Edwin is more willing to accompany you in Badur’s Gate 2 because he’s well-aware of your heritage and the power it will bring. When the chauvanistic mage was turned into a woman I couldn’t stop laughing at the irony of it.
Jeheria has a few advantages in Baldur’s Gate if you’re willing to endure her insufferable charm. As a druid/fighter, she can wield schimitars, which can make her quite useful when compared to a cleric who can’t. Her husband Khalid is so much smarter than her that I wonder what he sees in her.
I also dont see what she sees in a coward like him, quite a pair! Still its that kind of indepth relationship that made BG1 and 2 so good. What class was your player? I was a fighter mage cleric but i had played BG1 online for ages before starting BG2 so my stats were really high. Still it got annoying staying at a low level but I liked being complete quests with just my main character. The belt of immunity to all magic except beneficial magic was a great yet slightly overpowered item I liked to use as well.
I always played as a fighter in Baldur’s Gate. The character animations were much sharper than they were in Baldur’s Gate 2 and the human animations looked worse in the sequel. The trade off was that they animated far more realistically.
BioWare nerfed fighters in Baldur’s Gate 2 by depriving them of proper grandmastery. When you devoted five stars to a single weapon, a fighter was supposed to gain an extra 1/2 attack per round, but BioWare denied fighters that bonus for game balance reasons (which was a mistake IMO – a fighters needed something to separate themselves from the other warrior classes).
So, I always played as a thief or assassin in Baldur’s Gate 2. Although thieves were nerfed in many ways as well, I loved hiding in the shadows. That’s one of the reasons I liked Thief: The Dark Project so much; it’s the closest thing to playing as a D&D thief from a first person perspective a gamer can find.
I though Thief: The Dark Project was an excellent game too, I really liked the atmosphere in it as well as the mystery surrounding the different factions. Although Thief 2 was good as well, there were some elements I didnt like(like the mechanical eye and the random robots walking around). Im looking forward to thief 3 even though Ion Storm might muck it up like they did Deus Ex 2… still I await whilst praying.