Overall, I'm enjoying the game. I guess. But not for the reasons I enjoy a bioware game normally. The story in BG1 is pretty worthless. Durlag's Tower was the standout, with a complex bit of lore for why the place is haunted, which you are required to learn and recite in order to get past certain riddles. Finally understanding the history of this optional superdungeon opens access to a Big Dick SuperDemon. Killing him gives you a knife you can take to a certain town to unlock an EvenBiggerDick SuperDemon (tm) boss fight. Winning that gives you... Basically nothing. Your accomplishment was in not dying. Neat! The game doesn't lavish you with praise or loot. You did a thing but nobody cares because you're a low-level scrub.
The ghost at the end of Durlag's tower says, "hey thanks but we're still dead and the tower is still haunted by us. I guess the demon won't do anything bad in our tower though... So... Yeah."
That's the best quest in Baldur's Gate. Because it's optional and the dungeon is really cool. It's full of dickish traps that require 100 trap disarm to even detect. Traps that can pingpong across your entire party and kill them all. Traps that reset. It has in-depth puzzles and several gauntlets of minibosses. Resting is almost always punished with ambush spawns. Leaving is punished with respawning monsters, more ambush spawns and wasting your time. But you'll always find a way to win if you can just keep going and keep everyone alive.
Most of the other quests are proto-Bioware bullshit. "Help my cat is dead" *find cat* "thanks I'm gonna go rez it now" *dispenses tiny quest reward*
Or it'll be some shit like:
NPC A: Hey go kill that guy, he's a dick.
NPC B: Don't kill me, that first guy is the real dick. He's lying to you. His middle name is legally Dick and he's evil.
NPC A: dialogue choice 1: I'm not evil at all, go back and kill that guy
dialogue choice 2: MWAHAHAHAHA I'M TOTALLY EVIL, I'M GONNA RAPE YOUR CORPSES *initiate ambush combat encounter*
NPC B: dialogue choice 1: I'm telling you he's evil go kill him
dialogue choice 2: YOU FOOL! I'M EVIL BUT ALSO A VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCE! *initiate ambush combat encounter*
Best advice I can give for smoothly progressing without looking shit up is to equip magical weapons all the time so you can ignore the bullshit immunities that randomly pop up.
That said, you can mash through the dialogue and go kill things with impunity. The game has a large cast, so you can find a team you like. With less of an emphasis on story, there's no reason to stick with the story team. The combat is shit but you can still have a fun time. I'm probably going to end up hating Baldur's Gate 2 compared to this one. I bet icewind dale is the best of the lot.