With all my respect, Master D Evil, BG2 was not linear. It had many sidequests, a choice of good/evil and some class-related quests (strongholds).
Sorry but in my opinion Morrowind was non-linear because it practically lacked a story.
Just to remains clear: I never said Morrowind had a very rich storyline, neither did Daggerfall. Both had very subtle stories that you could entirely ignore because well... You could. However, they are clearly non-lineair.
<skip this if you want the short version>
BG2 on the other hand is still linear in my opinion. KotOR gave many sidequests too, often with an option of acting good and evil. Heck, KotOR *has* an evil ending.
How evil can you be in BG2? If you pick an evil alignment and decide to play evil and your alignment begins to drop, you eventually get attacked by everybody. In the end, you still had to kill Irenicus and that was it. Yes you could make evil choices, but did they have a REAL impact? No. Throne of Bhaal didn't add much more in that aspect: you could become an evil or a good god (or remain mortal) which is up par with KotOR's good and evil ending. So your choice of good/evil is and always has been fake. In both games you can act evil and in both games you cannot be as evil as you want, because it'd destroy the storyline. You're still within the boundaries of the game's "evil".
Take Morrowind: You can kill almost anybody except for a handful of characters which are critical to the storyline. A handful out of several hundreds without consequence. Do that in BG2 and the guards WILL keep coming after you and eventually kill you (unless you cheat), in KotOR I don't even think you can just randomly attack everybody, at least not without failing the game.
Stronghold quests: nice addition and yes, I'll take that as an element of non-lineairity. It's similar to Morrowind, where you can get a stronghold as well and expand it, although I think BG2's stronghold quests are more fun, although not all stronghold quests are equally fun. Still, that's +1 on non lineairity.
Many sidequests: So did KotOR. So do most RPG's. Does it make them any less lineair? No. In the end each game will have the "fetch this" or "bring that" or "kill him" quests that aren't part of the main story. I will admit there are *many* in BG2, but as far as I remember there are many in KotOR as well. In the end, you'll spend more time on BG2 yes, but we all know the price KotOR paid for better graphics was a shorter game. So once more, I'll contradict myself and give BG2 credit on having so many sidequests.
In the end however, it's still lineair as the main quest is still there and not to be ignored (wheras I actually needed a guide to get on Daggerfall's mainquest, that obscure is how it was).
</skip this if you want the short version>
BG2 has more gameplay elements than KotOR, but it's still lineair.
Which did I enjoy more? BG2 is the better rpg, it's bigger, more fun, etc. I finished it twice.
KotOR is the lesser of the two: shorter gameplay, shorter story (and the déjŕ vue feeling). I finished it four times.
The funny thing? BG2 was the 3rd game on the Infinity Engine (not counting expansions) and it was getting old as well. By the time I had finished the original, I was bored with it. It was a great game, but I really had seen it all and just couldn't replay it. The expansion lengthened it a bit and a year later I replayed it once.
KotOR on the other hand had nice graphics and compared to BG2 was quite refreshing, letting me replay it several times. Even for such a short game I still noticed new things after the third time (BG2 also had plenty of things I never noticed, but it's big enough for it as well).
Keep in mind of course that I dislike NWN + expansions, so I always ignore the fact that this game already had a 3d engine and KotOR wasn't the first to have one.
