fans of the game readily admit to all of the many, many flaws and weaknesses and problems of the game and yet insist that it is some sort of masterpiece game, something they'd never accept or say for any other game.
I think most of my favourite games are flawed masterpieces, including BG1 & BG2 (& BG3).
Well, it's interesting you should say that.
Because BG1 and BG2 definitely have their huge, glaring flaws (although BG1 far more than BG2.) Vanilla BG1 was seriously lacking in character interaction (and with good reason, since the built in assumption seemed to be that a lot of your NPCs would be experiencing permadeath) and the amount you have to cheese combat, especially at lower levels, is truly absurd. Going back and replaying BG1 truly is a blast from the past, from an era where frankly the standards of gaming were much lower. Weird jank was a given.
BG2 is a massive jump in quality (at least from my perspective) and it's there that you can see some of the seeds of modern rpgs being sown. That being said, it also has its jank, from the built in 2nd edition weirdness ("Negative armor class is actually good!") to the balancing issues (At high levels casters become the best tanks because spell protections are better than any AC boost, since monsters have such low thac0 that AC essentially stops mattering) to the exploits (infinite clones anyone?)
It's actually this that makes me wonder about turn-based vs. rtwp. I think turn-based is obviously the superior choice when it comes to big, important battles. However, not every battle is a big important battle, and for that...maybe rtwp systems have some advantage after all. When you get to a point that you steamroll enemies, easy fights take up less time with the rtwp option. Hell, arguably BG2 even uses this to thematic effect: Remember the moment in Throne of Bhaal where you essentially mow down an entire army of Drow? It essentially shows you how powerful you have become (powerful as a demigod by the time of ToB) and yet if it was as slow as a turn-based battle, it probably would have been obnoxious rather than satisfying.
