I am going to go out on a limb and assume unfamiliarity with the mechanics made things harder for you than they should have been.
Undoubtedly. At the time, though, it didn't seem worth the effort to check for options that could help. Nothing in particular about the other gameplay elements at the start of the demo was that appealing, so I didn't give the combat another shot.
You have been missing out.
For the fight in question, entering a largish area I sent 2 party member off to the right to fight a few bats, and the rest started left for another weak-ish opponent or two, when a bear came in from the front, so 2 (maybe just 1) of the left group went straight and had a tough time until the 1 (possibly 2) on the left was done and could join in attacking the bear.
I am very sure there are no bears anywhere in that chapter, so either that was added for the demo or it was something else (a Golem maybe, though nowhere do you run into a golem alongside mephits, so...?). And yes, I have played this game *a lot*.
When that hectic fight (even with pause) was done, I realized I hadn't checked on the two that went right for awhile, and (wondering if they were still alive) found them standing around doing nothing, with barely any damage. Obviously it was my fault for not paying attention to everyone, or checking if there were any notifications or automatic settings for when a character was done doing what he was told to do, but at the time, even if there were such settings it seemed like there would still be too much babysitting required.
Yeah, the problem I see here is you not being used to having to keep track of multiple characters. It most likely takes some getting used to if you come from games like Divine Divinity that don't have any notion of a "party" but imho it is well worth the effort.
In case you *do* decide to give BG another shot (which I would higly recommend you do if you enjoy RPGs), don't start with BG1 in the mistaken belief that would be a good idea for the story (while you will obviously miss out on some minor things it's not worth missing out on the HUGE improvement BG2 is over BG1 imo), BG2 is a lot better in many respects not in the least of which is accessibility.
