I'm probably pretty late to this thread, but here it goes anyway...
I love Baldur's Gate, I've been playing them since I was 10, and I have probably dumped a combined 10,000 hours into NWN and its sequels. I love these games. But the complaint I've had with them from the beginning, is that while DnD rules can be translated to real time with pause, DnD was designed with the assumption that you would have enough HP, spells, abilities, etc. for a couple of fights in a play session. Because combat is resolved so quickly, Bioware had no choice but to throw more fights at the player. Starting BG1 as a wizard with 4 hit points and 2 spells is objectively ridiculous. The NWN method of "rest whenever" and get all your spell slots back in between every encounter is also ridiculous. The only solution is to go back to basics and make combat slower.
I love that combat encounters feel more epic, because I'm not slogging through a dungeon full of 30,000 kobolds like I'm threshing wheat.
