Baldur's Gate is your standard role-playing game.
The first thing you will notice when starting the game is you think you are going to watch a movie. I have never seen some many credits before the start of a computer game. While this starts the great cinematics that this game uses, there is a small blimp on the design radar here. Every time you start the game, you have to click through (or watch if you are so inclined) each and every one of these credit movies. It should only take one click to bypass them all, but I guess you can't have everything.
When starting a game, the first thing you must do is create your character. You choose their gender, class, abilities, alignments, proficiencies, spells, appearance, and of course, name. Their are literally thousands of combinations you can come up with here, so your player will be unique to your style of game play. Choose wisely, as you will be living this role for many many hours, as you journey through the unknown.
When you have your character set up, you'll be placed in a castle where mages and other people teach you how to do everything from sleeping, to fighting, to completing quests, and even how to drink (yep, you can get drunk). Listen to these mages well, as their words will guide you throughout the game. Also, there are situations in this castle where people will not like you, and will fight you to the death. It's nearly impossible to lose these battles, but the experience and items you gain are of great use.
This first town also sets up your game. By talking to people, and hearing out what they have to say, you will learn why you have been chosen for this adventure, and what to do next. Complete a few small quests, build a reputation, and stock up on weapons and armor. As soon as you leave the castle, you will start your incredibly long journey fighting the good fight (or bad fight if you please).
Now, enough about what you have to do (I could go on for hundreds of pages doing that), let's concentrate on the game. One of the most obvious things about this game is it comes on five CDs. These CDs are full of beautifully pre-rendered landscapes. While this does cause more CD swapping than you are used to, it makes for awesome graphics. Everything from buildings, to spell casting, to items laying on the ground, and even the flowers look perfect. The best thing is, no 3D accelerator is needed for this spectacle of visual pleasures.
Unfortunately, the game interface is not as great. The buttons are hard to decipher, and take a long time to memorize. You can set it up so a little scroll unravels, detailing what the button does, and it's a good thing, because more often than not, you need it. This is saddening because sometimes you need quick reflexes, even in a game such as this (hint: if you hold down the tab key, the identification scrolls will come up instantaneously).
Fighting in Baldur's Gate is more strategic than any game I have ever seen. Most of the time, quick reflexes won't do a thing for you. Instead, learning the power of the pause key is what you need to work on. The only way to become a great hero, is by mastering the technique of pausing, issuing commands to all your party members, and unpausing. This is designed this way to give more of an AD&D feel. Pausing gives you time to cast spells, move your people, and select how you want to fight, without automatically dying. Just sending your members in melee fashion will not work.
Plus, monsters are actually smart in this game. If they feel they are getting defeated, they will break off the attack, regroup, and attack you again. Also, they know which way you are looking, and will attack you from behind if you aren't careful. The enemy AI in this game has to be one of the best ever.
Your party members are your life blood, treat them well. Each one must be furnished with weapons, armor, spells, experience, rest, moral, etc. Seeing as you can have up to six characters in your party, you can see how involved you will need to get. Keeping track of all this information is no easy task, and only many hours of playing will get you to master this juggling act.
That brings us to managing your time. Just like in real life, you need sleep. They game progresses 24 hours for every 2 hours your play. If you forget to sleep (or just avoid it), your characters will become groggy, which will make them worse fighters, have lower luck, and become rude. Just think of what you would be if you didn't get any sleep. Luckily, you don't have to control their bladders. According to the manual, your characters know to go when you aren't looking (they are smart).
There are two major pet peeves that I have with this game. First, your characters are slow, very slow. They walk slower than molasses in January in Alaska. It would be great if you could increase their rate of movement, but you just can't. The other one is with saving. You are allotted four spots for saves. However, of those four, one is reserved for auto saves, and one is reserved for quick saves. This makes it very difficult for two people to have adventures occurring at the same time. If there was just two more slots, it would be ten times better.