I think the game was pretty good, at least the best attempt to get back to the Baldur's Gate theme of old, that people were wanting. Pause-and-play is just far superior to round-based, and if you know how to use AI, and have a strong party, smaller fights go quickly and you don't need to micromanage that much at all, except boss fights. The story was supposed to be a darker, more edgy take on the Infinity Engine/Fantasy story of black-and-white good vs evil, with more gray-scale quests and resolutions to stories, making it more "realistic" I guess. It's far more challenging that Baldur's Gate, particularly on Path of the Damned, and very intricate with how all stats affect several important mechanics, making stat dumping less of an obvious choice.
That said, the game did suffer some mechanistic issues I think, like not being able to exit areas during a fight/seamless connection between areas, particularly houses/interiors and exteriors. The whole maximum of 2 camping supplies also seemed fairly arbitrary.