Yeah not so much. Have you even replayed Baldur's Gate in the last 10 years? I did, and it ain't pretty : shitty exploration, terribly writing, nonsensical simple quests, sterile encounter design. The whole narrative doesn't even hold up, as the player's personal motivation are without explanation tied to the larger issues that you have to solve ; it really reeks of bad DMing. It's a pretty shit game to be honest ; if there were no other IE games, or even no BG2, it would have been forgotten. Sure, it does some low-level dnd stuff okay - a certain sense of progression, exciting itemization, okay system overall (that was re-used in other games, to much better effect). Sometimes there are some good quests, and encounters, but they are far too sparse to make a good game.
Anyway, I suppose BG being a fairly mediocre game doesn't touch on the fact that Kingmaker would have been better without the management system ; it does say that it is still better without it, though, I would say. Kingmaker is better than BG - period., r00fles. But yeah, personally I think it was a good idea - it does anchor the player in some kind of larger considerations that rpgs sometimes strive for, but are unable to reach because they stick to a limited party-based system. I think in fact Kingmaker's greatest idea was the management system ; without it, it would be "a pure rpg", whatever that means - if it means remaking BG, then yeah, we've been there, no thanks. If BG was remade today, it would be shit.
