Stevedog13: I can't take more than a few hours before I rage quit over the inadequecies of the Infinity Engine.
What exactly bothers you? Don't feel you need to play on normal difficulty if the combat gets to you, just turn the difficulty down. If that's not it, it's honestly probably just a getting a feel for it sort of thing, a lot of games, especially "older" games have that and it can take a handful of hours to really get comfortable with the interface/engine/feel of the game, sometimes up to 10 hours even.
I like BG and BG2 well enough, but I don't think they are as great as they are made out to be. The story is very good, well told/developed, but what you get for the amount you have to play is unbalanced, and might not be the game for you to try RPG-wise. You can play a good 40-50 hours without hitting on much story or character development. Sure, you will get bunches of quests, but they are pretty individualized and wholly unrewarding and non-contributive to the entirety of the game.
The thing I like about them is that they really feel like a fantasy adventure and you are thrown believably into the role of the main character, sent off into a dangerous and unfamiliar world and you're not sure why. It takes a long time and you adventure around quite a bit, but it's not an adventure game, it's an RPG with a lot of combat game, and so it's probably not a great place to start if you are looking for an enthralling RPG to get you started on the genre because of the pacing (if you can get used to the feel of it, of course.) Again, just turn the difficulty down, breeze through all the combat, take your time with it because there is so much wilderness/sidequest stuff it can be overwhelming, just do it at your leisure as you like. But really, there are bunches of other games you should play first, IMO:
Planescape: Torment - be sure to install the mods, of course (inability to stack items was the #1 thing wrong with the engine in that game, one of the mods fixes that, plus all of the extra content and fixes of course.) It's rewarding from moment to moment, blows BGs out of the water, no comparison really.
Fallout 1+2 - get the GOG versions if you can, mod them as suggested, and enjoy. The interface takes a little getting used to (scroll to the edge of the screen to move around your view before having to move your character is one of the harder "get the feel for it" aspects of the game.) Different engine too. Increase the combat speed to take away a little tedium.
Arcanum - You have issues with the InfinityEngine? HAH! Despite the issues with the interface/engine of this game, it is worth playing, and again, you really just get used to it and it becomes no big deal, just takes some patience to learn the feel like a lot of games. Make sure to play on fast turn-based combat, and read the manual a bit is good before playing in order to decide what kind of character you want to play so you can create the right character and build it properly.