I actually just recently finished the first Baldur's Gate for the very first time (I did most of the quests from TOTSC as well, but I saved Durlag's Tower for later play-throughs), and I'm now well underway in Baldur's Gate II. So far, I have to say Baldur's Gate II is much more involving from the beginning and so far I like it better than BG1, which I already liked. But then I absolutely love stories, and this game seems to be full of them. Not to mention the characters feel very "real" thanks to the talks they sometime have with you.

Also, I played Dragon Age for several hours before I quit on the X360 (probably try again later on the PC), and I can easily see why they called it the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate now that I'm playing BG2. A shame it never lived up to the series though. A bigger shame that they had to go completely retard on the sequel.