Part 2, since that seemed to post:
Regarding your Player Character's motivations in this game, the bad guy just murdered your dad in front of your face. You are heir to his title. I can't imagine anyone thinking this is 'weak motivation' to go and find out more about why this happened.
Meanwhile, in Baldur's Gate, you might well witness the murder, but that's about it. It might as well have been a street mugging murder for all the level of drama in invoked. The game wont even let you go to the city to investigate the murder properly until you've basically forgotten all about it from spending 3 years wandering nowhere in particular.
I mean, that kind of debate is always going to be entirely subjective. There's no means to establish any kind of objectivity there. I only know that Black Geyser's story has me more invested than Baldur's Gate ever did, while you think the reverse. Neither of us can really quantify that into words that would establish an objectivity.
Companions? Well, I completely ignored those two obviously thoroughly evil dudes when I played Baldur's Gate, I can do without cartoon comedy evil sidekicks in my party, Imomen was bland and, IMO, very annoying. Jaheira and the other guy were, erm, OK I guess. I can't say I remember anything about them until BG2. Like you, I only played Baldur's Gate 1 relatively recently, maybe 5-10 years ago'ish, and I can't even remember who I had in my party for most of the game. I honestly couldn't tell you the name of one single character who I felt was my 'bestie' in it. And I'm not the swap-outer kind of player.
Is Black Geyser any better in this regard? I suppose, objectively, they have less dialogue, input, character, as in number of words written for them, but I feel much more attached to them as a party generally. They might not make you love them, for sure, but there's a lot to be said for them not being annoying or irritating either. It's going to be very subjective which is better for each individual gamer's taste. They don't have the Bioware issue of being 'botched builds' or 'overly quirky for the sake of being overly-quirky'.
And, no, I think Black Geyser is much, much better than I expected. I think the development team did better than they could have done. They surpassed my expectations.
I agree that the spell descriptions are annoyingly vague though, that is definitely a nit-pick we can both agree on.
To which, are you in agreement that what we're dealing with here is fine margins rather than a massively relevant gulf.
As in, you think:
Baldurs Gate -> Black Geyser
While I think:
Black Geyser -> Baldur's Gate
But neither of us think it's:
Baldur's Gate - much, much, much better than -> Black Geyser
or
Black Geyser - much, much, much better than -> Baldur's Gate
Which, between the two of us, would make:
Baldur's Gate = Black Geyser.
Or are you trying to suggest that Black Geyser is, objectively, genuinely a 'pale comparison' to Baldur's Gate?