Yah, I love BG1, but it lost a lot of steam for me once I hit the city as well. I don’t know, I think I get overwhelmed. And I have a compulsion to enter every damn house and go through their stuff. Which is mostly crap, and they always see you, and then they call the damn guards, which makes you reload. Forever, and ever, and ever.
The same reason I didn’t like BG2. You started in the city. I would rather have interesting locals broken up into small chuncks like in normal wilderness zones.
I keep coming back though, because I make a connection with the characters. Baldur’s Gate parties have some of the most memorable video game characters for me.