Some cult classics are timeless. Take Fallout, for example. Every couple years I feel the need to install it again and relive the journey of the Vault Dweller.
Some cult classics don't age well. In its day and age, Baldur's Gate was a breakthrough, an epic journey that brought the magic of a pen-and-paper RPG campaign to the computer screen. But revisiting it after two decades made me realize that, unless you are a game designer, journalist or scholar, there's no reason to play it today. It's not about its age alone: it's about the fact that everything this game did, other games have since did better. There is a whole genre of games that do Baldur's Gate better than Baldur's game itself!
By modern standards, it's very poorly written. The story is a mediocre political thriller with zero depth -- nothing remotely like, say, Planescape: Torment. All the events you see in the wild are simplistic, and do not affect anything later in game. The companions are shallow, with little dialogue -- don't expect deep and nuanced characters like in Dragon Age. And let's not even start talking about the game's mechanics and combat system -- by modern standards, the rules based on D&D 2 edition are horribly archaic and just barely more playable than SSI's Gold Box mathfest.
In short: the game was incredible for its time. But today, whatever you liked about it -- story, combat, exploration, companions -- there are games that do it much better.
