I've always heard that BG2 was a great and i'm not really an RPG player, but I did like Fallout 1 + 2. My problem is the team of highlighted characters looks threatening to someone unfarmiliar to RPG mechanics and is used to having a solid main character to project themself into (ie. in pokemon i always used to almost exclusivly use my starting pokemon because i couldnt balance the team). Do you control a whole team equally or is it a main character with a party you have minor control of like fallout?

Well, basically you control the whole team equally, with full control. So it's not like Fallout.
BUT
Like in Fallout, it's possible to finish the entire game solo. So you can try that. Or pick only one or two companions, the game is quite flexible about it. You even get bonuses if there's less people in your party. There's really no need to fill up all your party slots if you're not into that.

A more elegant solution, on the other hand, is AI scripts. You can assign any and all of your characters "scripts" that make them behave autonomously. The ones that come with the game are pretty basic, but look around on modding sites and you'll find some seriously powerful scripts that make your party members capable of fending for themselves and free you to concentrate on your own character. So you can make the game act sort of like Fallout (even better in a way, because the mod scripts are pretty much smarter than the team AI in Fallout).

You control the whole party in combat, but you role-play only your own character. The rest of the party consists of NPCs that you interact with.

Party balance is not the same kind of problem as in Pokemon or many other JRPGs, because there's no elemental strengths and weaknesses. Many different kinds of party compositions are perfectly viable. For a balanced party make sure you have a couple of of characters who can take hits, at least one spellcaster, at least one character who can heal, and preferrably one character who has thief skills.You will learn while playing which characters are useful and which are dead weight and can be swapped out.

Yeah the party needs to only have 4 major skill areas and you get 6 characters to work with. As long as you have at least one fighter, one cleric/druid, one mage and one thief you can do everything you need to in the game and then with the other 2 characters you can pick and choose what abilities you want to highlight.

With BG2 they've dual classed about half the NPCs which I personally don't like but it does guarantee you a wider range of skills and you can never underestimate a well placed magic missile from someone who has mage training.

The most important thing is that you can pause at any time and take as long as you like to sort out what to do with your people so there's no real time pressure. I mostly just give everyone bows or slings and shoot peopleas they charge in then whip out a sword and cut their faces off

Story wise however, I think starting with BG1 might be worthwhile

Thanks for the response. I guess i'll give it a go and come back here if i have any problems. Seems GOG has a pretty friendly community.

You're in for a treat! But just one warning: the dungeon where you start is considered the most boring part of the game. It gets much better once you get out. Don't give up!

You also might want to consider adding mods to your game, although they are not necessary. The fixpack fixes bugs, the tweak pack adds some gameplay improvements, the widescreen mod makes the game look considerably better on big screens, and the NPC mods add romances. There are several threads about mods on this thread if you're interested.

Have fun!