Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age: Origins are probably as good as it gets for me... I feel it's not as stringent as the old Baldurs Gate/Icewind Dale/Planescape Torment etc' from old, but you still need to think and strategize.
Dragon Age I felt really nailed the story and characterizations, which is what I look for in these games, not difficulty. - Morrigan and Alistair acted their roles, perfectly. - Don't recall a game making me laugh so much despite having a serious overtone.
But if you are new to the genre, you could do far worst than these two, the first Baldurs Gate is either a make-it or break-it for some people, it's stupidly unforgiving and can turn people off to the genre, I know I swore off CRPG until Neverwinter released in 2002 which I could never get enough of. (To be fair I am more of a RTS gamer!)
Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Dragon Age: Veilguard started to walk down the road of being "accessible" and streamlined all their systems to prioritize real-time combat and less on strategy and character placement, which is fine, some people find that super appealing... Inquisition is a great game and absolutely massive, but it's a different experience to Origins.
If you are going to jump into Dragon Age, definitely start with Origins and work through them consecutively... As the games all have character ties to each other, even if the stories themselves in the first 3 games can mostly stand on their own feet... Veilguard is probably the only proper sequel.
I do wish that Bioware would remaster more of it's old games like Origins, it wasn't a looker even on release, but it's definitely one of their best games, even with my rose tinted glasses.
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