I personally like how mages are represented in the BG series. Mages are still a very powerful class, but unlike in many other games, here they actually have some weaknesses
Yes, they start out relatively weak, but even a level 1 or 2 spell can completely change the tide of any battle in your favor. You don't have many spells to cast early on so you really have to plan ahead and pick and choose when you should use a spell. This makes spell casting so rewarding because you can't just go around wasting your Magic Missiles on Gibberlings. You NEED that spell to take down the Ogre [img]smile.gif[/img]
As for magic point systems, I am really not a big fan of them at all. They are made for powergamers. In theory they aren't so horrible, but in practice I've found that you never really run out of magic points, which means you basically have unlimited spells and you can use whatever spells you want. Take Final Fantasy 10 for example. They have a magic point system. More powerful spells use up more magic points. However, half way through the game you obtain an item that makes all spells use only 1 magic point! Diablo 2 is similar. Blizzard thought that by taking mana potions out of the stores, they would limit the amount of spells (skills whatever) that the characters could use. Wrong. My D2 characters never ran out of mana because mana potions were so abundantly dropped by the monsters. Result, they could use their most powerful spells/skills all the damn time.
The memorization system lends to more strategy IMO. Not only are you limited in how many spells you can cast, but you also have to plan ahead and think about which spells you are likely to use. If you have to reload after each battle and memorize different spells, you probably shouldn't be playing a mage. If you want an effective mage you should memorize a variety of spells that will suite most situations, instead of for example memorizing all of one spell and then bitching about it later. That's like going camping and bringing all firewood but no matches.