It's a different type of skill. And, to be honest, you can't claim that Baldur's Gate requires any real skill... the fights are easier and for the rest you just have to remember where the person you need to talk to is. Even the toughest fights in the game come down mostly to casting a spell that effects all the enemies (a summoning, a fireball, a web, a cloud type spell, you get the idea). Much of that is just the nature of the low level game though. Not like you're doing anything complicated at BG levels in IWD either.
Now, I know lots of people like to hack on the plot for IWD, but in its defense, it's got many elements that are superior to BG. NPC's react based upon your class, gender, and race. The puzzle room... nothing like it in BG. Options to do evil things and not get screwed over like you do in BG. Now, they could have made the game more like BG very easily. Just make you travel from map to map to get to the dungeons, and then make those maps sparcely populated and filled with a few simple quests like kill the hobgoblin to get a ring. But they decided not to do that. Instead, the game skips that and focuses on getting into the dungeons. Dungeons that are a bit more densely populated than BG... and much bigger, spacewise. And that's what gives the more hack and slash feeling.
But then, the game is supposed to be more straight forward. This tale happened a while back. It's a guy telling a story. And no grand tale is going to include things about how many stray puppies the party returned to sad little boys while they were off to save the world
Somewhere between the two games is the reality of PnP games... we don't usually recruit npc's, we don't run a million subquests, and we don't fight that much.
It's a different style, but it is great for what it is.