Even if in the core may seem these 2 games different - the base game experience may be similar, double so if the player did not play enough games of such genre, hence can't sort them in different buckets.
For me are all bicycles same, but bicycle expert would not ever understand my opinion, he does not have to anyway.
Both ToEE and KB tL are role play game, both have scenario based on long term story cut by many side quests, exciting battle system, plenty of spells and large variety of strategies in and outside battle.
After some time, if Metroplex will play more games of similar RPG genre, he will be able to understand the differences better, but what I see is a player who has revealed the beauty of RPG games in conjunction of very difficult rules (what could in normal cases discourage standard players), ToEE is D&D based, where the rules are quite complex, (that is why he probably did not finish the game his first time), but KB tL reveals complexity in very "easy to do" way - the level ups are quite intuitive, no hyper-complex skill trees, you get spells from scrolls, so you don't need to spend 4 hours reading all the spells from the tier you have to select from (from instance when you are sorcerer, the spells you choose will not change till the end of game and you have very few to be stored in your spellbook, even if you max your charisma)
When I first time played my first RPG Baldurs Gate I could not "sort" it as I had nothing to compare so my sorting result could not be different from Metroplex. (just different game titles would pop up, these years ago
)
I would like to use this topic to point on a game that I personally align with KB tL, not of the same genre, but for the similar GREAT game experience and game taste I have playing it: Warlords Battlecry III , it may be RTS RPG, and level ups may be more boring than any known level ups in game history, but the variety of strategy combination is enormous as in number so in efficiency and also in game fun... these days I swayed from KB to WB and back...
But to not be much off-topic: the real difference in my personal opinion between ToEE and KB tL for me is: I played ToEE twice, and the second time it was quite boring (as I knew all quests and the battle system did not provide me with enough fun/variety) ... KB tL is still played by me - now it would be for more than 50th time
and still having fun