Breaking my Cohost drought to throw in my 2 cents as huge KOTOR mark to try and give some advice for first timers given the recent AMCA pivot:
I'd recommend the Xbox back compat or mobile ports if you want the smoothest possible experience. The GOG release is probably the best PC version "out of the box" as it were, but it still has some quirks that are expected of a 20 y/o game running on modern machines. But seriously, it's genuinely impressive how well KOTOR plays on phones. Huge kudos to the dev team.
You can alter the difficulty at any time, so don't feel bad about slapping that down to easy, even if it's for one frustrating fight, if you find yourself just unable to parse the combat systems. I get a lot out of the party/character management in these games, but it's not for everyone, and the true draw is the narrative(s) and wild world building Bioware and Obsidian were allowed to get away with.
TL;DR: mobile and Xbox are the best versions to handle. Don't feel bad about going on easy if you feel overwhelmed by the combat/levelling mechanics.
I'm very excited to hear new opinions on this recently ancient game. Everyone has "their Star Wars" and mine is KOTOR 1+2 and honestly, LEGOs. But KOTOR embedded a love of the "people talking in rooms" mode of sci fi for me. And if you don't care about Star Wars, from a games' history perspective, this is the direct predecessor to Mass Effect which went on to be a huge influence on big budget video games up until now.
Hope everyone has a fun, or at least engrossing, first experience with KOTOR. And huge shouts outs to Ali, Austin, Natalie, and Rob for committing to this project. It's a doozy.