I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love this game.

yeah its not beautiful as Baldur's Gate or as engaging a story as Baldur's Gate

you dont have a huge party of romanceable characters like Baldur's Gate

buts its mechanically sublime

I have played this game from the beginning when it first came out. I enjoy every part of it from the single player to the multi player on different servers. I really enjoy this game and wish others would give it a try.

Long time vet , countless hours; this is one of those games that I'd argue requires a certain type of nerdy(likely older head) CRPG gamer to truly enjoy and get the most out of. The game is a product of when it was originally created in and while there are some excellent fan modules and interesting servers still going strong, the appeal and adjustment to the game probably will be smoother for those with some prior familiarity to games from this era and understanding of this era of DnD.

Sure it's a cheap game on sale and maybe worth curiosity but you probably won't be a convert if you never touched a DnD game before or are coming from more modern Baldur's 3, 5e DnD. There is a bit of a learning curve with a number of things like the 3rd edition having alignment mattering, certain mechanics with feats being more important, Rest system with Real Time Combat, and some other odds and ends.

The Good:

-Lot of customization tools, fan made content that exceeds quality of even bigger studio RPGs. Good framework to get creative juices flowing and you can straight up design your DnD gamenight campaign with the tools provided. Hate the ugly player portraits, import your own, very easy stuff with console commands and file tinkering.

- A tight niche community of diehards still keeping this old dog alive in multiplayer living world servers, it might not be for you and there's no obligation, but it's admirable to say the least for a game this old.

-The main campaign I'd say is a bit weak/tutorial tech demo-passable, the expansions Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark are much better. And of course there's a large trove of the fan made content that's got rave reviews for ages at this point. You might like the Original Campaign more than I did and yeah again reflective of when this game came out, but it's nothing special.

- 3rd edition dnd didn't get a ton of video game adaptations and this one does some justice on that front, gotta take these wins. It feels good when you properly setup a spell caster character's order of attack and things click.

-Decent itemization, at least in the main campaigns and content. It always felt crummy in games where you could literally not get any good drops early on .

-Dated but scratches an old head crpg itch

The Not Good:

- The Original Campaign was very likely designed with more players in mind and there's a lot of encounters where you and your clumsy AI henchman just don't cut it at times despite how you could've steam rolled a room before a certain section. It would've been nicer to have a traditional party. You can go from rolling zombies to having some random sorcerer throwing everything at you and wiping you, the power spikes can be tough and random.

-Related to above, there's far too many sections that were designed that somebody would be liberally skilled in picking locks and defusing traps constantly. You can always try to Bash open doors and chests, but it can be tedious and sometimes you can't always brute force which does leave a ton of loot on the table missed. If you have no lockpicking, no Henchman that picks stuff or aren't a Rogue by nature, parts of the campaign can be a bit frustrating.

- Real Time Combat can be a bit clunky. It takes adjusting to digesting when an attack is going off as there are technical rounds and orders of doing an attack but this can absolutely be a deal breaker if you're coming from way more recent games. Neverwinter Nights was a bit of a new chapter for this stuff in a 3D landscape and you can end up getting beat out in encounters on jank you didn't expect, e.g. see an animation not technically finishing and you miss out of doing another follow up thing and the enemy just hacks away at you. It also makes spell casting chars a bit of a challenge if you're not used to things.

-Some of the server communities can be a bit toxic with total powertripping jerks and a bit of a shared cliquey toxic culture. I understand this is a very specific niche geeky realm people wanna pretend to be an elf when they log on and expect everyone to roleplay to same extent, but sometimes people can be a bit too heavy handed on rules policing and very noob unfriendly. I understand people need to moderate things and these are old communities but some people have no chill. In some ways I'd almost not really even recommend them unless you're big on the nerdy life.



Final Verdict: In current year a serviceable boomer CRPG that goes down a lot easier if you have some time and memories put into this sort of thing or are a bit geekier and into the creative efforts of fan communities. It's a cheap good time but again takes a very particular RPG gamer to truly enjoy.