I've never played the tabletop, so maybe I'm talking out my bum here but thanks mainly to the restrictions they had to work with at the time it came out, this - and, I assume, the rest of the Gold Box stuff - feels more recognisably an adaptation of a pen and paper game than the stuff that would come later like Baldur's Gate. You'll get told that some wondrous item is in front of you or that you did some sikk move, but they can't render all that, so you're just going to have to imagine it. If you find an important document or book or kobold shopping list, it doesn't throw all the text at you - you've got to consult the corresponding journal entry number in the tome that the game came with. And, of course, you're gonna break out that graph paper, pal. It's pretty cool!
It can get a little tedious with the sheer amount of trekking back and forth you're going to do, and even fights against weak one-hit mooks take ages because it throws so many at you, but even in this early effort there were clear ways you could cheese the hell out things and that is always satisfying to discover. I wiped on my first fight though, because I forgot you have to buy gear first. Whoops!