I finally got back around to this, after getting bored with it last time I played. It's weird to play this as someone who's been playing KOTOR since I was a little kid, since it's kind of the missing link between Baldur's Gate and KOTOR. But it really feels more related to BG1 than BG2. In the same way that BG1 is a representation of how people often played AD&D 2e, and BG3 is how people play D&D 5e, NWN is how people played/still play 3e. You explore smallish maps until you find dungeons, then you go delving. There's a main quest and sidequests, but they're more often than not just excuses to get you into the areas surrounding the hub at that time. In that way it feels like an MMORPG of the time, and in a way it kind of was? Though it's not "massively multiplayer", just "multiplayer".
First of all, the game is fun. It's a 3rd person/isometric early 3d (and it's that good kinda early 3d) real time with pause VERY FAITHFUL implementation of D&D 3e, and that's just a good framework. It's a little rough around the edges, like how rests work, or how the wasd controls lock the camera to your back unless you actively swing the camera around, which is goofy when you switch targets and the camera WHIPS around. But broadly, it's fun. It's pretty well balanced as well as you go along, especially once you get out of the swingy early levels, where 1 bad roll is death. The puzzles are good, the dungeons range from good to fine, it all feels considered and, honestly, like it was pushing the genre of western RPGs forward.
One interesting way it pushed things forward was by providing a toolkit to make your own campaigns. You can just set up a server and play a custom D&D campaign with your friends, or build your own more traditional RPG campaign and put it online. Games don't usually offer toolkits like this anymore, but I imagine it created a hunger that's still satiated with modern modding scenes for popular RPGs.
Now, as far as the game's main campaign, it's kinda bunk. There's 4 chapters, and each of the first 3 has a hub and 3 or 4 areas leading off. Each area has a few dungeons and quests in it, and usually there's one big dungeon per area that's related to the main quest. And it's all just so boring and long winded. The story goes from "oh that's an interesting premise" to "it's been 15 hours since the story last moved along and even though I've focused entirely on main story dungeons" like 3 times, there's a lot of goofy sidequests but not many that feel substantial, and almost every quest, main or side, has 1 step. Go get an item, come back. It's a game of boringly contextualized fetch quests that, compared to other games with loads of fetch quests, take FOREVER. So you've got to focus entirely on the gameplay. While it's broadly good fun, the relative slowness of the mechanics really sinks in when fighting and exploring is all you're doing for 60 hours.
The last hub (and the final few dungeons after it) go a ways towards making the game more fun, but they don't fix the problems so much as they're just more interesting. The dungeons are more elaborate, more tied into the overarching story, and there's just more going on! Plus there's the best sidequest in the game, an investigation thing where you're a wrongly accused guy's lawyer. But that all brings something else into focus: Most of this game was done better in KOTOR.
KOTOR is a faster version of essentially the same gameplay, with the big twist from NWN worked into the main quest, and just much more interesting writing. Even that lawyer quest is repeated, but there's so much more dimension to it in KOTOR it's not even funny. The only reason I could see someone liking NWN's main campaign over KOTOR's is if they just don't care for Star Wars. KOTOR also doesn't have a toolkit and multiplayer like NWN does though, and that's not a small thing.
I still want to play some of the official expansions (many of which were made by other companies than Bioware), as that seems to be where people fall in love with the game. But later. For now, all I'll say is you can get the same experience as playing NWN by playing KOTOR and imagining it's all medieval and the writing is blander. But if you want more KOTOR dungeon crawling it kinda scratches that itch? Idk, make of that what you will
First of all, the game is fun. It's a 3rd person/isometric early 3d (and it's that good kinda early 3d) real time with pause VERY FAITHFUL implementation of D&D 3e, and that's just a good framework. It's a little rough around the edges, like how rests work, or how the wasd controls lock the camera to your back unless you actively swing the camera around, which is goofy when you switch targets and the camera WHIPS around. But broadly, it's fun. It's pretty well balanced as well as you go along, especially once you get out of the swingy early levels, where 1 bad roll is death. The puzzles are good, the dungeons range from good to fine, it all feels considered and, honestly, like it was pushing the genre of western RPGs forward.
One interesting way it pushed things forward was by providing a toolkit to make your own campaigns. You can just set up a server and play a custom D&D campaign with your friends, or build your own more traditional RPG campaign and put it online. Games don't usually offer toolkits like this anymore, but I imagine it created a hunger that's still satiated with modern modding scenes for popular RPGs.
Now, as far as the game's main campaign, it's kinda bunk. There's 4 chapters, and each of the first 3 has a hub and 3 or 4 areas leading off. Each area has a few dungeons and quests in it, and usually there's one big dungeon per area that's related to the main quest. And it's all just so boring and long winded. The story goes from "oh that's an interesting premise" to "it's been 15 hours since the story last moved along and even though I've focused entirely on main story dungeons" like 3 times, there's a lot of goofy sidequests but not many that feel substantial, and almost every quest, main or side, has 1 step. Go get an item, come back. It's a game of boringly contextualized fetch quests that, compared to other games with loads of fetch quests, take FOREVER. So you've got to focus entirely on the gameplay. While it's broadly good fun, the relative slowness of the mechanics really sinks in when fighting and exploring is all you're doing for 60 hours.
The last hub (and the final few dungeons after it) go a ways towards making the game more fun, but they don't fix the problems so much as they're just more interesting. The dungeons are more elaborate, more tied into the overarching story, and there's just more going on! Plus there's the best sidequest in the game, an investigation thing where you're a wrongly accused guy's lawyer. But that all brings something else into focus: Most of this game was done better in KOTOR.
KOTOR is a faster version of essentially the same gameplay, with the big twist from NWN worked into the main quest, and just much more interesting writing. Even that lawyer quest is repeated, but there's so much more dimension to it in KOTOR it's not even funny. The only reason I could see someone liking NWN's main campaign over KOTOR's is if they just don't care for Star Wars. KOTOR also doesn't have a toolkit and multiplayer like NWN does though, and that's not a small thing.
I still want to play some of the official expansions (many of which were made by other companies than Bioware), as that seems to be where people fall in love with the game. But later. For now, all I'll say is you can get the same experience as playing NWN by playing KOTOR and imagining it's all medieval and the writing is blander. But if you want more KOTOR dungeon crawling it kinda scratches that itch? Idk, make of that what you will