Two decades old

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The original NWN game is now twenty years old.

 

I'm feeling old, the Bard's Tale is almost 35 years old.

 

My 1st RPG was Zork 1, followed by many of the Infocom text based games back in the early 80s. I believe that was on an IBM PC jr, 128k system.

NWN was a ton of fun at time of release. I preferred NWN2, but

 

My first was Curse of the Azure Bonds of the Gold Box fame for Christmas, followed shortly by getting Final Fantasy Legend II on the Game Boy for my Birthday.
I didn't find Final Fantasy Legend I at Funcoland until years after I got Legend III.
I played one of my ATF's, Dungeon Master at a friend's house, but wouldn't get to play on my computer until over a year later because my computer didn't have enough RAM. I actually saved up for a RAM upgrade just for that game. Although I kinda wish I'd found Bard's Tale earlier than I actually did.

 

I began with Wizardry 1 and played various M&M blobbers. But my first real tactical D&D RPG was Pool of Radiance on the Mac. Gaming has come a long way since then.

 

You got more control over your henchmen in the expansions, especially HoTU. For some reason they still kept the OC the same with such limited control over your henchmen.
If you play SoTU instead of the OC and then go on to HoTU you can treat the henchmen as a party member to a certain extent.
Still, you won't want to take a magic user without installing the mod that gives you some control over them or the magic user will blow all their high level spells on the easy opponents and be out of spells when it's time to face the tough guys. It kinda forces you to play the cleric or mage and take a fighter or thief as an escort. Even the bard is like this thanks to bard songs being limited per day resources unlike in earlier editions, and of course the spells are a third of their (Sharwyn, Deekin) firepower.

That said, I liked NWN better than Elder Scrolls Arena or Daggerfall. I haven't tried the later games because I didn't much like the jumping around and the action part.
I'm not really into Action-RPGs. I prefer Bard's Tale, Wizardry, or Final Fantasy style game play more, or something like the Gold Box games, Exile/Avernum series, Baldur's Gate, or Icewind Dale style.


For some reason people really liked the toolset and the ability to make their own adventures. It's interesting, because there are other such tools made in the past that didn't catch on. Stuart Smiths' "Adventure Construction Set (ACS)", the Gold Box Games Construction Set, Bard's Tale Construction Set, etc. The only other one I can think of off-hand that really caught on was RPGMaker 2000.
Although ExplorerGS seemed to get some popularity on AOL, I didn't have AOL and didn't get access to it until their archives were transferred to the (now defunct) Ground FTP site. I had Explorer GS, but few scenarios.

 

The ‘best’ of the old school party-basedd games was the Realms of Arkania series. They took some serious devotion. Being a 1st2nd Edition AD&D junkie back then, The Gold Box games were tons of fun, but RoA was the most challenging.

 

Fun fact: The "Realms of Arkania"´s original german name is abbrevated DSA for "Das schwarze Auge" which literally translates into "The black eye"

Edit: And I can write in the forum again. Seems Taluntain or my ISP solved my "can´t get email" problem...

 

I think a big part of the appeal of NWN is the ability to create your own campaigns, as well as add mods to vary the experience. There's been an extensive community engaged in modding activities.

Personally I wasn't that big of a fan of NWN, compared to its BG predecessors. The loss of control of the party members was discouraging for me.

 

That wouldn't have been so bad if the AI hadn't been so stupid. The NPC spellcasters would blow all their high level spells on low threat enemies like 1st level thieves instead of doing the intelligent thing and hanging back while taking pot shots with a ranged weapon while my PC fighter/monk/paladin/ranger/barbarian easily dispatches them, and when you faced the tougher foes they would have nothing left to contribute.
Only the non-spellcasting types were worth taking.

 

Good point Slick