As far as the game itself goes (I haven't played the EE and I don't intend to), I've never come to like NWN just like other D&D RPGs, especially
Baldur's Gate & Co, for a number of reasons:
- The original game's campaign is awful. It's very bland and forgettable, and nothing compared to that of other games I've played. However, the expansions are quite good, especially
Hordes of the Underdark. They can be played without having to play the original campaign and tell their own stories (even though they refer to things from the original campaign, but not much of importance, if I remember correctly). So if you decide to skip the original campaign, you could probably start with
Shadows of Unrentide and then play
Hordes of the Underdark, if you like with the same character because you start at level 15 - you can also create a new character, which immediately advances to that level.
There are also a number of Premium Modules (some of which have to be bought separately for the EE, but they can all be downloaded for free for the original version), which are somewhat shorter campaigns than the expansions, but to be honest I didn't really like most of them, especially since two of them (
Shadowguard and
Witch's Wake) are only the first parts of stories that were never finished).
Kingmaker and
Pirates of the Sword Coast were ok,
Wyvern Crown of Cormyr has some unique ideas, but I was still a bit underwhelmed by it.
Infinite Dungeons is basically a huge, randomly generated Dungeon, which gets pretty repetitive and tedious after a while. I haven't played
Darkness over Daggerford, yet, which used to be a cancelled Premium Module that could be downloaded for free, but is now sold for the EE, but I've heard that it is pretty good.
Additionally, there are countless additional modules (=campaigns), made by fans with the toolset. Some of them are supposedly very good. However, I haven't played any of them, yet.
- The party-based gameplay from
Baldur's Gate and the other games with its engine (
Planescape: Torment &
Icewind Dale) was replaced by a single character that you control and a few compainions that you cannot control directly. If I remember correctly, you could not even access their inventories in the original campaign, but you can in the expansions and in the Premium Modules (that may be different in the EE). Therefore, much of the tactical aspects of the former games is lost in my opinion, and the battles are much less interesting. But that may just be me.
- The UI is, for the most part, horrible and impractical. What used to annoy me most was that the dialogue window is always in the upper left corner, and with higher resolutions and widesceen I found it very difficult to follow the dialogues because of this. This may have been improved in the EE as well. However, there is a mod for the original version (it may also work in the EE, though), which enlarges both the dialogue window and the text itself to a much more eye-friendly size. I've written about it here:
https://www.gog.com/forum/neverwinter_nights_series/enhanced_gui_for_nwn_diamond_finally_larger_text_in_1080p - I've never liked the graphics, not even when the game was new (though it wasn't until several years later that I got to play it), and they haven't aged well at all. Especially the segmented character models are really ugly. Graphics are not everything, of course, but I really prefer the beautiful 2D backgrounds and more realistic sprites of the older games to this "early 3D" ugliness. There are mods, of course, which somewhat improve the graphics, but not as much as is possible for example in
Morrowind, which was released around the same time. Of course, they are fundamentally different games.
- I can't say anything about multiplayer, as I've never played it (not much of a multiplayer kind of guy), but I've heard it is one of the strongest points of the game.
Also, I know many people really love this game, so this is just my opinion, and your experience may differ.