I loved NWN and played it all the way through because the story was good, how anyone could say different is as bizarre as someone thinking their own opinions define reality! hehe
NWN was in no way, shape or form reliant on mods. Nope, all mods did was extend the life of the game, which does not constitute a crutch because you could play the game without mods, enjoy it, and be satisfied. And the thing I remember most fondly about NWN is being a bear, with a bear companion, and a summoned bear along for the ride. And humming bear necessities as I played.
Look for the...
Glad you enjoyed it, you will find, however, that relatively few people consider NWN's OC particularly good. Was it, perchance, your introduction to cRPGs?
NWN's OC (I am not talking about any of the expansions, which, according to pretty much everyone are a lot better than the OC) was bad because:
- the story was dragged out by oftne unecessary combat sequences that were dragged out themselves for way too long.
For example at the start where you have to recapture the escaped creatues, you get to slug through one part of the city. Yay, now do it again...and again and then you finally get some meaningful dialogue again as there's pretty much no dialogue or nothing interesting happening in these fetch/kill stuff parts of the game, it's just a Diablo-style slog through various mobs until you reach your goal.
The same story repeats once you make it to Luskan, and when they wanted another round of this crap when I returned from Luskan I called it quits.
- henchmen were bland. They were basically mindless zombies there to compensate for your PC's deficiencies (eg. melee tank for a mage, healer for a fighter...), most of them had very little actual personality. They did, however, have their own quests which, at least for the honorable warrior companion, appeared rather uninspired, but beyond that they had no opinion of their own on anything you did or anything that happened around you. Which, in itself wouldn't have been so bad if more interesting stuff happened around you.
- combat was uninteresting. Probably mostly because there was very little tactics involved (other than spell selection etc.). You couldn't actively do anything about your NPC helpers' positioning or casting in combat so the only one to be concerned about was your PC.
(DLC later added companions back in, but I had long since moved on so I dunno if it improved things, doesn't matter as far as the OC is concerned anyway.).
Maybe it was more interesting when playing a more hybrid class (like a druid), but playing a wizard (my preferred class) in NWN1 was just painfully dull.
NWN2, while suffering quite a few deficiencies of its own, had *much* better pacing of the story. Also having a full party actually made combat interesting (the combat system is practically the same as the one of NWN, after all), especially since all your party members are actual proper characters with their own personalities and opinions.
As for thinking that my opinions define reality, I'd like to point you to my signature.
