To be clear when I say that I never liked NWN 1 and 2 I'm not even talking strictly about the narrative, the characters, writing or what else.
I didn't like them on a mechanical level.
Not a fan of the way they looked ( I found the art in both games butt-ugly), and even less of the way they controlled and played.
EDIT: Also, I remember fiercely disliking the fact that NWN 1 moved away from being a party based game and focused on "Single character plus mercenary".
And to put things into context I'm not talking from a "modern perspective". I was there trying them when they were fresh releases.
This is certainly true of the default art. I barely remember their default art though (aside from not liking it either), since I've been using haks with custom content since basically forever
The "Single character plus mercenary" thing fortunately never irked me, as I play(ed) on persistent worlds in multiplayer. The controls were... admittedly somewhat bad, with NWN2 having the worse control scheme of the two.
Then again... I wouldn't consider the controls in BG3 to be much better...
It really depends on what you want(ed) from NWN... if you were looking for a toolset and a multiplayer mode with DM, it was/is still a good game. If you want a good single player game, then yes, you'll end up disappointed.
