If I had to recommend NWN1 or NWN2, I'd recommend NWN1 for a variety of reasons. The healthier modding community. The more stable engine. The better expansion campaigns (the original campaigns of both NWN games are garbage), and the fact that despite NWN1's fairly primitive graphics, it has aged better than NWN2. However, the Mask of the Betrayer campaign for NWN2 is almost enough tip the balance. Mask of the Betrayer is legitimately good, and has some incredible moments of brilliance - HOWEVER, if you're at all familiar with the Forgotten Realms, you'll notice that Obsidian has fumbled basic setting elements (in game, all the Rashemi are light skinned, where in the source material they're dark skinned), and worse, the Spirit Eater mechanic is a massive impediment to enjoying the game. With the Spirit Eater mechanic, you have to feed (by killing) or suppress the Spirit Eater, and there's very little explanation of how that works and which is the best way. If you choose the wrong path (not suppressing) you'll quickly find yourself on the verge of death, thanks to the fact that the more spirits you eat, the faster the meter runs out. When I played through, I cheated to disable the Spirit Eater mechanic. The game was much more enjoyable and required less maintenance of a mechanic that doesn't fit into D&D's rules. Speaking of rules, Obsidian fumbles that as well. I was in Myrkul's Temple in MoB, and ran into ancient vampire monks. My character was a level 24+ Cleric imported from the original campaign. Those ancient vampire monks managed to kill my entire party (save my character) with energy drain, and my character couldn't even hit them fully buffed. A few more things that were not kosher was the fact that the vampires could energy drain when using Flurry of Blows - which is impossible if we're following the rules (vampires can only energy drain on their "slam" attacks, which are separate from the Monk's flurry). With NWN2, you take the good with the bad.

NWN2 is hard to review. On one hand, the modules included are some of my most memorable DnD video game adventures, however they sometimes fall very short of where they're supposed to go in terms of characterization and plot. The gameplay is equally baffling as NWN1; real time combat, based on a pen and paper system that is entirely turn and round based. The level cap is also absurdly high, and I've always thought 3.5 DnD basically falls apart around or after Level 12, and you'll be pressured to multiclass if you want to kick butt. My biggest gripe is that the camera is just a nightmare, and I'm not even sure how that was allowed to go to retail. However, I thought the original campaign was great, and I really felt for many of my party members, but it all falls apart in the end. I had to use God Mode just to pass the horribly, horribly scripted final boss, and then sheer stupidity awaited me in the ending. However, the game continues into Mask of the Betrayer, which is a truly epic 5/5 story... but you have to play the very long original campaign for it to truly make any sense or have any emotional impact, and still you're ridiculously high level so expect combat to be a slog. I was an Eldritch Knight, which was really cool, but so much time was wasted involved in buffing before each individual combat encounter I couldn't just auto-attack my way through. It's a pretty satisfying tale otherwise, and it's been rightfully compared to Planescape: Torment. Storm of Zehir is a blast, and probably the star of the show for some. It's reminiscent of Pool of Radiance, where your party travels the countryside looking for conquest and mystery. I just couldn't get into Mysteries of Westgate, but I am glad it was included. There's a lot of great storytelling here, but the combat is mostly boring, extremely complicated, and unfun, and there's plenty of both to be had here. Overall, in my opinion, it's a 3/5 package, with some flashes of 5/5 brilliance.

Neverwinter Nights 1 was a failure to me - a technological nightmare with boring story, after games like Planescape: Torment, BG1&2, Icewind Dale etc. Its expansions were good though. Let's say post-Interplay Bioware didn't exactly have my confidence. So I was relieved, back in the day, to learn that this one was made by former Black Isle people in Obsidian Entertainment and not Bioware. As a result, we got an adventuring party with amazing NPC companions, a deep and engaging story and overall a good game. Then they released Mask of the Betrayer, which was even better than the base game. And the game still plays well, there's hardly anything that has aged badly. Sure the visuals are "back then", but the art direction and style are good and inspired.

I played this when it came out and have recently purchased the collection from GOG. It is a great game but it DOES HAVE BUGS. Saying it doesn't is a lie. Right now I have a charcter in my party with over 520 skill points to spend when I go to level him up, he can't spend that many points, making it impossible to level him up... that is a bug. Not game killing, but annoying. So be warned. It is a great game and I do recommend it, but the people saying it doesn't have bugs are wrong. It is better than it used to be, that's for sure, but some problems still exist.

The basic campaign is actively bad to the point where it's hard to tell if its trying to be a parody or not. Mask of the Betrayer is somewhat more polished but if you replay it it becomes painfully apparent how little your choices actually matter. Storm of Zehir on the other hand is nothing but quality swashbuckling fun that I'd give 5 stars to on its own.