I first played this on my roomate's "upgraded" 286 back in the 1990's. It has the most freedom to follow the story or not as you like. I enjoy just doing my own thing and upgrading my ship. Most games don't let you do that.
This game has been a favorite of mine for a long time. It has a good balance of options and strategy for building your empire. This old DOS game now works on newer Windows machines, and I am so grateful.
I'm old enough to have played the unenhanced version of Icewind Dale. I love this update. It helps with some subtle gameplay as well as fixing old bugs that would crash it way back then.
This is eveything the origional was and more.