GOG Patron
First of all, if you already own the Diamond Edition and you don't feel like getting this version as well is worth it... then don't. But if you don't own NVN, this is the version to get. And no, you're not paying for a campaign mod. You're paying for a remastered version that comes with all the OG expansions, it includes the OG Diamond Edition as well, plus compatibilty with plenty of mods. Yes, the graphics are dated, but who cares about graphics in a game that's nearly a quarter of a century old? The important thing is that it runs out of the box at modern resolutions with proper UI scaling. No fiddling around to get it running at 4K. Besides, you're not supposed to play this sort of game zoomed in, like some sort of third person RPG. It continues in the tradition of 'isometric' CRPGs. The game is perfectly readable. If in doubt, the action log that tells you exactly what's going on. You can press tab to see interactable items. You have multiple camera options, it's not fixed as the person below says. The game teaches you about it in the early tutorial section. I've had a lot of fun with the OG campaing and it can serve as an excellent introduction into DnD based RPGs because it eases you into it. Yes, you directly control only your character (tho you can have a henchman, summoned creatures, pets), but if you're just learning the ropes having only one character to deal with is actually a plus. Having to deal with a whole party of different races and classes can be intimidating for a beginner. Being an older game, there's a wealth of information out there about builds and such. Shadows of Undrentide and especially Hordes of the Underdark are fantastic. The companion AI isn't great, but you do have some control over their behaviour. Plus with a bit of planning you can easily solo the game. For the amount of content you get, plus access to all the community modules, you can't argue with the price. It's literally hundreds of hours of fun once you get into it.
I can't rate this game any higher because the camera implementation is godawful which makes the rather clunky combat a chore to get through. It's honeslty amazing how bad the game feels to play considering that, by 2003, the world had figured out how to do cameras and controls in 3D games. Yeah, the art style has aged well, the music is nice, many of the navigational puzzles are interesting to figure out, but when you're consantly fighting against the camera, the generally poor mouse and keyboard controls (the game won't recognize my Xbox gamepad despite supposedly supporting gamepads) and the uninspired combat design, the game soon turns from fun to frustrating.
If you're running Windows 8/10/11 and you buy this game when the store page states that it only works on XP/Vista/7, then you're taking a risk. That's why there's a "works on" field in the game/product details: so you know if it will work on your OS or not. If the store page claimed it worked on Windows 10 or 11 and it didn't, then you'd have a case to call this a scam, but it doesn't. My advice: be careful about what OSs are supported by a game before buying it. That said, it's not a great look for GOG to be selling games that don't work out of the box in any Windows version newer than 7 and the game should probably be delisted before more people buy it expecting it to work on modern Windows with no hassle. I will add that it's actually possible to get this running on Windows 10 by following some simple instructions here: https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper/wiki/Gangsters-Organized-Crime I believe this solution is perfectly safe, it's just a DirectX wrapper, it doesn't require you to edit the registry, change any system files or anything else shady. It's not unlike the Glide wrappers that are commonly used to run old 3Dfx games on modern systems. Nevertheless, use it at your own risk. I can't guarantee it will work for you and I have no idea if it will work on Windows 11. 5 stars for the game, 1 star for GOG for selling a game that will only work on old Windows versions.