I can safely and seriously say that I grew up between the Old Camp and the New Camp, and for a reason. The game can be clunky to get into, the story is barely sufficient, and I woud NOT call it polished. But the setting is so good that it's enough to make up for everything else. Experiencing the world is a joy, everything has been hand-crafted with a precise tone and it feels. The progression is meaningful, and there are a few curated skills instead of a plethora of marginal ones. No permanent buffs, for example, but actual skills whose effect is immediately visible in the gameplay. For a good chunk of the game, mobs can easily kill you and most characters can one-shot you, hence once you're capable of trading blows the sense of progression is amazing. Also, one of the last few games which actually challanged the player's mind instead of assuming that the player is mentally challenged. You can outsmart the game in a number of ways, as long as you try for a while and think in terms of "what if I try that". I could not reccomend it more, if only to see how bad the industry has gone now and how good it could've been if the Gothic approach would have been privileged instead.
