I spent a lot of time on Neverwinter Knights back when it was new. To some extent, it plays like a 3D Baldur's Gate 1&2 and/or Icewind Dale. Some differences: * You only control the main character. You may give very limited commands to helpers in the form of dialog options (help/don't help with doors/chests, be aggressive/flighty, etc). In addition, you may only recruit two hirelings at a time. There are several in the game, and they can come and go as you please. The helpers interact with each other very little, if at all, from what I remember. No mediating disputes or all-out drama like in Baldur's Gate. Each character has a backstory that's revealed in optional conversations each chapter as the game progresses, and they're generally colorful but kind of campy stories - a halfling miscreant teller of fish tales, a hopelessly clumsy cleric, a death-worshipping monk who's a little too serious to be believed... etc. * Customization is a lot easier. Dual-classing is explained much more clearly, so you can actually plan out a character in advance. Still, you may need to Google around to get the most out of your plot. There are Prestige Classes, too, an additional class a character may wish to take levels in once one has met certain pre-requisites. With planning, your character will be eligible for whatever prestige class you choose by about level 6 or 10 or so. Some are just utility classes, and others - like Red Dragon Disciple - are just plain wicked unbalanced at high levels. One-hit kills on monsters 5 levels higher than you, and the like. Still others are highly unique, but maybe harder for a novice or power gamer to use - like the Shapeshifter. * It's not AD&D, where low AC is good, and "+2 AC" means AC is lower because it's all wacky. Compared to Icewind Dale, a lot of annoyances are smoothed out - you don't have to max Dex on a heavily armored fighter, for example, because the max Dex bonus for AC is capped based on what kind of armor you're using. Now casters can use some armor while casting, but with a chance of spell failure. Overall, it just feels more transparent and the edges feel smoothed out. * It feels a little too easy to gimmick things. They allow you to disable friendly fire, making it easy to spam fireballs with impunity. On the other hand, this is probably necessary, since you aren't allowed to order individual units around anyway, and they'd probably be too dumb to run from the danger, anyway. * I'm told that there is an online community for this game, but I never made use of it. I imagine it may be a LOT more fun if done right, but it sounds tricky. Turn friendly fire back on, get a few human players together... it sounds great. I don't know how easy it is to do, though. I would give it 5 stars if it were possible to control your other party members. As it is now, you have no choice but to cope with a sort of dumbed-down range of strategic options. The main game just feels easier all around, from what I remember. It looks great and feels kind of big, but know that you'll be customizing a character and not a party. After playing Icewind Dale, I might find it hard to go back to going solo with two automatons. But I have fond memories all the same.
