Single-player campaign is better than the first NWN, but still buggy after a year of patches.
Gameplay: Story-wise, this is a run-of-the-mill roleplaying game (RPG). Your character rises from rags to riches in search of his/her life's meaning and in search of the bad guy that needs to be vanquished. The game is based on the 3.5 Dungeon & Dragons rules and offers a lot of customization options for race, class, skills, feats, etc. There is an awful lot of loot to be found, bought, and custom-made. Unlike the first game, you actually have a party to control, which is both good and bad. The good part is that your party members have personalities and make the adventuring a bit more colorful. The bad, well, where should I start: pathfinding issues, not-too-efficient use of spells, suddenly vanishing party members, some suicidal behavior, and so on. You can let the AI control the party, but this works well only early on. Toward the end of the game, you'll need to micromanage each spell and sword swing. It's not as tedious as it sounds if you ever played classic games like Baldur's Gate. But none of the possible 10 or so party members that you can have around come close to the hilarity of a Boo & Minsc or the seductive intrigue of a Viconia from Baldur's Gate 2.
Generally, the pieces come together fairly well in this game. The inventory system and journal are decent, as is the interface. The camera can be annoying largely because it never seems to face in the right direction when you enter a new area. That is, sometimes north will be toward the right side of the screen or toward the left, forcing you to swing the camera around to match the direction of the map. You'll get used to it, but you shouldn't have to. A few things I really liked were the number of scripted events, the save system (none of that checkpoint stuff; you can save anywhere), and the death system (no one in your party actually dies unless everyone goes down in a fight). But the things that I really didn't like were prominent as well, mostly involving the campaign which was about twice as long as it should have been. There are a lot of busy-work quests in the game that add absolutely nothing to the story. Chapter 1 (there are 3 in all) is the worst in this regard, but monotonous chores and a somewhat nonsensical narrative plague the game throughout. There is about 60-80 hours of gameplay here if you try to do everything. A tighter, more compelling story could have been told in half that time.
Graphics: The game looks good, but certainly not great. With the patches and the expansion installed, I didn't notice any framerate problems on my mid-range computer, although the game sometimes did not load all of the textures in each area. Character models, monsters, and terrain are all convincing, and spell effects look particularly good. There are night & day cycles that make the game a bit immersive, though it is hard to get too immersed in a game that is best played from a high overhead perspective and that requires constant monkeying with the camera.
Sound: The music was great. I wouldn't mine actually owning a few of the tracks. The voice acting ranged from decent to good, but it was the usual RPG fare of Scottish-accented dwarves, English-accented elves, deep-throated demons, and the occasionally whiny acolyte magician (always with an American accent). Sound effects for spells and other things were appropriate.
Technical Issue/Documentation: The game comes with a rather lengthy manual, which is quite helpful. It also has a clever tutorial at the beginning. Whether you get it alone or with the expansion, prepare for up to a 30-minute install which includes downloading some big patches. The game was rock-solid stable for about the first 30 hours of gameplay. Then the crashes started. According to posts at the official website, people are still have a variety of problems with this game, even after all the patches. My issues involved the game refusing to load new area and crashing during transitions. The first time this occurred (while leaving Ammon Jerro's haven), I was able to find a workaround solution on the internet. The second time (at Crossroad Keep in chapter 3) there was just nothing that could be found to get me around this. I never got to finish the game. This was very frustrating and more than likely will keep me from buying another game by this developer. In fact, I was so disgusted by this problem that I sold both the game and the expansion on eBay. I had really had enough of the main quest after 50+ hours.
Value/Recommendation: If you like D&D-style roleplaying games, this might be worth your while at the current price ($20). However, be sure to patch it and be willing to deal with the game's remaining technical issues. This is really not a good value unless you are going to play player-made modules and/or play online. As with the first game, the single-player campaign, while long and with a few high points, is largely unremarkable (and buggy) and there are better RPGs available.