Simply stated, I love this game.  It is addictive, challenging, and after one week of playing it, still not boring.  Wonderful, except...  NWN is like a nice sports car with a flakey ignition computer.  When you get it running it is great-- but you don't know how long before the car will quit on you.
Installation, patching and getting it to otherwise run took nearly two days of frustration.  For my installing was a simple matter, getting it to run was another matter entirely.
On my AMD 1700XP system with 512 MB of memory (Windows 2000), it crashed the system intermittently, requiring a hard reboot every time.  The upgrade/patch utility aborted during the update.  I had to manually install the patch files.  This didn't resolve the issue.  I ended up updating my AGP driver, video drivers, IRQ driver, and soundblaster drivers.
As a result, my system no longer crashes.  However, NWN will crash and become CPU-bound after a few hours.
If you are frustrated easily, I would wait.  It is irresponsible for Bioware/Atari to release a product in this state.  After five years, this is the best they could do?
Simply stated, I love this game. It is addictive, challenging, and after one week of playing it, still not boring. Wonderful, except... NWN is like a nice sports car with a flakey ignition computer. When you get it running it is great-- but you don't know how long before the car will quit on you. Installation, patching and getting it to otherwise run took nearly two days of frustration. For my installing was a simple matter, getting it to run was another matter entirely. On my AMD 1700XP system with 512 MB of memory (Windows 2000), it crashed the system intermittently, requiring a hard reboot every time. The upgrade/patch utility aborted during the update. I had to manually install the patch files. This didn't resolve the issue. I ended up updating my AGP driver, video drivers, IRQ driver, and soundblaster drivers. As a result, my system no longer crashes. However, NWN will crash and become CPU-bound after a few hours. If you are frustrated easily, I would wait. It is irresponsible for Bioware/Atari to release a product in this state. After five years, this is the best they could do?