I played ToEE in 2014 knowing nothing more than the franchise it ran under. This was actually my introduction to the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Everything about this game impressed me. You have beautiful isometric scenes that really stand out and catch your eye (other than Fallout/Fallout 2 I had not experienced much 'showcasing' in this art style as the CRPG transitioned from first person type dungeon crawler setting to direct3d enhanced isometric showcasing of the environment). I learned how to play DND 3.5 knowing nothing about the game just from reading the in game encycolepdia, because it teaches you EVERYTHING and it's really wonderful in how you click subjects *(it's like a wikipedia on rules for DND, in the game!). I havent' played icewind dale or other games reported to be similiar.

So in the game you have essentially a module that in D&Dspeak means a direction for a game story, some rules, and charaters and various other bits limited to the setting, (could be NPCs or bosses, or maybe some special item and rules) whats interesting about this game is that EVERY single thing going on in the game is rooted in some DND ruleset or math. You have a dice roller that you can dig intowith more verbosity to see how saving throws work, and i love how you can make things more or less detailed like the dice roller as you wish.. It's a bit slow paced but its a TBT (turn based tactics) game in which you recurit a party, then add some more, spec them out gear them out, etc (this is also DND rule based and you are bound to race rules, class rules, etc... be warned!) the combat is what this game is all about, but some of the most involved dialgoue trees are present in it as well. for locations in the game you basically have a small dungeon, a mid sized town, and a biiiiig dungeon. those three areas are the whole game (10%, 15% and 75% respectively, roughly)
the combat in the game is really quite decent and very satisfying. when you score a critical hit its such a good feeling and as you get stronger your crits can become devasating. I've never seen a game have critical hits that work like this as you level up and build a character properly. the combat feels a bit like a pace yourself kind of tour de france as you dance with enemies. You know how many enemies (roughly) there will be and have a good idea of what to expect of them if you've come across them before. So it's a tactics aspect of how do you want to go about proceeding, how to pace yourself. How to spend your actions, etc. It's definitely a slow and thinking style of combat that unravels itself as you go through it. Crits act as the element of surpise and chaotic factor that make things interesting. Fumbling a weapon. Killing blows. Things like that. Certain mechanics play out nicely like the health you lose before going down and the threshold after being downed that results in death, as well as 'coupe de grace' I've yet to see a game that has a system of killing blows with these Coupe de grace moves. eseentially you must spend and action to finish an enemy for good, lest they possibly recover (its also a great way to net/harvest XP for the character of your choice)

Really rough and tumble fighters are easy to figure out how to play, spec and gear. Don't be afraid to try two handed weapons, dual wield or sword and shield spec for each one of your party members.

rogue class is tricky but very deadly. especially with crossbows. a halfling can hide easy and armed with bow like weapons can do an ungodly amount of damage to end things quick.

magic doesnt feel gimmicky. there are a lot of spells that have different effects in the game and the more you learn the more you have acess to. It pays to have some mages.

I wasn't a big fan of the shaman class, sling weapons or rangers my little halfling rogue was the beast, as my half orc claymore wielding fighter.

The music and visuals are very well done. Check out this epic piece:

I found myself marathoning this nonstop and got sucked into it really hard and deep due to its involved and intricate combat system that was more or less bound to the pen and paper game. The rote mechanical like nature of combat as it unfolds will not be to everyone's liking, but i really havent seen something like this done, and for me it was done exceptionally well. There were a few things bout it i did not like. I hated the way there were all these little items and you more or less had encumberance issues. You had to drop stuff right there where it was and remember what chest you put things and on what floor if you actually need to find something you found (kind of a problem in fallout 2 but here its a bit more confusing and easy to misplace things, although they do show up on a map, you still have to know the floor you were at...) also it was a real pain to go to town to barter/sell your goods. (likely intended as that could be abused, i certainly did, but is that really the best approach to design?) Tiers of encumberance with increasing penalties was a nice approach but it seemed that it was always a state i'd find myself in no matter what.

If you like fallout and the way you solve quests in fallout and like intricate turn based combat this wont dissapoint you. its a much more simple setting (a big dugneon) that lets you explore and proceed to solve problems through combat or dialgoue option and alignment as you see fit. Controlling a party of multiple people and finding quite a few other NPCs to replace anyone who dies or mix and match your style is a lot of fun. There's a lot in here to like and a lot to do, and it's all well done and pretty engaging. It's fun to explore the alignments (good evil, neutral etc) evil characters who fight against evil in the temple of elemental evil is fun/funny. sometimes your party doesnt always agree with each other, and there can be internal conflicts as well. I made all my party mostly neutral with 1 guy on good and one guy on 1 evil. everyone seemed to think those two were crazy.