I loved the game until my saves got corrupted. It has great atmosphere, it is reasonably close to the P&P version especially with point buy, or if you can limit yourself to roll only once though most cannot, and the diplomacy skills are used quite a bit unlike in most D&D games.
There was also little to no hand holding and you have to find out stuff on your own. Modern games gravitate more and more towards making it almost impossible to fail for you sadly. On and loads of followers to recruit though some are a little too greedy for my taste.
In 3.5, it is difficult to roll once and be done with it. The whole system, unfortunately, doesn't encourage it.
In ADnD, stats didn't mean too much. You practically needed 16+ to have an effect in most cases. So most people ended up with +0 in most things from stats.
In 3.5, every 2 points above 10 counts, and a lot of the early game is all about stats. If you didn't have a decent bonus in Strength, for example, you are really out of luck trying to hit anyone with a 14 Dex, scale armour and a heavy shield (AC 18, so 17+ to hit for a Str 10 L1 Fighter). The same guy in ADnD would have a Thac0 of 19, but the opponent would only have an AC of 5, so he would be hitting 14+. That is a huge difference.
To further illustrate the point: A fully tricked out Warforged Fighter in 3.5 can have an AC of 22 from level 1 (Adamantine Body (+8) feat plus Extreme Shield feat (replacing Tower Shield feat; +3) plus Dex of 12) with no penalties to his fighting ability. There is no way a Fighter with a Strength less than 14 is going to hit him on anything other than a 20.
Tying spellcasting to a stat in 3.5 also made having a high stat mandatory. You can't cast spells if your casting stat is too low, something that ADnD didn't really have until much higher spell levels.
I tend to stay away from the followers except Meleny. I would only take 2 of them for their equipment (the femi-Nazi and the drunkard). The problem with the followers is that none of them are spellcasters other than Meleny, and all of my guys are always spellcasters except for the rogue (who is usually a Rogue 4/Fighter x). I find straight fighters to be too boring. Usual party is 2 clerics, sorcerer, wizard, rogue/fighter plus Meleny.