Dumbed down, perhaps, but actually ENTERTAINING, as opposed to the godawful slog that was wrestling with the IE interface. It killed any and all enjoyment I could have had from those games. NWN, on the other hand, was extremely simple and clear to use, and this made combat, even the repetitive filler combat in some of the longer dungeons, ten times more fun than anything encountered in the IE games. Interface makes or breaks games.
NWN2 NPCs may have had more impact on the story, but they also SUCKED. In the hours I played, I encountered stereotypical drunken dwarf brawler, stereotypical elven druid nature freak girl, stereotypical thieving tiefling with the most insanely annoying voice acting in history and stereotypical redhaired firewitch with a fiery temper.
I slogged through the first half of the game hoping that the quality of writing would pick up and justify the game having such fucking terrible controls, graphics and especially performance on a PC that far exceeded the recommended requirements but no, more run-of-the-mill standard fantasy shit with very little happening that was unpredictable. I have tried heroically to finish this game twice and failed, quitting around the end of the dwarven areas.
NWN1 is a dungeon crawl with a lameass story tacked on, but that's fine. It doesn't really pretend to be anything more, the lootwhoring, fights and levelups are entertaining enough as they are. NWN2 tried to be a full emotional rowlplayin egsbereunz and failed at that, meaning it was a half-baked dungeon crawl and a half-baked storyfag game. This is not fine and the end product was poor as a result.
For an example of how to do this properly, see Dead Money - pretty lame game mechanics redeemed by outstanding storyfaggotry and voiceacting. NWN2 just failed in all categories.