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Mixed alignment parties are more interesting by far. The game gives you 25 NPCs, of which putting together a balanced party limits the number of possible combinations, but still is in the hundreds of thousands.
However, I've got to say that I'm underwhelmed at the lack of NPC interaction so far in current games where I'm trying out NPCs I haven't used much in the past. I recently added Kivan to my evil party because I know he and Viconia will go at it, but after about 20 days I've heard not even a peep between them. Now at about day 74, Kagain and Edwin just recently started having a cross word every now and then, but it is rare. In another current game the only NPCs so far are Safana and Xan, and as far as I know they aren't scripted for any particular interaction.
In all the games where I've used NPCs I have seen very little NPC interaction--hardly any at all. 95% of the time NPCs don't utter anything beyond their happy, bored, tired, etc., lines just as a custom NPC does with a custom soundset. Is that 5% of NPC interaction you get from using nothing but NPCs worth the sacrifice of never trying out custom characters? That is, to never try parties consisting of custom race/class combinations that aren't available among the NPCs?
For a year I've been reading (on other forums) about how players categorically prefer to play with NPCs than making a custom party because of the character interaction. I now suspect that most of them have never actually created a custom party, or if they ever did they didn't use any of the excellent custom soundsets that are available out there.
In both of the games I'm playing I will be trying to get as much interaction as possible as I continue, so I may change my tune fown the road here. But so far I have had just as much fun, if not more, creating custom parties, as long as they have great custom soundsets, of course).
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