The miniatures that came with this set were fantastic, and by themselves are worth the asking price. That medium black dragon is a fantastic sculpt and to this day remains one of my favorites, and the troglodyte and kobolds get pretty frequent use at my tables too.
You wondered if there was something like the Basic Game for 5th Edition. There have been a few different "introductory set" things for D&D since 5E launched. Most of them don't have miniatures or dungeon tiles. I'm not sure WotC themselves have done anything *quite* like this since 4th Edition (the 80s-style red-box 4E set looks like it filled the same role as that 3.5E Basic Game). I don't think any of them have quick-start rulebooks paired with a more fleshed-out rulebook the way the Basic Game does, either. (BTW, at a glance, the 3.5 Basic Game looks like it's a revision of the 3e "Adventure Game" set.) Anyway, here's the 5E-era starter stuff I can think of: -- Starter Set (2014). ~$20. Had 6 dice, a 32-page rulebook (a stripped-down PHB, it had rules for combat, adventuring, and spellcasting with 8 pages of spells) and a 64-page Adventure module, "The Lost Mine of Phandelver." "Lost Mine" is considered one of the best adventures made for D&D 5e even today, and it has both dungeons AND dragons! "Lost Mine" had guidance for first-time DMs weaved into the adventure, so it was also kinda a micro-DMG. It's no longer in print. (They have a new starter set out now, and WotC expanded "Lost Mine" into a longer, much weirder campaign book this year.) -- Tie-in Starter Sets: "D&D Stranger Things" (2018) and "D&D vs. Rick & Morty" (2019) starter kits also briefly existed, but I don't know much about them. -- Essentials Kit (2019). ~$25. Has a 64-page expanded rulebook with basic character creation info and a kind of "job list"-themed adventure called "Dragon of Icespire Peak." It also comes with an 11-die set (w/4 d6 for rolling up characters, and 2 d20 for dis-/advantage rolls) and basically some DM tools (various cards for tracking initiative, spell info, etc.; and a thin cardboard DM screen). Some say it's a better starter set than the Starter Set, but I can't say. -- Starter Set: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle (2022). $20-25. Includes a 32-page rulebook (similar to the 2014 set, but tweaked), the same basic 6-die set as the 2014 set, a 48-page adventure (see title) that's generally considered easier to DM for, but only levels the characters up to 3 ("Lost Mine" was for character levels 1-5). -- D&D: The Adventure Begins (2020, board game). You'd think this would be the Basic Game, but it's extremely linear and simplified. Players walk a straight path to a goal, roll the d20, read a card, and just practice the concepts of roleplaying. Kids are clearly the primary demographic; it doesn't really teach you the rules of D&D as far as I can tell. Honorable Mentions: -- "D&D Basic Rules" (2014, updated 2018) - A free 180-page PDF. It's not quite an "introductory-level" book, but it's a cut-down Player's Handbook and a mini-DMG+Monster Manual all in one. You could print that out and play D&D for years and years with only that as your foundation, as long as you were willing to reskin monsters. -- Campaign Cases. These are basically DM helper kits with round tokens and backs for them (Creature Case) and dungeon tiles w/ clings for dungeon features (Terrain Case). But they're ~$20 each, so combined with either of the current starter kits, you'd be looking at about $60-65 to have the lot. And you still wouldn't have the full core rule set. -- D&D Adventure System Board Games: There are a handful of D&D board games that teach the basics of the RPG which run around $90-100. I don't know if the newer ones are more 5e-based or closer to 4e, but Tomb of Annihilation and Temple of Elemental Evil are notable newer ones. These games include miniatures, lots of cards and tokens, dungeon tiles, and (maybe) a d20; so they're closer in spirit to that 3.5e Basic Game, but they're hardly a cheap means of entry. Again, the 3 core 5th-Edition rulebooks are about as expensive as just one of those games. There's a $20 co-op Dragonlance game out now but it doesn't have dungeon tiles or anything like them, so I'm guessing it plays completely differently from D&D proper.
This is very buds RPG review... It would be nice to have a bit more of your own style on show here. Also, less of how much you like something and more about things that make it specifically striking or good. Less repetition in the commentary would be nice too.
