Go for it! It is unbelievable what can be done with the RAW files

I shoot RAW & JPG, use the JPGs to quickly scan the photos and decide if i want to do any further work on any particular Raw file

I use capture nx2 and find it very powerful, the initial version had a bunch of bugs and crashed often , though i never lost anything, maybe a few minutes worth of editing, the bugs have been corrected , for $130 dlls I think it is an excellent value.

If you want to process many images it can be very time consuming. so nowadays i only do post processing on what i think are the best photos of a particular session.

A particular feature i really like is to e able to change the settings on the RAW file as they are in the camera, you can change an image from standard (or any particular mode you may have used) , to vivid, neutral, portrait, landscape, etc ... and work from there

If you used autofocus it will show you the spot where the camera focused

all the exif data is available

while saved as .NEF all editions are reversible
once complete you can save as TIFF, or JPG

the u-point technology allows you to easily select specific areas of the image for modification , it can be very complicated areas, for example the leaves of a tree, while leaving the background behind the leaves unchanged