Neverwinter Nights 2

[Whytewulf]

Has anyone played this yet? Looking for a brief review before I order.

[Woody]

http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/922154.asp

I tend to trust Gamespot:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/neverwinternights2/review.html

[Raxtull]

I think that once all the bugs and issues gets fixed, it's a surefire game of the year. Outstanding storyline, decent graphics, plenty of different companions to choose from (though their AI is really buggy right now.) Basically wait a few months while the game comes out of beta phase before buying it. Not that anyone who plays CRPGs should be surprised about getting a buggy game at release.

[B_Delacroix]

What I really want is to be able to play the campaign with my wife and not have to hack it to do so.

Now, I'm off to read that review.

[Whytewulf]

Man, my company declares 75% of the websites I want to go to at lunch off limits. I will have to check out the sites when I get home. so far so good.. GU is not banned.

[Ceistant]

Its been running bug free for me so far. I picked it up Friday (11/03/06) and after patching, it has run great. I just started Act III lastnight, so I can't wait to back to it.

[Neurohacker]

So far it's been good, a tad laggy/stuttering but I think that calls for some tweaking. I've had the dead AI glitch a few times so far (where the NPC's just stand there and do nothing) but a call to follow seemed to get them back on track. Overall, the cutscenes and voice acting has been very good and the pacing is admirable. I am not past the first chapter, but I can tell it is going to be a wild ride to the end.

I didn't think I needed to upgrade to get a smooth playing time, but maybe my Athlon 64 3500+, 6800 GT OC, and 3GB DDR may need to be changed, however, I just bought a new car, so I'll deal with a lower texture, lower resolution. bleh

Now to snag GoW after work...

[oneeye]

Well not really happy with the graphics so far, for some reason there is no place to set refresh rate so it runs at 60 only.

Also the female pc's look like men. But the male pc's look fine.

Still I'm having a lot more fun than oblivion so far, which was just too open ended for me. The story in nwn2 is pretty fun, even the tutorial so far, still in chapter 1 though.

I think you'll have to buy two copies to play with your wife, but you'd have to that for an mmo too.

This Woody comic came to mind hehe, though it was for a different game.

http://gucomics.com/archives/view.php?cdate=20060407

[Edward]

if the multiplayer on nwn2 is as good as nwn then I will get it fosho. Beside the item hacking, on servers that restricted it like the gladiator ones, it was tight.

[DemonMage]

I enjoy the game... but get horrible framerates even with everything turned off. With high textures on, the graphics look quite nice, but no way I can play them at anything near that. I didn't expect to be able to play it with very good settings, but wasn't expecting to have to turn everything off and to low, and to still have to run horrible then =-(

The game itself is pretty fun, the story in the OC is pretty decent, and enjoying playing it with my girlfriend. And since it's Obsidian, you know the companions are going to be awesome one way or another, and so far I've seen that holding true =-p Great interactions between each other too. That's something Obsidian does real well.

Other than the massive performance issues, that could be partly solved by getting a new video card (the game does have issues in general though), the game is well worth a buy in my opinon.

[Darkov]

They admit they need to do more performance optimisation on the NWN2 forums. They have issues with xfire too slowly things down, but I think thats more xfire than NWN2, as it's getting worse each time they patch it for all my games.

Anyways, the story is a million times better than NWN, I have finished the first one cause I found the story so bloody boring, but this time it's looking very promising. Graphics appear average at best for the performance, but it's not the visuals I want from it, it's the great gameplay and story.

It feels a lot like Baldur's Gate and a lot like Knights of the Old Republic.. and as I have to say they are possibly my two most favorite games ever (even though I'm an MMO and FPS addict), I am very happy with it so far.

PS.. make sure you decide which Prestige class is any you want to be before you make your character.. there is a character creation module on fileplanet that should help you with that. Definitely recommend planning ahead as fixing mistakes appears to be really hard atm.

[Ceistant]

I didn't think I needed to upgrade to get a smooth playing time, but maybe my Athlon 64 3500+, 6800 GT OC, and 3GB DDR may need to be changed,

Athlon 64 3500+ & 6800 GT OC you should be fine. I would recommend checking out The System Requirements Lab (http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest). If you meet the Processor, Processor Speed (Athlon 64 3500+ exceeds Recommended Specs), Memory and general GFX Card Requirements (GPU, Onboard GFX Memory, and such) you should run fine. (Vertex and Pixel Shader verions 2.0 should be fine)

I have had a few systems come out fine on the "Required" but fell just short of the "Recommended" specs, and still ran smoothly. The couple that did have issues with "Chop" in the GXF were the result of Heat issues with the CPU. Quick stop at the local Mom&Pop computer store for a new CPU Fan and additional Case Fan (Not to mention cleaning the months of caked on dust from all the fans, heatsinks, and other components) solved the problem and the game ran fine afterwards. If you can, check your CPU and Motherboard Temp. If your system didn't come with a utility for this, you may be able to download some free software, that will give you a diagnostic of your machine.

Not saying that this will be a sure thing, but it could save you from doing upgrades.

[No.6]

Absolutely stunning.

Framerates are excellent with what is IMO a low-end system (Sempron XP 3000+, think Athlon XP 2500+ as it's the same chip; ATI X800XL 256Mb; 1.25Gb DDR333). This is an AGP system; it's doing fine.

I read that there's a problem with Xfire and NWN2 and framerates which can be fixed through some parameter or another; I don't use XFire so /shrug.

Getting away from tech stuff like graphics and framerates and talking about the important stuff, namely the gameplay: as with NWN, if you are a fan of D&D in any form, it's superb. There's quite a bit of flak on the official boards, largely from people who IMO appear to have wanted some other type of game and not a D&D game, or perhaps were seeking some sort of tech demo in game form so they could brag about their systems. Hard to tell, the writing in many of the complaint posts is murky.

The official campaign is very entertaining so far, but that's just the surface of the whole NWN experience (comparable to the old starter modules people used to get with D&D basic kits ... I predate those by a bit as my basic set came with dungeon geomorphs).

Haven't really broken into the builder yet.

[Darkov]

People were expecting NWN with a new fancy engine. The engine isn't great and they've changed a few things that were in NWN and replaced them with things they made for Kotor.. I think the good changes outweigh the bad..

Most of the complaints appear to be from people who got really into the custom modules and things for NWN, five years of playing the same game sorta makes expectations of a sequel a lot higher than they should be.

[sparkhazel]

I figure I would post my reviews and thoughts on the new "improved" sequal to the award winning Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2.

First of all, I will talk about the things I like about this game.

Firstly, I love the cinematic storylines in this game, it makes it feel more like you are apart of the story than the original. Your character has a bit more push and decision on how they treat their party members which opens up more story options and gives the NPC's you group with more depth and makes them feel more a part of the party, instead of being just stuck there for filler. The characters, if differently alligned and racially different, will disagree, and argue, and all in all not get along, which makes the realism and draws you into the middle of your rag tag party of adventurers.

The class selection is deep and you have many options as to what you do with your character. The prestige classes add a flavor to the game that, if anything, makes the game even more fun and enjoyable. The huge selection of races and sub races also adds to the depth and enjoyability of the game. You have everything from Assimar, Tieflings, Drow, Several different elves, druegars, etc... It has the base races, and the special races.

I like the character customization as well. Some people I have seen didn't care for the fact that it uses graphics for your character now instead of the predrawn portraits by famous D&D artists, but I disagree with that. I like the fact that your portrait is actual portrait of the character you create.

The graphics are definitely an upgrade in this game. I rate them up there with games like Titan Quest, as far as 3rd person action and animation.

Now... for the things I didn't like.

I disliked the fact that they used most of the voice overs from the 1st game for this one. So all of the characters sounded the same. That kinda bumed me out.

I also dislike the camera angles and controls, they are a bit clunky at times and take awhile to get used to. But with the handy dandy pause button, that becomes easier to deal with as you go along.

Also, one final thing I wasn't a fan of, was the computer controlled AI system. The npc players of your party seem to be slow with casting spells and responding to combat. Too often the rogue runs in and gets beat to heck and back, the druid shapeshifts right as the last mob is dieing, and the bard casts his AE spells out of range of the party. The AI could use a little bit of work.

I haven't tried the multi-player much yet, but I know with the creativity of the player base, there will be several great static realms out there before too much longer.

Anyhow, thats my thought of it in a nutshell. Enjoy

all in all 4/5 stars

[Darkov]

Someone on the official forums is translating the NWN1 custom AI scripts to work with NWN2, initial tests are positive (ie the cleric now heals), though it's taking some time apparently.

As the AI is generic or something it will also make all the enemies smarter too, which should make a lot of the game more fun.

[junior]

One thing I don't like is that the game no longer displays the relative health of mobs. This can be a bit of a problem when you're fighting half a dozen thugs that all look identical, and trying to decide which one to go after next. I've had more fights than I can count where I kill one opponent, and then kill 2-3 more with only one light tap on each.

[Darkov]

Right click on a mob to group target it, if you pause and do this you can check em all before deciding.

[junior]

Also, one final thing I wasn't a fan of, was the computer controlled AI system. The npc players of your party seem to be slow with casting spells and responding to combat. Too often the rogue runs in and gets beat to heck and back, the druid shapeshifts right as the last mob is dieing, and the bard casts his AE spells out of range of the party. The AI could use a little bit of work.


Second this.

The AI in this game is HORRIFIC. Healers only heal themselves, and never heal other party members. Spells like Invisibility Purge get cast when there's no justification for them. The AI REALLY needs some help.

[bulldog]

It's slow, tedious, the graphics are horrific, as are the AI, who are too incompetent to follow you or even attack the enemy at times. The campaign is very linear, it's the same kind of quests repeatedly, the interaction with AI is possibly the worst I have -ever- faced, half of them don't talk, the other half talk about a complete load of nonsense. The interface is appauling - it being small and most of it completely useless; mainly unexplained. Quests are worse than World of Warcraft's 'kill 10 boars, kill 10 defias bandits, kill 10 bunny rabbits' system, and half of them are just pure nonsense. The Internet play is awful, you can't join a game without downloading the module from an outside source. You have to leave the game, download it, put it in a file then join that game just to find that everybody's left. I can think of many more bad things to say about this game, but that's just the game summed up in two minutes. Now, I'm going to get a massive, massive amount of ranting after this. But I'm just being honest. It's abysmal. Do not buy it, do not play it, save your money for something better - like a new toilet seat.

[Darkov]

If you read the official forums you will see that too, two sides of the coin. NWN2 is a game you either love or hate. Personally I love it, cause it's a real rpg story and real DnD, as a game though.. yeah it has a lot of issues.

[B_Delacroix]

I finally got this for me and my wife to play together.

It had issues. The interface is clunky, but I've manged to fix it up to something useable by using the chase camera with the "always force camera behind character" turned off.

It would crash often until I looked and found new sound drivers for our creative XFI cards. It didn't crash last night, but hey, maybe that was a fluke.

I switched to server saved characters only because we ran into a problem of entire inventories vanishing.

I don't have a wimpy system but I still have to turn off all fancy settings to let it work well.

Even though both of our computers are built with the same manufacturer parts, hers has more sounds playing than mine. Bizarre.

I had to change the .ini file so it would stop changing my windows speaker settings.

After doing all of those things, we got it working long enough to start enjoying it. Too bad all the monsters seem to focus fire on my wife's character.

Though interesting, the ability to have your alignment influenced by your responses has made me, for the first time ever, feel like my paladin isn't playing lawful good, but the trite lawful stupid.

[DemonMage]

The 1.3 patch does help the performance issues quite a bit. I managed to get about 10 extra FPS with my old system. My new system... didn't try it pre-1.3 but with 1.3 I can play in 1680x1050 with high resolution textures and it's smooth, so I'm happy.

Also this might help with the shoddy AI (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2HakpaksOriginal.Detail&id=11). It's a work in progress of improving the henchmen AI, and AI in general.

[B_Delacroix]

I spoke too soon. Last night, we were crashing in the cut scenes once again, though not as much as over the weekend. Played with the latest patch since the beginning, too.

[No.6]

Having just finished the included campaign last weekend, a few thoughts to add to my prior post:

- As noted by others the AI is confused. My character was a bard/duelist/neverwinter nine mix - I had to keep an eye on him constantly lest he start playing 'haven song' when he's supposed to be going about being heroic. However, I read that the community has created some good alternate AI.

- Without giving away spoilers, I can say I was disappointed by the campaign's conclusion. The journey to that conclusion was very good, IMO; the box claims that your decisions matter, and so far as that's possible in a CRPG this is true.

- Bugs persist, both in the engine and the builder. Crashes are relatively common. Fortunately the usual RPG tactic of saving frequently prevents any truly aggravating moments. Some class abilities don't work as intended,

- On the other hand, it had been my intent to create a campaign world for NWN2, and I think I'll give it a pass for now. The toolkit is powerful but ... inconsistent, and there's too much work involved to have a module vaporize due to a glitch (again, for the dedicated, frequent backups avoid the truly horrific disasters). Maybe in a few months some patches will improve the situation.

In short I enjoyed playing the original campaign, but I bought NWN2 with the intent of making a whole hobby out of it rather than having just a CRPG campaign to play and discard. So, for now, NWN2 has failed for me.

[Darkov]

It has a dedicated live team to ensure that it has as much after release life as the first game had. Premium modules = money.

[junior]

Overall I think the game was generally good. But there were constant issues that detracted from it. I've already mentioned the AI. And there were other things.

And yes, I know it's a minor point, but it really gets on my nerves when people permanently die in the story and I've got a character standing right next to the body with the Resurrection spell ready to cast.

Umm... what?

The writers obviously didn't stop to think through some of the more important ramifications of a society where cleric-style spells are commonplace.

If they decided to ignore it in the interests of a good story, then shame on them.

[MediaMogul]

my personal beefs with NVN2 are as follows:

Bugs bugs bugs. The kind that ruins gameplay in a BIG way. Like if you touch leaver A before talking to person B you cant complete that quest and you will be penalised for it in the entire next chapter ( well sorta)

Roleplay inconsitencies: You choose to create an evil charachter. Yet the 2 people who know you best in the entire world and which you start out with are both good alinged ( lawfull aswell I seem to recall)

You can not choose to encounter NPCs with one of your other charachters. If you try your charachter will be swapped with teh one infront when encounter NPCs that initiate conversation. which is bad if you are non melee class. Which means that skills like diplomacy/intimidate/barter etc are all useless on any charachter other then urself.

While you can flirt with many of the people in your party there are only to romantic paths. The one for females is an evil alinged charachter. And the one for males is a good alinged charachter. So if you evil then no romance for you if you male. And if you female no romancce if you aint evil. Always knew women where evil.

Zones are to small. Feels like like zoning is the #1 waste of time in the game.

tradeskill system is so badly bugged I was getting +8 bracers when doing a bow combine.

a handfull of fight actually require you to do any real effort. And thoose are usually against dragons.

+ side is that you cna sorta build your own fort. but your options are really limited and in the end it never really matters how well you do or dont do.

In the end what ruined it for me where all the random crashes and bugs.
I just stopped playing close to teh end of act 3. And then I went and swapped it in for another game.

[bigdogchris]

I bought NWN 2 on the launch day, played for about 10 hours and quit. NWN 1 was pretty bad IMO, NWN 2 is also bad, but slightly better game due to being able to have party based encounters instead of solo, heal potion guzzle fest that NWN 1 was. Yes the graphics engine and ruleset is improved and the storyline is ok, the way they handle stuff like resting, travel, linear progression, auto level up of NPC's, the way you handle your party members, all of it ruined it for me. I don't mind if the storyline isn't as epic as BG 1 or 2 is but at least allow me to have a party system game like that.

I'm waiting for BG 3 for my next major RPG fix.

[LordPazuzu]

If your looking to NWN games for an out of the box RPG to play through, you're looking in the wrong place. The main point of NWN has always been the toolest and the NWN builder community. The boxed adventure is more of a demo of what the toolset can do on a technical level.

[bigdogchris]

I decided to give this game another chance. I patched it up and instead of playing it like Baldurs Gate, I just set the companion behavior how I wanted and played my main guy. I'm having a lot more fun this time around. I've made it to chapter III and I'm defiantly going to finish it. I don't know why it's so much more fun this time. Maybe because I have a little more direction with my character and I'm not frustrated with the NPC's anymore.

[junior]

While you can flirt with many of the people in your party there are only to romantic paths. The one for females is an evil alinged charachter.

No...

The primary romantic relationship for female characters is a good-aligned NPC. If a female character has a stronger friendship with a particular evil-aligned character than with said good-aligned NPC, then there are some hints about mutual feelings late in the game. But the "official" romance is with a good-aligned character.

Speaking of the romance, while I liked the character that they had males hook up with, I found the actual acknowledgement of mutual feelings to be one of the most disappointing things I've ever seen in a game. It felt as if there was plenty of build-up toward that point, but the pay-off was a let-down.


I never finished this game. I made it to the final dungeon, and then set it aside and never came back. Part of me would like to finish the game, but there are things about it that annoyed me.


1.) It's often difficult to get the triggers that you need to raise your NPCs' friendship numbers. In fact, it often seemed to me as if picking the proper NPCs to take along was more a matter of guessing correctly which NPCs would have friendship boosts in a given dungeon than actually trying to guess which NPCs might be useful.
2.) The matter I previously mentioned in which the usefulness of the Raise Dead spell was completely ignored by the storywriters. When one of the Neverwinter Nine was killed during the course of the game, I immediately questioned why she didn't have a deal set up with a local temple to Raise her in the event that she died. When a member of the party was permanently killed during the course of the storyline, I immediately questioned why my cleric, who was in the same room as the still-warm body and had the Raise Dead spell in her list of prepared spells couldn't bring the person back to life.
3.) Some of the NPCs at the end of the game (while I didn't finish the game, I did at one point extensively root through the conversation trees) seemed particularly bone-headed to me. In particular, the fact that two of your party members always end up on opposite sides mostly because they don't like each other no matter what your character does seems particularly... well... dumb.

[bigdogchris]

I just spent a 12 hour session to finish up the last of chapter III (yes it's my day off haha). I LOVED the ending of the game ... it really hit me in the chest ... I've extremely happy that I gave it another chance. There is some very good optional content to soak up in chapter III.

As for companions. I played my character as how my alignment would allow me too. I didn't answer questions a certain way to make my companions like/dislike me, I just played my character and they came along with me for the ride.

[junior]

As for companions. I played my character as how my alignment would allow me too. I didn't answer questions a certain way to make my companions like/dislike me, I just played my character and they came along with me for the ride.

I don't have an issue with that. What I DO have an issue with is the fact that it's quite possible to play your character according to a certain alignment, and answer prompts that way, but still end up with NPC party members that don't like you very much because the trips you took them on ended up having nothing at all that would raise your friendship with them.

As an example, it's quite possible to play your character according to paladin ideals, but end up with the paladin in the party being indifferent toward your character because the times you used him didn't have conversations that netted an improvement in his attitude toward you.

[bigdogchris]

Well if your role playing a Chaotic Evil character ... I don't think it's unreasonable to finish with low influence with Casavir ...

[junior]

Well if your role playing a Chaotic Evil character ... I don't think it's unreasonable to finish with low influence with Casavir ...

That's the exact opposite of what I said...

As an example, it's quite possible to play your character according to paladin ideals, but end up with the paladin in the party being indifferent toward your character because the times you used him didn't have conversations that netted an improvement in his attitude toward you.

The problem is that it's possible to play with LAWFUL GOOD ideals and STILL end up with Casavir indifferent toward you. And that applies to ALL of the characters. It's very possible to clear out a set of quests in a dungeon with party members that have no +reputation triggers in that dungeon. And that means that you've just spent a good chunk of the game not boosting your rep with anyone. If you rotate characters in and out of your party - whether it's because you like bringing everyone along at one time or another, or because you like to tailor certain parties for certain situations - it's very possible to have almost no opportunities to ever increase your reputation with your NPCs.

[midmagic]

It is alright...

Can't say I was impressed with the official campaign overall. Stereotyped characters. Unfinished story all over the place. Plot that makes little sense in a high magic setting. inflexible plot line based on alignment. Nothing new really.

After saying all that, I did play it through 3 times.

lawful good paladin of hard hitting.
neutral evil druid of heavy armor aoe burn.
chaotic good warlock. Well warlocks are pretty awesome if you try to play through with proper rest restrictions and don't mind spamming keys to make your character fight.

the actual evil ending is decent ;p

[midmagic]

The problem is that it's possible to play with LAWFUL GOOD ideals and STILL end up with Casavir indifferent toward you. And that applies to ALL of the characters. It's very possible to clear out a set of quests in a dungeon with party members that have no +reputation triggers in that dungeon. And that means that you've just spent a good chunk of the game not boosting your rep with anyone. If you rotate characters in and out of your party - whether it's because you like bringing everyone along at one time or another, or because you like to tailor certain parties for certain situations - it's very possible to have almost no opportunities to ever increase your reputation with your NPCs.

Too many henchmen and not enough group slots. This is esepcially an issue since there is only one henchmen that is a rogue for lockpicking.

Your opions about this are:
1. You be a rogue.
2. Bring the henchmen rogue.
3. Go back with the rogue for the boxes after you smash faces.
4. Forget the chests or break them open and destroy 1 of the items inside.

It is rather bothersome since the party size is so small.

I suppose you could do with a caster and knock... but they can't always meet the DC.