Customer Reviews

Neverwinter Nights 2 Gold

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Like many fans of the original Bioware epic Neverwinter Nights, I was giddy as a schoolgirl when we approached the release of Neverwinter Nights 2. Perhaps the fact that it was constantly delayed should have been a warning, but I wasn't deterred at all and was travelling all over the city on launch day trying to find a copy of the Limited Edition with rings that don't fit and an art book.

But let me digress for a moment...
Bioware was the creative studio behind the epic hit Knights of the Old Republic, and Obsidian's only prior game as a studio was Knights of the Old Republic 2 which was lauded for its excellent story, and bemoaned over its incomplete nature and buggy unfinished feel. Neverwinter Nights 2 was Obsidian's second title, and also their second continuation of a Bioware masterpiece, and ultimately the foreshadowing of what was to be released should have been heeded by those of us who were chomping at the bits to get our hands on it as soon as possible.

Obsidian released Neverwinter Nights 2 without the DM client, despite the fact that they had been touting the fact in interviews a year prior that the online component of the game was well in hand. On the contrary, the online component of NWN2 was in shambles, and even after multiple patches over the course of 2 years now has the online component stabilized... to a point.

When you play online with the latest patch, you still get load screen freezes, the game crashes every time on exiting (Vista and XP), and it appears to have enormous memory leak issues which have not been resolved. I am not running a weak machine mind you, I'm running a dual core 2 duo 8400 (Wolfdale), 4 GB of RAM, and a 64 bit operating system, with a 512MB Geforce 8800GT... a powerhouse which crashes consistently with NWN2.

I had the same problems on my prior system, an AMD core, with 2GB of RAM and a 7900GT and XP. Multiplayer freezes your computer or crashes the game randomly.

Let us be honest... the Multiplayer component may not be what sells the game out of the gate, but it is what makes the original NWN a hit even in the present time (6 years post-release). Multiplayer was incredibly unfinished by Obsidian, and reading the release notes it is almost criminal how they acknowledge bugs, don't know what causes them, and don't issue any timeframe or even a plan on an expected fix.

This game hasn't worked since release for those who enjoy Multiplayer. Single player is buggy, but the campaign is good (reminiscent of KOTOR2).

Despite all this, the cash cow milking is at work, and Gold Editions, Platinum Editions, Diamond Editions, etc. are promised features and fixes for those who shell out cash to buy the newest bundle or expansion.

Obsidian/Atari should not be planning any expansions until the game actually works. Instead, they are financing development and running the license into the ground because of the shortsighted nature of development.

This game was supposed to be a D&D fan's dream, but many of us are moving back to NWN where Bioware still adds free content, fixes, and additions to the game despite not making much money off of it.

Perhaps Obsidian/Atari should slow down on milking the consumer and think about what breeds customer loyalty. I've bought every single Bioware title to date, and I will continue buying because I get what I expect - quality, and a finished game.

I can't say the same for Obsidian. Boo.

OS: Vista Ultimate 64
Processor: 3Ghz Intel (forgot the exact name)
Graphics: nVidia 7950 GT
Sound: Creative Labs Xtreme Gamer Pro
Ram: 4 Gigs

This game runs fine on my system and it's on Vista 64.
You can set the graphics setting from low to high.
Check out the NWN 2 forums ([...]).

Some people have horrible time getting this game to run. Others run this fine.

The in game AI is not too good, but Tony K's AI ([...]) is awesome. Monsters and companions fight smarter and know when to switch from range to melee weapons. You can even set your companions to disarm traps, unlock doors, and pick up nearby loot for you (assuming they have the skills to do those things).

The player content for this game is small compared to NWN1, but it's growing. The player content and the community makes this game 4 stars.

The Original Campaign (OC) is a light fantasy. You grew up in a small farm now you must save the world. Some of the NPCs are very rememberable, while others you may chose not to include in your party unless you must.

The sequel Mask of the Betrayer is a much darker fantasy with the story surrounding your survival. The NPCs are more fleshed out and people seem to like this dark story more. Very few companions to join your party compared to the OC.

For me this series has tons of fun factor because you can customize your character, the gear, the monsters, and the game itself (within limits). The toolset lets you create your own world, but it's a heavy learning curve. The player community has put quite a bit of their material at the nwnvault.com and it's slowly growing.

If you like AD&D (this uses the 3.5 rules) you should checkout this game. The player community gives this game tons of replay value. I agree with other reviewers that this game should have been given more time before released.

Having so thoroughly enjoyed the original game, I ignored the warnings of other reviewers reporting negative experiences with this sequel and went ahead and bought it anyway. But the complaints made by other reviewers are absolutely correct. Despite my meeting or exceeding all of the stated hardware requirements for the game, the thing crashes constantly. And, frankly, it's not woth the hassle. Plainly Atari, in typically corporate fashion, figured that they could turn a quick buck by buying up the rights to the game, turning out any old piece of shoddy junk, and people would still pay for it because they loved the original. It's immediately obvious that none of the love, sweat, tears, and creativity invested in the original game went into the sequel. The environment is disappoiningly static. Only a very small percentage of nonplayer characters allow you to enter into dialogue with them. Virtually none of the buildings allow you to enter and explore them. The NPCs lack any personality, style, or panache. The environment is consequently flat, lifeless, and noninteractive, lacking the myriad possibilities to explore and socialize of the original, which gave the original that successful illusion of navigating a real world. Quite a disappointment.

This game was so exciting when I first put it on, and played through the first level or so. Then slowly, I realized, the developers of this game didn't finish the game. I've encountered at *LEAST* 15 or so bugs in the game that stopped me from progressive further, I had to find debug commands online in order to continue playing. This sucked horribly. And if that wasn't enough.

Then I started realizing and noticing other things. Like every creature/chest in the game *ALWAYS* drops the same items *EVERY* time you play through it, with any class. It's ridiculous. What kind of RPG doesn't have random loot?

Then I decided maybe I could get some redeeming qualities from playing Multiplayer with a friend. We encountered even more bugs than I previously saw, and decided to try me running the server as a DM and just helping him through the story, create creatures and new treasure chests to make things more interesting. That didn't even work for too long, cause it kept trying to load my DM character through the cutscenes, without giving him the option to speak to people.

There's also been about 14 patches for it so far. And even with all those patches, only some of the bugs were fixed.

Overall, I'd say this game had a potential for a 5 star rating, but due to the fact that it isn't finished, I'm giving it a 1 star, and recommending you don't buy it, unless you're ready for a headache.

EDIT: I've noticed a couple of comments about my review not mentioning the Mask of the Betrayer Expansion. After attempting to stumble through the campaign, and having it fail miserably, I did play through the beginning of the Mask of the Betrayer. You know what I noticed? Well, you were a higher level, and had nicer powers, and the game was a little less buggy. I'm not sure how that's supposed to be a redeeming quality for the Gold Edition, considering it is Both games. The expansion shouldn't be the only working part of a game. And it would be more of a redeeming quality, if the expansion improved gameplay in the initial campaigns of the game, but it doesn't.

It should also tell you something, that just because I didn't give the game or its expansion a great review, they must resort to calling me a dimwitted teenager. It's nice to know that name calling is a good defense against an incomplete game.

I enjoy RPGs whereby one can have several party members who join you and NWN2 delivers as opposed to NWN1 where your PC is limited to one companion and an animal companion if your PC can cast such a spell. The original campaign is also superior to to the OC of NWN1 as well and the very fact you can access your NPC party members is a real boon to gameplay. I thought the voice acting was excellent and the NPC characters had considerable depth. The bottom line is that I had a lot of fun with it. The resting aspect of only five seconds instead of a whole game day was refreshing. There were also a number of things that I never experienced before in an RPG that were quite intriguing: a trial and the running and defending of your keep.

The game is decently long, the story line good, and various quests fun. You also get to choose who will be in your party as you go though there are a few times when a certain NPC has to tag along. There is even a cheat code, if you like, to raise your NPCs to a total of 6 + you = 7! You muct put this code in at the beginning of every chapter.

There are a few cons, however. The first and foremost is: Get ready to spending a significant time of patching the game. I am so glad I waited three years before buying it because the amount of patches to get this game working properly is astounding. Obsidian deserved the heavy criticism for initially selling a bug infested slop. Just use the update button until the patching is finished and then get ready to patch the included expansion Mask of the Betrayer (MotB). After the patching both games played without any issue.

Another con - to a degree - are the cut scenes. Now they are important to the game and some of them contain enjoyable humor, but sometimes they get long and there are a suprising number of them throughout. Still, not a real game breaker.

The last con has to do with MotB in that there are a few significant game mechanics that are different from the OC. Proabably the major one is spirit-eating and the impact that has on gameplay. It can really force you to get bogged down as you are always having to gauge your spirit hunger and spiritual energy. The aspect was none too popular with the majority of players and is the reason for my 4 Star Overall rating. There is a cheat code whereby you can disable it. Still MotB was a lot of fun and you can export your PC from NWN2 into this expansion.

This is a worthy game to purchase and play; glad I did.

I actually played the original NWN2 and MotB expansions and experienced almost no "bugs" at all, except the Kaelyn vs Gann bug, which could be worked around by resetting their AI.

The story was pretty darn good for both he original and the expansion, but it is true that many of the NPCs are not as interactive as the BG2 and NWN1 NPCs.

My biggest gripe about the Mask of the Betrayer expansion was the fact that it was simply too easy as compared to earlier D&D games (BG2, NWN1.) Several of the "Boss" battles can be killed or incapacitated on the first round of the battle before they ever even take their first turn, even on "hard". The final boss can also be killed without ever getting hit, in fact, it never even gets a turn when I play a caster class. Basicly, if you are a wizard or sorcerer, train All the Isaac's Missle spells, Dominate Person, Bigby's Forceful Hand, and Wail of the Banshee ASAP...you'll have to try very hard to lose any fight from then on.

I found several character builds that could SOLO NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer without leveling up after character creation, and without ever taking damage on the highest difficulty level. That is, this is supposedly a "level 30" campaign, but several different level 17 race/class combinations can finish the highest difficulty setting without ever getting hit.

So in terms of "challenge," this campaign is actually the easiest of the D&D games I've played. A few of the levels it seems like the enemies were just place holders and had never actually been play tested or balanced to present a real challenge to a player, especially after the first 1/3 of the game. If you get past act 1, there is never another challenging fight in the game. Even the fights that some people asked help for on the home page forums, I found to be laughably easy.

If you learn to turn off the worthless NPC AI and micromanage all the characters for yourself, so that they do exactly what you want them to do, when you want them to do it, then the game is much, much easier.

It might be enough to just sum up what many others have said -- it's buggy, unstable, and often feels incomplete. It takes many unnecessary creative liberties with 3.5 D&D mechanics. It seems to run more slowly than it should, even with graphics turned down.

I've tried to play this game many times and like it. I love 3.5 D&D, I loved NWN1 and loved one of its expansions (sorry, Shadows of Undrentide), and I thought I was in for another good experience. Instead, the game features a boring storyline, frustratingly bad character models, a very counterintuitive modding system, and a serious lack of forethought in regards to balancing game mechanics. Playing through the first 5 levels or so of a Warlock is an achievement worthy of a medal. Or god forbid you decide to make a character in the original campaign with one of the two new base classes from MotB -- you get no starting equipment! To boot, half the Cleric buff spells just don't do what they say they do (let alone what they're supposed to do in 3.5), lots of spells are in the wrong school or have saving throws added for no reason, and plenty of fun, old-fashioned core spells just aren't there. On top of that, even if you find one or two spells that you really like and want to just fill your prepared slots with them, you can't! They still haven't implemented the simple ability to fill a slot with a lower-leveled spell. For the non-spellcasting types, staple feats like Power Attack still function like NWN1, where they have a fixed cost and return. Some of the fun PrCs, like Pale Master, were hit so bad that they're useless.

Let's say that you want to download one of the many high-quality mods that can fix some of these issues. If more than one of them modifies the dialog.tlk file, then guess what? You can only have one of them at a time! If you want to use mods that are easy, drag-and-drop affairs, then you have to make sure that no two mods are modifying the same .2da file, or else you'll have to find another program to merge them -- and I couldn't find any that worked. If you want to use mods that are in hakpaks, which don't have the .2da problem, then you'll have to open them individually with the toolkit and assign them to modules a la carte. And you're still out of luck if more than one of them want to make changes to dialog.tlk. AND you have to manually back up your old dialog.tlk in case they patch the game again, although I doubt that it would happen at this point or even make a difference in the long run.

I know a lot of the mechanical complaints are just as pertinent to NWN1; however, NWN1 was the company's first 3e D&D game, and NWN1 had a more engaging story and overall a much better gaming experience. If nothing else, the in-game cutscenes were vastly superior in the first game. Remember Mephistopheles walking through the vast expanse of corpses as they were reanimated in his wake? Nothing nearly as awesome to be had here. Now, I'll admit that Mask of the Betrayer is marginally more fun than the original campaign, but it's still not as good as the first game. Right as soon as it starts to get really fun, they introduce a new meter for you to keep track of, with scaling debuffs and everything. It's like I bought a new D&D game and they forgot to mention that I would have to play through the entire campaign as a spiritual vampire. If the rest of the campaign wasn't so linear I might not have minded so much, but I really hate being railroaded, just like the quests to gain entry into Neverwinter railroad your alignment in Act II of the original campaign.

Overall, I'd have to give it 2.5 stars for fun, but it's really not worth the time or money. NWN1 and the expansions are much more fun, more forgiving of older computers (which is sad, as my desktop is just ahead of what was cutting-edge when NWN2 was released), and these days they're probably a lot cheaper too.

I played the original NWN and was sorely disappointed. I could never get past the first chapter, because I found the whole thing exceedingly boring, and I got lost from sheer lack of directions in the expansion packs. NWN2 fixed that, in several ways.

The first is with the characters you encounter. The people actually seem more real, and you can build relationships with your companions based on your actions. The characters have more depth to them, and have backstory and quests to go with them.

The second is the plot. Apparently, it's quite typical of adventure games, but I wouldn't really know. I enjoyed the plot, and unraveling the mystery. Parts of the first chapter were a little tedious, but were still fun (at least on the first play through). This is particularly true of MotB, which has a truly epic plot and even better characters.

Third, you can now control all of the player characters. Instead of only being able to give suggestions, you can equip them the way you wish and tell them exactly what to do. I've found that by tweaking the AI slightly, you can get a party that doesn't need turn by turn guidance, but figuring out just what you want can take a while.

Playback value varies, because it depends on how thoroughly you did everything the first time. There are two sides to choose from in the beginning, so I suppose you could play through it twice to see how each one plays out, but other than going back and finding little things, there's not a whole lot to get the second time around. If you enjoy playing with different characters, however, and don't mind the same plot over again, it is a wonderful replay.

Challenge will vary depending on the person and how well you level. For NWN2, I played the first time and missed several side quests, and was about five levels below recommended. This made playing hell, even on the easiest level. On the other hand, if you do it right, you can blow right through most of it.


There are a few cons to the NWN2 as well. You are "herded" a lot more. There is less space to wreak havoc than in the original. There's much more guidance, and you have to follow along the main plot or not continue with the game. There are enough side quests and different things you can do that it doesn't really matter, and you still get to make choices, but the basic plot and events will stay the same regardless. I rather liked this, because it means you don't get lost wondering what to do nearly as often. Some of the quests are rather annoying, and quite a bit tedious, but only one or two stand out in particular. I didn't notice the problems with the camera in NWN2, but I had a hard time adjusting to the change in MotB. However, it is possible to tweak the camera until you find what you're comfortable with.

Neverwinter Nights 2 is not nearly as well-done as the original Neverwinter Nights games that were made by Bioware. If you haven't played those already and you're looking for a Dungeons & Dragons or Forgotten Realms game setting, I strongly suggest you go buy Neverwinter Nights Diamond edition instead of this. Not only is it better, but it's cheaper too, and the game's online multiplayer community is still going strong.

In fact, following the release of NWN2, I would frequently check up on X-Fire's public gaming statistics for NWN and NWN2, and find that NWN is unsurprisingly still the reigning champion between the two games in terms of most hours played each day, even all these years after NWN's release.

While some say the graphics look nicer in NWN2, I actually feel like I somewhat prefer the graphics in NWN. This isn't because NWN's graphics are objectively better, and it certainly shouldn't be construed as to imply that I think NWN's graphics are more advanced because they certainly aren't. I'm merely going to say that I thought the graphics in NWN were done in a more artistic manner and seemed more fitting for what you might expect in a Dungeons & Dragons world. Some of the visuals in NWN2 in terms of certain features seemed exaggerated to the point of seeming ever so slightly cartoony. This damaged my feeling of immersion into NWN2 that NWN had done such a good job of creating for me.

To the credit of this game's producers, they have finally patched out the intrusive SecuROM DRM software from the game, so those who were holding back on purchasing this game due to the malware-like SecuROM's presence can rest assured now that this game has finally been cleansed of that annoying and intrusive software, assuming you run the game's updater after you have the game installed.

You should also be happy to hear that this game has a wonderful soundtrack that complements the game's setting and themes rather nicely. People with decent taste in music should find something to like in that, if nothing else.

All in all, this is a pretty average game. If it was possible, I'd probably rate it 3.5 stars. Since I can't, and because of some of the other virtues I mentioned in this review, I'll bump the rating up to a decent 4 star rating. If you're a hardcore NWN fan who played and loved the older games, this could arguably be worth getting. If not, I would suggest going with the far superior original Neverwinter Nights games.

My computer pretty much meets the minimum specs for this game, but my processor speed is a little slow. I do have a quad-core processor which usually makes up for the speed requirement in games. Advertized minimum spec processor speed is 3.5 GHz, recommended 4 GHz. Amazon doesn't state this in the ad I recall reading, and it's a good idea for potential buyers to know.

The game experience is a different format than the original -- several new character classes, new customizing options. You don't choose in-game portraits yourself like in the original.

Gameplay experience is generally great, except for some periods of lag-like slowdowns I attributed to my slower processor. learning curve with party selection modes took some time.

The expansion "Mask of the Betrayer" gives more race/class options and ability options. I am impressed with the Planetouched races.

In the original NWN game I used to have a lot of trouble getting back to desktop and then returning to game [on returning to game, I was unable to use the mouse or any keys to progress further in the game]. This problem was never solved with any patches.

That problem doesn't exist in NWN2.