Neverwinter Nights 2

by Atari

Product Features

• Massive D&D-style role-playing game set in the fantasy world of the Forgotten Realms
• Epic single-player campaign that makes you work through three complete stories
• Character designs allow for different types, races, alignments, and even histories
• More communicative multiplayer mode with features such as emotes
• Build your own campaigns and adventures, creating new quests and items with a more robust module maker

Product Details

• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B000E0TOKI
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: October 31, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,768 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Platform: PC | Edition: Standard

Amazon.com Product Description

For those of you unfortunate enough not to be familiar with the first Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2 is a massive D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) style role-playing game set in the fantasy world of the Forgotten Realms. Neverwinter Nights 2 combines an epic single-player campaign that makes you work through three complete stories and features online play and a robust module-making editor. As a single player, you'll be swept from the tiniest of villages into a tale of danger and war, where you'll eventually rise from a peasant to a full-fledged Hero-of-the-Realms.

In this epic sequel, character development has improved dramatically. View larger.

The new graphics engine is absolutely amazing. View larger.

If you are interested in having adventures, look no further than Neverwinter Nights 2. View larger.

One of the biggest areas of improvement in Neverwinter Nights 2 is with character development. Armor is made up of many different segments, allowing for an impressive assortment of characters that let you make better use of more available graphics. Build whatever character best suits your style of play -- good or evil, chaotic or lawful -- with any number of skills, feats and professions. Whether you like lobbing fireballs and researching forgotten spells as a powerful Wizard, hacking head-on through innumerable orcs as a Fighter, or slipping unnoticed through the shadows as a Rogue, you'll be able to create a character that's perfect for you. What's more, the races of Neverwinter Nights all have sub-races as well, which will add a great deal of replay value as you progress. You can also choose character histories now, each of which provide different bonuses and change how others interact with you in the game world. And while you may already have an idea of what kind of character you want to play, Neverwinter Nights 2 includes a handy "recommended" option for those players who would rather let the game customize a character just for them.

Another major enhancement is with the addition of companions. In Neverwinter Nights, you just hired henchman, and they did things for you that you didn't really have any control over. You'll have complete control over the companions you attain in Neverwinter Nights 2, and they'll remain integral to the story -- they will travel and fight with you, and some may even fall in love with you or betray you.

The game follows standard D&D alignment conventions, keeping track of your morality throughout the game. Depending on whether the actions you perform are good or bad, how those around you relate to you will gradually shift, which is especially significant where the members of your party are concerned. There is even an influence system similar to the one in Knights of the Old Republic 2 that allows you to gradually redeem, or corrupt, your party members through your actions. Design the character you want and choose your alignment, your allies, your companions, and how you want your character to develop, and then carry the battle to your enemies. Without spoiling the ending, the whole experience leads up to a cool plot twist and a massive battle that sets up the third and final act.

The new graphics engine is absolutely amazing, depicting all the fancy worlds, beautiful mapping, dynamic lighting, per-pixel lighting and more. And the multiplayer characters have been given an increase in their ways of communication with one another. And when you cast a spell effect, the other players won't have to read something to find out what you just cast -- they'll know right away and will know how to react. Neverwinter Nights 2 also gives you the tools you need to build your own modules, campaigns, and adventures for your friends. You can move buildings, alter terrain, script encounters, write dialogues, or create quests and items in order to create an epic adventure for you, or any other worldbuilder, to use. So if you are interested in having adventures, or building adventures of your own, you need look no further than Neverwinter Nights 2.

Product Description

Neverwinter Nights 2 returns you to the Forgotten Realms, one of the popular campaign settings of Dungeons and Dragons. Emerge from the tiniest of villages into a sweeping tale of danger and war, chronicling your rise from a peasant to a full-fledged hero of the Realms. The story takes place several years after the original Neverwinter Nights, and reintroduces popular characters and NPCs in a new storyline with new challenges.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing But Shows Promise, December 7, 2006

By 

J. Moher (Auckland, NZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Neverwinter Nights 2 (CD-ROM)

I was so looking forward to NWN2 - I loved the Baldur's Gate & NWN series from Bioware; and to a lesser extent the Icewind Dale games. The pre-release hype implied this would be NWN with radically improved graphics, especially scenery, with a more BG feel to the game and interface and everyone expected such. Instead Obsidian seem to have scrapped the entire engine & toolset (the most developed parts of NWN) and rebuilt from scratch. However they recycled many voice scripts & background music from the original! So you get a new game engine that is basically similar to NWN on the surface (but nominally to D&D 3.5 Edition standards), but which has no new features of any huge merit and a limited quality rendering for your character customisation and only limited new original sounds (voice, ambient, or music).

NWN2 also exhibits similar bugs to what NWN had, in fact on first release it had more originally but by the 5th Patch (version 1.03.840 on 05 December) it has at least reduced to a more acceptable level. However some characters in game are seriously hampered by bugs (e.g. Defensive Casting mode is erratic for spell casters). NWN2 was probably released too soon and it is yet to be seen whether Obsidian (& Atari) have a genuine commitment to support the game long-term as considerable patching and improvement will still be required.

Graphically the game is visually impressive in some areas (notably Outdoors Terrain), but the poor customisation capability for characters, limited variety of interior terrain, poor spell effect graphics, and issues with frame rates undermine this. Obsidian have also indicated they may not offer any real support for PWs; and only minimal MP support! I don't dislike this game, but I am disappointed, apart from the overall first impression of the outdoors graphics it offers little over the original NWN and expansions. I expect the game may be worth 4 stars by about June 2007 if Obsidian are committed to improvement.

I purchased the Limited Edition (DVD) version, primarily to get the extra Feat & Store Items in game, although the artwork book is also nice (but features spoilers so shouldn't be read until after playing). The NZ/Au version of the LE seems to be much better than the UK/European one. Despite what the packaging says you will actually need about 6.5GB to install, and about 7GB free space to play & patch).

If you have not previously played the original NWN and expansions you may get much better value from buying them (Platinum or Diamond Editions are recommended) and downloading additional Premier or Free modules off the Internet until NWN2 has been further debugged & enhanced.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not a suitable successor to NWN (Expanded after 20+ hours use), November 4, 2006

By 

D. Lawrence (NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Neverwinter Nights 2 (CD-ROM)

Many bad things about this title and performance isn't one of them for me as it runs fine.

Bad:
Radial menus are gone.

No more quick chat options like greetings and goodbye.

Campaign is linear.

No exploration as there are no longer any area transitions. Go to world map, click area, fight in small area, go to world map, continue over and over.

Toolset is not intuitive and frustrating to use. If you think NWN's was difficult this one is much worse. NWN's is far superior in ease of use.

There are very few tilesets and they lack what NWN's have.

There are no longer any Item, Monster, Clothing, wizards in the toolset.

They used the same character soundsets as NWN but they're worse.

Camera edge scrolling is too slow to use effectively. There is no way to adjust edge scrolling.

Chase camera is useless underground because walls obstruct view.

Cannot put 2 weapons or shield and weapon on quick slot - Dual Wield

Cannot unequip a weapon using quick slot. It must be done manually from the inventory screen.

Cannot put skills/feats on quick slots.

AI party characters get stuck and cannot move.

AI party characters must be micro managed as the AI is horrible. You have to keep pausing the game to get everyone working together, unpause for a few seconds, pause and rearrange them, and so on, and so on.

AI sometimes will not do what you order them to.

Direction keys WASD over control movement making it very difficult.

New targeting system is difficult and you end up casting spells on the wrong target constantly.

No Linux support.

No Great Cleave of Coup-de-Grace animations. the monsters around you just drop dead without anyone touching them.

Cannot drag a box or ctrl click all of your party members to select them all; Like older titles from Obsidian??

Character heads pretty much all look them same. You can give them different hair styles though.

Hardly any monsters. They used different colors or just renamed some monsters with the same model. The first part of the campaign is just fighting dwarfs. No Minotaurs, Hobgoblins, only 2 dragons.

no rideable horses which NWN has

DM client is beta as they planned not to add one even though the 1st has it

Large persitant worlds are gone because of huge memory requirements (Developer's own words) This is probably why it shipped with D&D online a pay per month subscription

Don't ask me how but there is lag in offline play

Non-stop cutscenes

Poor animations

No more character portaits

Hardly any variation in armor, weapons, clothing, items, etc - Falls way short of NWN

Graphics are better than NWN but mediocre when compared to other current titles. Frame rates are worse than titles with better graphics!

Obsidian dropped the ball on this one. They have not listened to the large NWN following and have implemented what they want, not the customer.

If you're thinking about buying, it is more like Baldurs Gate than NWN. Even the "You have been waylaid by enemies," on the world map is back. If you like Icewind Dale or Baldurs Gate you'll probably like this.

Neverwinter Nights it is not.

If you own NWN stick with it, if you like the sound of this type game buy NWN Diamond edition. It is far superior to NWN2.

Experience:
28 years D&D player, DM
NWN player since original release
PW world developer

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Rushed and Buggy, November 7, 2006

By 

Stephen L. Sheldon (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Neverwinter Nights 2 (CD-ROM)

I previously reviewed this and gave it a slightly higher rating - my score has come down because the more I play it the less satisfied I become. First, NWN 2 has none of the stuff that made NWN good (and I didn't care for NWN that much). And it has none of the things that made games like Baldur's Gate (which I liked) fun. So it basically is a failure on a number of fronts.

The user-interface is terrible, for example click a button which brings up a menu and you can pick inventor - very clumberson - in Baldur's Gate, for example, you could just click on the person icon and have an inventory.

Camera angles are a major pain and things are always blocking your view. Interior views are just annoying.

Tons of bugs because of the tons of cut scenes (which are mediocre and have poor voice acting in general) - the bugs are slowly being elimiated with patches but right now the game is more of a beta then in production shape - it is unacceptable when you cannot finish the first level because of a bug - which a recently released patch has fixed.

Graphically stale but requiring a major PC to run - system recommendations are not even close to what is required to run the game at an acceptable frame rate with the effects turned on.

Party AI is okay for fighters (fair amount of running past one bad guy to get another bad guy for no partciular reason except to give the first bad guy a attack of opportunity) but if you switch between players, the computer takes over and does what it wants with the other players. So if your scorcer is using a crossbow to conserve magic and you switch to control another player, the computer starts running through spells and ignores what you had the sorcer doing. Luckily the fights are pretty simple so there is not much need for tactics - which you couldn't use if you wanted to.

So it basically is one of the worst D&D games I have played to date from a user interface standpoint. The story may be fine but I am usually so annoyed that I don't care. Which is a shame - this game with some polish could have been something. Stay away unless you are sadistic or you plan to use the toolset to make your own games. The 8.5 that IGN gave this game was WAY to high - it should have been about a 5.0. The fact that you can make your own game does not make this game worth anything - it just gives certain people a reason to buy this terrible game anyway.

2115|RQSJ18VB268T3;2115|R208KIQK37U0FU;2115|R2M1UZYNR20MMA;