Customer Reviews

Neverwinter Nights Official Adventure Guide (Versus Books)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I ordered the adventure guide in spite of these reviews. I've played Baldurs Gate I and II and I was pretty sure that the guide would help me. I was right. I don't like to zip through these kinds of games, but be thorough and take ALL the side quests and find all the loot.

While I waited for this guide, I played all of Chapter 1 and part of 2. When I got the guide, I found that, in spite of my attempts at thoroughness, I had missed some good stuff and some side quests. AND, I had two amateur walkthroughs I had gotten off the net to guide me. They weren't as good as this guide by far. For instance, I found that neither the game manual nor the amateur walkthroughs helped me design my main character correctly. In fact, the manual mislead me in my design. This Versus guide got me straightened out.

Not only do I like the walkthrough in this Versus guide, but I like the character descriptions and like the information given about how to build effective characters that take advantage of the uniqueness of each type of character. I also like the extensive spell and equipment lists. I find that NWN is even more full of neat equipment and items to find and use than BG and BGII. Having this guide has helped me determine what is the best equipment for my character to use as it levels up. As to spells, I've found the same thing. Due to this guide I have a better idea about what the spells do and how to effectively use them than I had without it.

The bottomline is: I'm glad I ignored the previous reviews.

The guide was written before the game was complete - specifically the final level. Their comment is "As of press time the final encounter was still not complete, so we don't know exactly what waits on the other side of that portal..." Not exactly helpful. Nor would I call it "Complete" or "Perfect"

The maps and narrative are quest specific. Other areas where you might encounter creatures, houses, or items are left out. The maps are inconsistent in quality. Some are thorough and well marked. Others are missing the letters being referenced completely.

The creature, item, and spells appendix is not much more useful than finding it in the game and examining it. Reference to where the items might be found or made is not given. The narrative text does list items that can be forged, but a hint to the rest (i.e. high level boss chest in ch4 only) is missing.

Multiplayer is not covered at all.

Final: If you are really struggling with the early and mid portion of the game, you are probably better off looking online. If you want to mule your way through making sure you get every quest, this book has some limited value.

I'm obviously in the minority here; I didn't hate the book, nor did I find it worthy of a great review. I think the book is just so-so. It does the job giving you a point in the right direction, but sometimes, only barely.

I love NWN, and purchased this book to help slog through the different possible quests. I think that the asking price was too much for a magazine-ish glossy book.

Aside from the price, there were other things to disappoint. There were errors in the book (I'm guessing that the book was written before the game was finished). Also, the layout and organization is horrible. Columns of text are punctuated with screenshots and cartoon-ish. The maps in the book are not great, either.

On the other hand, the book does point you in the right direction, and I found myself flipping through it in order to save some time and rack up a few extra quests.

A good portion of the book lists out spells, weapons, skills, and monsters. These sections are easiest to read and most uniform, more so than the little book that comes with NWN.

For those of us who don't get dressed up and beat each other with wooden swords on the weekends (or know the newer DND rules), this book is helpful, if you can get past the gaudy, glossy, cluttered pages.

<deep sigh>

The game is great, the book is not. Incomplete is the best way to describe it. Poor listing of items, armor, and monsters. Badly organized strategy making finding help a real pain at times. A general lack of answers. Poorly marked maps. Not good. Not good at all. A lot of stuff in NWN is random and I can't fault them for not covering it, but even on the simplest of questions there was no information to be found or at least not in a way that I could find it in over 20 minutes with the book. Sorry, but I'd rather be playing than looking for an answer that may or may not exist. Hey...I hear the world building guide is pretty good though. Glad to know they put some effort into something.

I definitley can't speak for the rest of the people who reveiwed this game guide but I found it to be informative and detailed. I'm new to the rpg gameing experience so people who have played rpg's for a while might dissagree, but on the whole I found the charachter descriptions to be very well written and useful.

The only major flaws I found were the lack of markings on some of the maps which gets confusing, but the weapon appendix and spell appendix was way better than I could've hoped for. I also plan on getting the world builders guide, and I can only hope that is's half as good as the adventure guide. :-)

title says it all. Might be slightly helpfull in finding where things are but the maps being unmarked on some pages kind of negats that.

To many errors in the book.

This guide is pretty good, but there are a few things wrong with it. First the cover of the guide I got doesn't look like the one seen on Amazon. The cover also mentions that there's a second guide that was not included with my purchase: the "World Builder" guide. I don't care about building my own dungeons and stuff, so that's fine with me. People who like to use the world builder would be disappointed, obviously. Also, there are some misspellings and some of the quest names don't match the actual quests in the game. Finally, it does a poor job of explaining the statistics and how the game works. That's really bad for me because I don't play the traditional Dungeons and Dragons games, so I have no idea what "Saving Throws" are or how much dps I get out of a weapon that does 1d6 damage, etc.

On the other hand, it's fairly descriptive quest-wise and there are many areas I probably would have missed if I didn't read about them in the guide. Thanks, Versus Books!

Good shape and the guide that I needed. Have played without before but helped me get more out of by playing time.

This guide is well writen and easy to follow. You can use all the information or just use if you have problems with a part of the game.

may be the worst Guide book of all times. Incomplete, maps are often wrong, not laid out in good order.Versus books has done a lot better and I was surprised that it was such a shambles.Never winter nights 2 was done by Brady games and it was superb. The walk throughs and maps from other web sites are much better than this..