NWN2 Discussion Thread - Spoilers

EDIT: Ooops, clicked on the wrong thread. My bad.

Stylez wrote:

Rat Boy: I wouldn't have it any other way :)

Goat Girl's kind of cute when she's jealous. I'll leave you guys to figure out what I'm talking about.

Rat Boy wrote:

Goat Girl's kind of cute when she's jealous. I'll leave you guys to figure out what I'm talking about.

I didn't know you could roleplay your love affair with Lobster's Mom...

PurEvil wrote:

I didn't know you could roleplay your love affair with Lobster's Mom...

Easy there, tiger. No need to be bringing in anyone's mama's influence checks into the discussion.

Slight spoiler for the end of Act I, but a possible bug:

[color=white]It's possible to kill Zeeaire without engaging her bodyguards. Don't even enter the room, just use the sphere that the devil (Mervin?) gave you to break her portal. She'll come rushing out alone and she'll drop rather fast.

[/color]

Just encountered my first showstopping bug, resulting in the loss of about a half-hour's worth of progress. If I encounter that bug again, then this game's worth severely drops in my eyes and I may just set it on the shelf never to be completed.

Edit: Based on my readings at the NWN2 forums, this is unfortunately not an uncommon occurence:

[color=white]After beating Black Garius at Crossroads Keep and asking the lead Neverwinter mage to return to the city, the game crashes during the load screen, thus making it impossible to progress

[/color]

Well, looks like that's it for me. Unless and until Obsidian patches this thing, off to the shelf it goes.

Encountered my first major bug last night that probably requires I wait for the first patch or longer.

*small spoiler*
After saving the guy from the Bonegnasher cave, I try and return to Old Owl Well or Neverwinter to complete the quest and it loads one of the "party was interrupted fight segments". It is a certain area with orcs that you have to fight, after the fight is finished it starts to load a cutscene but the screen just goes black, but eventually returns to the normal game screen. It appears everything is fine except the world map travel icon on the ground is disabled. It does nothing so I am stuck. I have an earlier saved game back in the cave but reloading still leads to this problem every time. I have tested about 6 or 7 different things to try and avoid it but I can't. I was really enjoying the story, party members, and 3.5 rules/spells. But like Rat, I will have to shelf it for a while.

**The reason I know it is a cutscene that is trying to load is it actually loaded one time, more orcs show up and some guards. So, I thought I would be fine, however the travel icon is still not functioning. NWN2 has won me over and I definitely agree it is better than NWN1, so I will come back to it eventually.

So I finally booted this baby and put in some 5 hours or so. Here will be my small review.

Finally there is a nice party game again. I love BG for it's party game, in this way it doesn't matter if you take a certain class, because you can fully enjoy all the classes in the game because you can add them to your party. This is something I love, because I always have a hard time choosing one path, and seldom replay a game.

I also had trouble with the camera, and decided that the free camera gave me the best way of control. It's most like the BG camera, which I like for its overview and nice feeling of control. A problem I do have with it, is the camera move constraint not going a certain distance from your selected character. So you have to walk your characters manually over the entire map, and can't just click on the other side and have them walk themselves. This is a big minus for me, and I also don't understand the reason for this constraint.

I have always loved the party game battling, has a nice tactical element to it. And it's the same with this game. Sometimes the automatic AI bugs me, but most of the time it's ok. I am a great fan of big fireballs in games, I loved the BG1 and BG2 fireballs, and this game does justice to its name. The fireball is great, with even greater damage, just the way I love them.

The story isn't that great so far, especially because of that pansy tree-hugging elf being all self-important and all. They really should have taken a different character. I love the dwarven companion tho.

I've already seen my share of bugs, no showstoppers as of yet. I'm hoping to keep it that way, but by the looks of this forum that won't happen.

Currently I'm contend with this game, it's a great ride back in time to the BG era. For me it's a big nice deja vu. Hope it keeps up.

Ah, stronghold management. How I've missed you so.

Why, whhhhhhhhhhhy?

Spoilers wrote:

[color=white]Of all the companions to kill off, why Shandra? Why not Grobnar or Bishop? Nobody likes them!

[/color]

I have the following problem with a quest.

spoiler wrote:

[color=white]I am going for the Owl Well as a watchman. To get it I'm supposed to go to some bonegnasher clan head. So I go to that area, kill some trolls and orcs. Then you come to a pathway which is blocked by stones. Now you get to the cave to the north and get some fireballs from there. With these fireballs I cleared the path so I didn't have to walk all the way around to get to the quest blocking stones. I have thrown all the fireball thingies at the stones, but they just don't budge. Any ideas?[/color]

Also, I have the problem that my druid continues to cast some polymorph spell on herself making her some kind of beast. But in that beast form she can't cast any spells, and I can't find the button to cancel the beast form.

EDIT: Wrong thread, sorry.

Koning_Floris wrote:

I have the following problem with a quest.

Simple solution:

spoiler wrote:

[color=white]You need the box of unstable ones.[/color]

Two more pieces of free advice before I move on to Medieval II for God knows how long:

General Spoiler wrote:

[color=white]Unless you're character is a tanked-up fighter, you may want to consider not completing Khelgar's vision quest. Upon becoming a monk, he loses a lot of his offensive punch, the sort of thing you really need if you're either a ranged combatant or a spell-caster later on.[/color]

Act Three Spoiler wrote:

[color=white]During battles with the Soul Reavers, it is imperative that you take direct control over the person reciting the Reaver's true name, be that NPC the Githzerai woman with the impossible to spell name or Ammon Jerro. For some reason, they're scripted to only attempt to recite it (aka cast the spell) only once; if they fail a Concentration check, they'll fall back on their prescripted "playbook" to fight off whoever's attacking them and won't make a second attempt automatically. You're best bet is to take that character, run off to the edge of the map, order the rest of the party to follow you in order to divide up the bad guys, and let the party pick off the defenders before attempting to recite the True Name at a safe distance. Chalk this one up to, once again, pitiful AI code.[/color]

Thanks Ratboy

spoiler wrote:

[color=white]I backed up yesterday and picked it up. But I think it's weird to have to pick up unstable bombs. It would not come over as the smartest thing to do. It's not like I go around running around with a unstable stick of TNT in my pocket. Well, not most of the time.

Are there any more warriors to get in the game? Khelgar is defiantly a great warrior. The Orc killer palandin is much less. I'm a spellcaster so I sure can use a good warrior at the front.
[/color]

Still struggling with the camera. What a pile of an implementation.

The only question I have after playing for ~2 hours is: are they sure they wrote a new engine from scratch? If so, then why?

It just seems to me like Im playing the same game with a little more substance, normal maps, and the click intensive UI is more hidden.

Cramped, angular and dark interior design - check
Same music - check
Same voices - check
Same sound effects - check

And then there is the similar stuff that is marginally better such as stilted combat that is mostly due to awkward path finding and animations with startups and cooldowns that are too long.

The outdoor areas are less blocky but may as well be blocky with jagged paths (with mostly right angle branches) and lots of unusable clutter that serves the same purpose as invisible walls.

Sorry but this one is going back on the shelf until I have a serious dry spell.

What a kick in the balls.

I must have wasted two hours yesterday trying to play a LAN game with one of my troops. Three times the module loaded us into the tutorial, which is bugged to sh*t for multiplay, the fourth time it loaded some wierd random game mode, and the fifth loaded the first act.

We played for about an hour until we made it outside of Fort Locke. After the cutscene with the tiefling, our characters just stopped running. They would run to items but no where else. We finally just gave up and played Dark Crusade.

I'm completely baffled at how this game got published. It's barely fun.There is no direct prestige class for the druids, druids can't pick spheres, cleric domains are changed to the point of being useless, and bugs that should have been quashed in even basic QA are glaringly obvious.

The only good thing to come out of the game is Ao.

If it gets some serious love over the next six months, I may look at this game again but this is the last time Obsidian gets my money without some positive post release reviews.

Some ending spoilers to follow, but suffice it to say, Obsidian's f*cked up once more:

SPOILERS wrote:

[color=white]So, after tediously wading through every one of the King of Shadow's minions up to fighting him and his mini-hims not once but twice, the final cut scene is...a f*cking slideshow? And me and my entire party are dead anyway? You've got to be sh*tting me! All that work for nothing, not even a touching final movie?[/color]

Leave it to the makers of Knights of the Old Republic 2 to botch up another ending and another franchise. Last time I ever buy anything with the names "Neverwinter Nights" or "Obsidian" on it ever again.

Another detail about the final battle I left out:

SPOILERS wrote:

[color=white]Before the throwdown with Black Garius, he asks your companions if they wish to turn on you. Depending on how high your influence is with Sand, Qara, and Bishop is, they'll join forces with Garius. Both Qara's betrayal speech and Bishop's decision to just screw it and run (depending if you have high influence on the latter and little on the former) just sound so contrived. I mean, first off, where the hell did that come from with Qara, anyway? It's not like you had a lot of opportunity to talk with her. And Bishop? First he goes from letting Garius through the front door of Crossroads Keep to just chickening out at the last minute? These characters were written very inconsistently.[/color]

Woah, awful lot of neverwinter nights-hating in the last couple posts.

I'll chime in with the opposite opinion. So far, I've just reached the paladin and the second orc lair.

I'm having a great time playing it; the story is interesting enough, the voice acting isn't wonderful but it's passable and the dialogue is fairly well written-there's been more than a few laugh out loud moments. As well, they give an absolute ton of options for building your character. Following my tradition with the BG games, I always build a weak-as-sin dual-classed bonaza of a character who can't fight his way out of a wet paper bag but always has his conversation skills maxed. It makes the fights interesting (I REALLY need to rely on careful movement and item/ability use) and it makes conversations much more fun. Oh, and he's always chaotic evil too. Extortion rules!

I didn't have the framerate problem I've heard of, I have all settings maxed and it plays silky smooth. No showstopper bugs so far, only a couple mild sound/animation ones so far. The only major bug I've seen is that my party members will stop following me until I boot/readd them to the party-definitely annoying but otherwise the bugs just give the game a "rough" feel rather than any sense of unplayability.

So far, it's been a huge two thumbs up for this title-maybe my opinions will change when I get further. In fact, given I was snowed in this weekend with no wish to drive around in it and with nothing else to do, thank god for neverwinter nights!

And had the ending not been the way it was, I would have agreed with you. But to put in fifty hours only to be rewarded by what I saw, that's as bad if not worse than the ending of KOTOR2, which at least had a cutscene video rather than a slideshow.

Rat Boy wrote:

And had the ending not been the way it was, I would have agreed with you. But to put in fifty hours only to be rewarded by what I saw, that's as bad if not worse than the ending of KOTOR2, which at least had a cutscene video rather than a slideshow.

Didn't the Icewind Dale games have sort of a slide show presentation to their endings too? I wonder if that was carry-over from that experience? Having not actually reached the ending of NWN2, I have no means to compare....

I'm stuck in the fight with the three shadow reavers. They just keep doing that move where they send out a shockwave that knocks down anyone near, and heals them completely. It seems to be instant cast, and they can do it infinite times. Did I mention there were three of them?

It's not challenging fun, it's just challenging cheap. Am I very far from the final fight?

Finally finished the campaign myself, but I definitely came away with a different opinion; I loved it! This would be coming from the chaotic evil point of view.

[color=white]Firstly, the slideshow with unenthusiastic narrator was definitely a letdown, but I'm always more interested in the final battle and finish of the story arc myself, both of which were finished fantastically.

So, Shandra dead at Act 3 - perfect, never could stand her, "Please don't leave me!!" Waaaa, grow a spine, woman. Then I got Ammon who was damn cool. Win-Win. Good storyline there too, I didn't see her death coming and I could've sworn I felt a *little* there when she got all confused about how to solve the haven.

Elanee dead along with druids. Ok, couldn't stand her either. Sorry, re-phrase that. I *hated* her and *strongly* enjoyed killing her. Another shocker and fairly well situated.

Then Bishop leaves. This one I kind of suspected after that woman in Port Llast. I didn't really like how this one was handled, felt kinda weird, him giving the victory speech, then just *walking* out the door. I would be beatin' his ass before he could get away were I in charge. Still, it was a good mixup.

Now in the final bit is where it gets really good! Neeskha's gone and you finally meet up with her again. Now, about half your companions ditch you based on influence (and all but Sand did leave, cause I was a jerk). I thought this was a great way to make better use of influence, I completely didn't see this coming, and it made that battle suprisingly tough.

I didn't think Bishop was inconsistent here, he only left as opposed to fighting you if your influence was high enough and that was because then he thinks you are tougher than Garius so is "picking the winning side" again (obviously can't *rejoin*, not after betrayal, so he leaves) as he puts it earlier. Still, I was a bit ticked as I loved this guy.

"Did someone die? Sounds like a cause for celebration for me. Grobnar, you worthless half-man, strike up a tune, before I strike you."

I didn't talk to Quara all that much but it seemed ok for her too. From what I saw, she was a stuck up b*tch entirely obsessed with power. Not a very interesting character, but meh, she sure threw a mean fireball.

Garius is now dead and now it gets AWESOME. I'm down to about half a group now and now the Shadow King offers to join with him! Hell yeah I accept, let's kill off this rabble. And then, Bishop, my favourite character, promptly REAPPEARS and joins up!

At this point, I had to cheat with god mode, cause no way were Bishop and I taking on an angry Khelgar/Sand/Ammon/Casavir/Zhaaeve/Construct/Grobnar (though the last barely counts).

This is a point where I had a problem though. I distinctly remember an Act 2 cutscene where Bishop tricked the Construct's codeword out of Grobnar. I then could've sworn I was going to get the construct over on my side. This never came up though. I was disappointed. I also liked the construct. He was like a walking soupcan. Of death!

So anyway, Bishop and I are the only ones left, then the Shadow king with me as the new lieutenant go on to destroy everything and I make myself a new castle with a wall of skulls. Fun stuff.

So, to summarize, there were a few bits that did feel rushed to me, but overall I loved the story direction and that was the most fun final battle I've played in awhile. [/color]