Neverwinter Nights 2 rocks!

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I've been playing Neverwinter Nights 2 and its two expansions, Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir (just started) for the past couple of weeks since I've been stuck without internet at home. I just had to say how pleasantly surprised I am by the games. The original NWN annoyed me so much that I never really gave it's sequel a chance but I'm so glad I did now. Each game has been entertaining in unique ways, so even halfway through Betrayer and just starting on Zehir, things still feel new and different to keep me playing.

The main game has a good sense of power progression and takes your character on a very interesting arc. This one is less about character and moral choice than it is about an epic fantasy war. You can even slay a dragon if you get good enough. That's supposed to be cliche, but how many games do you ACTUALLY do that? You just get 1 main character in this one, plus set companions and they go from level 1 to about 20.

Mask of the Betrayer continues the main character's story from NWN2 so you go from about level 20 to 30. Starting out at such a high level and getting high level companions is a pretty unique situation. Instead of a high fantasy epic tale in this one, you get more of a character driven story with some very interesting twists that keep this from being too 'standard' as far as D&D games are considered. The main character has an interesting attribute that would be too much of a spoiler to mention, but does provide some cool moments and interesting things to think about. Moral choices in this game are much harder to make in this one. I'm less than halfway through but I can see how people compare it favorably with Planescape: Torment.

Storm of Zehir is one I'm just getting started in, but it's the one I'm most excited about. This one makes a lot of improvements on conversation UI and party interaction over the last two games. This one starts with all new characters at level 4 (though you can import your characters from the other campaigns at their super-high levels. No idea if the game scales for you or if its just a breeze) and this is the first game that allows you to create your own party of 1 to 6 players. It can be played cooperatively online, and it adds to the standard D&D fare by replacing the standard overland map system (pick a location, loading screen, arrive at location) with a sort of Final Fantasy 7/8/9 map you can physically move around on with wandering monsters, random and special encounters, and checks against your character's many attributes and skills to add a big exploration aspect to the whole thing. The only drawback of this one that I see is that there's some definite MMO bleedover into this one, in that I've already done a 'click on 10 boxes' quest. Since I was doing a more intellectually challenging investigation at the same time, I'm willing to overlook that little tidbit.

There have been a few annoyances in the series. The first game has had a number of potentially game-stopping bugs. One involved a boss encounter where the boss didn't spawn, resulting in a neverending encounter. I had to access the console and input a code to bypass it. Apparently the bug has been in since launch and still never fixed. A bug with the installation of Zehir causes all dialog in Betrayer to go away. It's fixed in a patch but in my no internet house, patching has been quite a chore. Many of my personal complaints about NWN2 are addressed in its expansions. Conversation design in it never let anyone's stats but your main character's matter, but in Zehir they've fixed it so that all characters in the party can contribute to a conversation, often with unique options for each one. Betrayer and Zehir both auto-save more frequently to try to match current trends in game save design. NWN2 basic forces you to retrain your brain to save manually (quicksave is fortunately an option in all 3) as often as possible, but you'll lose progress until you re-learn how games used to be played.

So yeah, try these out if you need a winter fix like I did. You should be able to get NWN2 and Betrayer in the Gold edition for under $30 and Zehir for about 30 too. You'll be getting lots of bang for the buck there.

It's one of my favorites, and it doesn't look half bad. Bugs aside, it's one of the few games I think about playing on the PC even being a console gamer primarily.

I've been meaning to get back into this. I played a fair bit of the original campaign around this time last year.Maybe I should pick up the expansions and give it another go after I finish The Witcher....

I also just ordered the D&D 4th edition rulebooks.. so I am sure I'll be in the D&D mood.

Nice timing! I just picked up a copy of NWN2 in a post christmas sale for NZ$15 (that's about US$9), so good to hear it was money well spent.

It does rock, which makes me sad that they've taken their sweet time putting it on Steam. When Atari first started putting games there, the press release said "in the coming weeks" things like NWN would be added.

Two expansions later...

My biggest problem with NWN2 and the reason I am yet to pick up any of the expansions, is bugs, when the game released it was a god awful buggy mess that I couldn't force my self to play past about lvl 8. Since patch 1.21 I have gone back wondering if it was now playable. I was pleasantly surprised to find that yes, yes it is, so I set about playing through the original campaign as a Sorcerer squirreling away crafting mats in order to make my self an epic +8 cape of awesomeness so I could destroy all before me, only to get it and find that every time I transitioned to a new area all the new spells my fancy cloak granted me disappeared until I rested, that was the straw that broke the camels back. The AI is still pretty bad and incapable of following you and attacking enemies consistently without rigorous hand holding, the campaign is still poorly scripted with characters walking on the spot or camera angles that obstruct everything or sit halfway between the ground and the abyss of nothingness (to be fair I've only seen that one once). Right now the game feels like it's at the point where releasing it would have been acceptable instead of the Alpha that was released two+ years ago.

Oddly enough I didn't really experience bugs when I played the initial release. Less than stellar performance, but no real bugs that stand out in my mind.

I recall when I first bought the game it was unplayable on my computer at the time. 1 fps more or less in terms of performance. After the first patch, it was back to what I expected from an AMD64 3500, 3 gigs of ram and a 7600GT. It's retail release was definitely broken until the first patch.

Yes it does, and one of these days I will get around to finishing it (looks at the pile)...

Great game, and a good community out there for this too -- there are trillions of billions of mods and maps and adventures for this as well --

I have NWN 2, and even though I never finished it, I really enjoyed it. The second expansion sounds like something I need to pick up and try, based on what you've said about it -- especially if it's basically NWN's version of Icewind Dale 2 with a FF-style overworld map.

I tried this game twice (I actually had to buy two copies because I lost the first set). Once more or less upon release and then a second time about 18 months later.

I loathe the game is the conclusion I came to. I can sort of let the bugs go, but for me the controls and camera were so bad that I just gave up in frustration. Twice.

But what was most disappointing to me was the editor. I loved NWN and the editor. I actually wrote my own module that took characters from about level 3 to level 15 and found the editor in NWN2 to be neither evolutionary nor revolutionary, but a massive step backwards simply in ease of use.

When you get the expansions, do the new classes get opened up in the original NWN2 game (for starting a new campaign)?

Sokkratez wrote:

Oddly enough I didn't really experience bugs when I played the initial release. Less than stellar performance, but no real bugs that stand out in my mind.

I always play spell casters in games such as this and my experience was definitely coloured by this. At launch half the spells didn't work (this was slowly fixed by the community, but by that time I was getting just as frustrated with other aspects such as AI, camera etc.) and one the first classes I wanted to play, the druid, since summons and animal companions no longer gave an xp hit like they did in NWN, was completely broken.

sheared wrote:

When you get the expansions, do the new classes get opened up in the original NWN2 game (for starting a new campaign)?

Yes, as well as any new feats.

Th3 Space Pope wrote:
Sokkratez wrote:

Oddly enough I didn't really experience bugs when I played the initial release. Less than stellar performance, but no real bugs that stand out in my mind.

I always play spell casters in games such as this and my experience was definitely coloured by this. At launch half the spells didn't work (this was slowly fixed by the community, but by that time I was getting just as frustrated with other aspects such as AI, camera etc.) and one the first classes I wanted to play, the druid, since summons and animal companions no longer gave an xp hit like they did in NWN, was completely broken.

That could be why I had a different experience; I played a Ranger.

Im playing as a sorceror in NWN2 and in Mask of the Betrayer and I'm loving the class. Spirit Shaman brings the same mechanic of learning just a few spells and being able to cast them a lot to Druid magic. I haven't had any bugs related to my spells disappearing. I just run into my own forgetfulness where I dont realize my other characters with spells actually have to ADD them to their spellbooks for the day... so Ill pick up the wizard again for the first time in days and he'll be running around with 8 spells when he should have 22 for a while.

If anyone has played any mods they'd highly recommend, I'd love to hear about it. I have had a hard time sorting what is available from what is good.

I didn't like NWN2 at all, this coming from someone who loved NWN1 and BG2.

The graphics felt like a downgrade, the camera was maddening, and it ran like poopoo. To name the biggest annoyances.

Its weird how often the folks who liked NWN hated 2 and vice-versa. I hated 1, love 2. The camera does suck though, and the performance is nowhere near as good as it should be.

polypusher wrote:

Its weird how often the folks who liked NWN hated 2 and vice-versa. I hated 1, love 2. The camera does suck though, and the performance is nowhere near as good as it should be.

Hated 1, loved 2. That's why it took me so long to finally pick up two... it was cheap and I do tend to enjoy these games when I get into them.

I also hated 1, but enjoyed 2.

vbl wrote:

I didn't like NWN2 at all, this coming from someone who loved NWN1 and BG2.

The graphics felt like a downgrade, the camera was maddening, and it ran like poopoo. To name the biggest annoyances.

I was in that boat but for different reasons. The beginning was slow and I was trying to play a warlock since I liked that concept. I could not survive. Kept getting killed till I played a big smashy stupid warrior. Maybe it's just me. I only made it as far as the tiefling before I gave up because of the slow pace and the graphical problems. Might reinstall and try again now that it's been patched and I've upgraded my computer.

I think the included campaign was a definite step up from NWN1. In particular, I was pleasantly surprised to find the work involving my keep later in the game to be a lot more involved than I had expected. Performance was terrible however, and I think they stuck to the D&D rules roughly as closely as in NWN1 (ie. not very). All in all, I enjoyed the game but by the end of it I started to feel like I was over D&D CRPGs in general. WotC seems to impose too many requirements on content for the plot to be terribly interesting to me, and I've yet to see an implementation of the D&D mechanics outside of ToEE that really felt like playing D&D. So I'm giving future NWN titles and other such games a pass, unless something surprising and fresh is released.

LobsterMobster wrote:
vbl wrote:

I didn't like NWN2 at all, this coming from someone who loved NWN1 and BG2.

The graphics felt like a downgrade, the camera was maddening, and it ran like poopoo. To name the biggest annoyances.

I was in that boat but for different reasons. The beginning was slow and I was trying to play a warlock since I liked that concept. I could not survive. Kept getting killed till I played a big smashy stupid warrior. Maybe it's just me. I only made it as far as the tiefling before I gave up because of the slow pace and the graphical problems. Might reinstall and try again now that it's been patched and I've upgraded my computer.

Yeah, I played a straight-up wizard. There were some terrible times in the beginning, and even a few when I had to go mono-a-mono with the guy from Luskan in the arena, but other than that, well, we all know how shameful mages are when they're high level..

I fizzled out at some point in the city, after the game crashed on my one too many times, and I lost all my progress in a dungeon (the crypt, I think.) Now, perhaps I should have been more liberal with the quick-save button, but I was having enough other difficulties with the camera controls and micro-managment of all the spellcaster companions and so I gave up. I tried again after Mask of the Betrayer came out, and still had trouble with the camera controls. One of these days, I'll give it another go.

I died a lot too as my sorceror in the beginning. The first few levels are rough going for any spell caster. Especially when you've gotten used to MMO mechanics like 'the fighter can always taunt the badguy off me so Ill just stand here and keep throwing magic missiles'

I played through NWN1, but man, it didn't feel like what I had hoped. The no-party-just-a-follower deal was irritating, and the fact that I got to play through as Paladin/Rogue was interesting, but in the end, it wasn't fun.

NWN2, on the other hand, was a lot of fun. I played through once fully as my standard Paladin, then about 60% with a Ranger & 70% with a Barabarian/Berserker/Fighter. I guess a game is considered fun when you start making a new character with names from favorite books & movies. Let's just say, my NWN2 version of River Tam is someone you don't wanna mess with

polypusher wrote:

I died a lot too as my sorceror in the beginning. The first few levels are rough going for any spell caster. Especially when you've gotten used to MMO mechanics like 'the fighter can always taunt the badguy off me so Ill just stand here and keep throwing magic missiles'

Yeah, then you get off one magic missile before a goblin clubs you into the ground and steals your 4 hp, which is just as well because you were only able to cast one magic missile anyway.

LobsterMobster wrote:
polypusher wrote:

I died a lot too as my sorceror in the beginning. The first few levels are rough going for any spell caster. Especially when you've gotten used to MMO mechanics like 'the fighter can always taunt the badguy off me so Ill just stand here and keep throwing magic missiles'

Yeah, then you get off one magic missile before a goblin clubs you into the ground and steals your 4 hp, which is just as well because you were only able to cast one magic missile anyway.

Sleep, web and a bow. Let the others do the heavy lifting. I hid behind the dumb NPC fighter a lot early on and the moved right over to the dwarf after that.

BlackSheep wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:
polypusher wrote:

I died a lot too as my sorceror in the beginning. The first few levels are rough going for any spell caster. Especially when you've gotten used to MMO mechanics like 'the fighter can always taunt the badguy off me so Ill just stand here and keep throwing magic missiles'

Yeah, then you get off one magic missile before a goblin clubs you into the ground and steals your 4 hp, which is just as well because you were only able to cast one magic missile anyway.

Sleep, web and a bow. Let the others do the heavy lifting. I hid behind the dumb NPC fighter a lot early on and the moved right over to the dwarf after that.

I've always found games of this type to be brutal on spell casters early on. You need to be super tactical and not scared of running away.

Haven't played this yet, looking for it in a local store, but I can only find Storm of Zehir.

polypusher wrote:

Its weird how often the folks who liked NWN hated 2 and vice-versa. I hated 1, love 2. The camera does suck though, and the performance is nowhere near as good as it should be.

Thats exactly why i couldn't finish 2. It's 2 not .5 it's like they went reverse with their camera tech.

I spent over 100+ hours with NWN and was expecting to spend double that with NWN2. As it was i stopped around 4 or 5 hour mark.

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