When you buy a game you typically expect about 20 or so hours of enjoyment from it. Occasionally you will get lucky and get around 50 odd hours out of a game. It’s fair to say that spending years on NWN with the countless (free) modules that were available on the internet and the very robust online component was (and still is) easier than one might think. Slap on the toolset that the authors themselves used to create the game on top and you got possibly the best bang for your buck ever!

It’s no surprise that the fans had high expectations for the sequel, especially since it was being developed by the talented people of Obsidian (composed mainly of ex-Black Isle people) who also brought us Knights of the Old Republic 2. With the high pedigree we expected (yes, I am one of the NWN fans) NWN2 to be at least as good as the original and possibly a lot better due to the better technology available today. Over 5 years after the original came out it is time to see if the descendant is capable of holding the torch.

First impressions can be deceiving
I think that you will like NWN2 more if you never laid eyes on the original. For some reason Obsidian decided that the NWN interface needed a facelift and so they changed most of it. Those of you used to the old interface will most likely hate the new one. It’s not that it is bad or anything, but compared to the old one it is very unresponsive and the camera just plain sucks. After a few hours of playing you can get used to both, but they never quite reach the fluidity found in NWN.


But even before you have the chance to notice all the damage done to the interface you will have to get past the good looking but terribly performing engine. It seems that the latest trend in RPGs (Gothic 3 comes to mind) is to create a game that can look stunning under the right circumstances and then ruin the whole thing by making it perform disturbingly bad on even the fastest hardware. Although I am pretty lucky with the performance of the game, the fps hover around 30 most of the time with frequent drops under 20 and single digit framerates are also common in certain areas.
All of these problems didn’t make me stop though. You see, I can be a bit of a masochist at times so I simply had to play what appeared to be a sacrilege to the Neverwinter name. Now that I spent near 40 hours with the game I can only thank the lucky star I was born under that I decided to keep trying. With each hour spent in the game the experience got better and it didn’t take long before I decided that the things which bothered me in the beginning were only minor at worst.

Looking past the problems
As with the rest of the game, the story doesn’t leave a strong impression at first. You play an adopted orphan living in a village in the middle of nowhere. Early on the village gets attacked by an unknown force and soon after that you are sent out into the world. During the first few hours of the game nothing major happens in the plot and the time is mainly spent on learning the ropes and meeting the character cast. After that the story picks up and you are soon battling not one, not two but three major hostile forces, each of them with their own agenda. I won’t give any more spoilers here; suffice it to say that each of the three acts has its own share of unexpected twists in the story. Personally I think the story is better than that of NWN (which was only average) and in some parts (mainly presentation) it manages to outdo even the stories of the two NWN expansions.


NWN2 wouldn’t be a true D&D game if it didn’t contain a very detailed character creation process. The choices given to you can be a bit overwhelming (especially since there is no printed manual supplied the game, only a 30 page quick-start booklet) and perfectionists will probably spend hours just tweaking all the attributes of their would-be hero. The list of feats (abilities) goes on for pages and except if you know exactly what you are looking for you’ll lose considerable amounts of time just reading through all the descriptions. The most important choices you’ll have to make, namely the race and class, are (thankfully) limited to 16 and 12 choices respectfully. Later on in the game you’ll be able to switch your class to any of the remaining 11 or specialize with one of the 17 prestige classes. These classes can’t be chosen at character creation, as they usually have specific stat requirements that need to be met before you can select them. The wide range of classes guarantees that everyone will find at least one that suits their style of play and since playing with another class can be a completely different experience it encourages additional playthroughs.

Dungeons and Dragons in all their glory
If you ever played a D&D video game you know that most of the gameplay revolves around throwing dice. The player doesn’t get to see most of these throws as the game performs them in the background, but almost every action in the game takes into account the character statistics and the results of a throw. This can sometimes make you lose an easy fight if you are unlucky and vice versa. It has been like this since the days of Baldur’s Gate and it would be stupid to expect (or want) anything else from a D&D based game. Those of you familiar with D&D will be glad to know that the game uses the 3.5 ruleset, which brings some noticeable changes to the way classes and items work.

Unlike NWN where the hero could only be accompanied by computer controlled henchmen the player character in NWN2 is rarely alone - most of the time he (or she) is accompanied by a band of up to four other characters, all fully controllable and customizable. This party system is pretty much the same as the one found in Knights of the Old Republic and those who played the game know it works well nearly all the time. Occasionally a character will do a stupid move due to the lackluster AI, but even the dumbest thing they do can easily be fixed in a second or two by taking control of the character and issuing the right orders. Just like in KOTOR the interaction with your companions is an important aspect of the game and there are some genuinely funny dialogues to be experienced when talking to them.

Like a true RPG the game offers food for the brains in the form of puzzles and detective work. An important part of the game has you gathering evidence and witnesses for a trial which is then followed by the trial itself. Puzzles mostly come in the form of riddles and some of them are pretty imaginative. They don’t require you to be a brain surgeon to know how to solve them, but they are a welcome distraction from all the fighting.

Quests are for the most part above average and I have experienced some of the best role playing moments in this game. As I’ve said before I don’t want to spoil the experience for you but fighting a war against a huge army with an entire castle garrison backing you up is possibly one of the best encounters of the recent years. Side quests are well written as well and some of them are very amusing. A lot of them rely on your wit, but sometimes swords will still have to be drawn.

Speaking of fighting, the pacing of the encounters is one of the best I experienced in the recent years. There is no winning strategy that would make the encounters trivial and by the time you figure out how to deal with a certain type of enemy that enemy will get replaced by another (usually tougher) type. This makes combat throughout the entire game interesting and for the most part challenging. Some boss fights are a bit too easy and some too hard, but in the end all of them are enjoyable.


Crunching numbers
It’s time we had a closer look at the technology behind the game. Obsidian took the NWN framework and wrote an entirely new graphics engine for the sequel. The modding community will appreciate this as most of the scripts from NWN still work here with only minor adjustments. The toolset is also similar, although it is more complex this time around.

Looking at the pictures of the game you can easily see that there is a lot of detail to be seen on the character models and the environments don’t look half bad either. The problem is that in order to play the game at the level of detail seen in the pictures you have to own one monster of a machine. Lowering the level of details helps and it is possible to play the game on older hardware as well (with most of the settings set to the lowest available option), but it is annoying that a computer capable of running Oblivion at a stable 30fps is having problems coping with the graphics of this game. Obsidian promised a lot of pixel shader optimizations in the next (1.03) patch so there is still hope, but the state at the time of this review was far from ideal.

The sound engine of the game works well most of the time and the background music fits the general mood of what is going on in the game (a lot of the old NWN tunes make a return). Dialogue voices are some of the best I’ve heard lately and nothing bad can be said of the sound effects heard during fights. I haven’t tried turning sound off but I can guarantee that the game wouldn’t be half as good without it.

Bugs are a standard companion of big RPGs and I’m not talking about the ones you can slay in the game. The 1.01 patch fixed most of the major problems, but you will still occasionally see your companions stand idly while there is a fight raging around them. I have confidence that Obsidian will fix most of these issues in due time, but don’t expect a bug-free game out of the box.

Multiplayer
As mentioned in the introduction multiplayer played a major role in making NWN the game it is. Persistent world servers for the original are still popular and the ability to play a multiplayer module with your friends as companions and a DM (Dungeon Master) overseeing the entire adventure made NWN one of the best multiplayer RPG experiences available. Unfortunately for the multiplayer community NWN2 has some “features” that will make playing over the net a bit harder. First of all, all but the most basic modules reach sizes of over 100mb which makes joining a random server all but impossible. Second, the DM client is only in the beta stage at the moment so playing the digital equivalent of a table D&D game is near impossible for the time being. Servers also have a tendency to crash after a day or so, so persistent worlds are hard to maintain (not to mention that every change to the module requires all the players to re-download the entire module). It will take considerable work to make multiplayer in NWN2 as good as it was in the original and I doubt Obsidian will go through the trouble of making all the necessary changes (after all they get nothing from it).

Don’t judge a book by it’s covers (Collector’s Edition)


The EU collector’s edition comes in two flavors – Lawful good and Chaotic evil. Being the shadowy type of person I am I naturally did my best to get the Chaotic evil version for myself. Both versions come in a box shaped like an old tome (see the picture above). The contents of both boxes are nearly identical so I will just list them:

1. DVD box with the game DVD and quickstart guide
   
2. Figurine of a troll (for the CE version) or an eldritch giant (for the LG edition)
   
3. A ring-bound 20 page art booklet
   
4. A pewter ring with the words Chaotic Evil/Lawful Good and the NWN symbol engraved
   
5. Paper map of the area surrounding Neverwinter City
   
6. Soundtrack/artwork DVD
   
7. DVD with the Platinum edition of the original NWN (original + addons)
   
8. An in-game feat that gives bonuses to stats and access to special items.
   

As you can see the collector’s edition contains quite a lot of goodies and for those of you that don’t own the original the higher cost is more than justified just with the inclusion of the original NWN and its expansions.

Conclusion
I realize that even now a lot of you still don’t know if you should get this game or not. If you are willing to look past the issues mentioned in the review you will grow to love the game as much as I do. On the other hand, if you can’t stand unpolished products you should veer away from NWN2 at least for the time being. In a few months the game will most likely be patched up and the issues will be gone, but right now that is not the case. And for the fans of the original: get this game, but expect a few unwelcome changes here and there.

Gameplay	16/20	Some radical changes to the NWN formula make the gameplay somewhat less attractive at first. With time the changes grow on you and you can finally start enjoying this otherwise great RPG.
Graphics	16/20	The high system requirements for playing this game maxed out make some serious dents in the overall impression given by the otherwise good looking game.
Sound	18/20	Botching up the sound aspect of an RPG is a hard thing to do and Obsidian apparently didn’t have the time to do it. The voiceovers are great and the music fits the game well.
Value	18/20	The singleplayer campaign will take most over 30 hours to complete. With all the free modules that will be soon available you are bound to keep returning long after you have finished the campaign.
Preference	16/20	NWN fans beware – this is not the same game you are used to playing. Give it a change though, and you will learn to love it.
Overall	84/100	If I was rating the game based on its potential I would have given it 90/100 or even more. This however is a review of the game as it is, so the score of 84/100 is more than fair. If you intend to play with your friends or are willing to wait for the community modules to come out add another 5 points to the score.

What do these awards mean?