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Neverwinter Nights 2 Review
Neverwinter Nights was like an arrow of Zonk-slaying aimed directly at my gamer heart. I've been a table-top player since grade school, and a CRPG version of Dungeons and Dragons with the (at the time) new 3.0 rule set was tremendously exciting. Some four years later, and the sequel had me equally excited. Neverwinter Nights 2 was developed by Obsidian (of Planescape: Torment fame), using a fairly faithful version of the newer 3.5 rules. The result is a game that oozes D&D from every pore. You've got tons of spells, prestige classes, quirky-weird races (tieflings? anybody?), and a polished, functional story that gets you from point A to point B with a minimum of pain. A recipe for a nerdgasm if there ever was one. The game itself, regrettably, suffers from a fairly big problem: they rolled a 1 on their Craft(Videogame) roll. Read on to find out why they should have taken 10 in my impressions of Neverwinter Nights 2.
NWN 2's story sees you beginning life as a 'Harborman', a person adopted by a local luminary in a small village along the Sword Coast. This is the same region of the Forgotten Realms that played host to every other D&D CRPGs you've played, so you're likely to see some familiar names in both locations and characters. There's a big evil, of course, and within the first hour of play it has interrupted your village's quaint little carnival in order to kill and maim. Once the battle's done, you're tasked by your adoptive parent to head north to the city of Neverwinter, to figure out exactly what's wrong and set things right. Along the way, you meet a cast of crazy characters who aide you on your journey. Though they mostly play into the usual D&D stereotypes (grumpy dwarf, annoying druid), there's some originality here as well. I particularly liked the aforementioned tiefling (a union between a human and a demon). She's a rogue (and thus very handy to have around), and punctuates her annoyances by exclaiming "Hells, Hells, Hells". It isn't Shakespeare, but it isn't grade-school D&D either. The story itself develops from these humble beginnings with the usual dramatic scaling that table-top gaming requires. Before long, you're fighting horrific monsters and doing a bit of world saving on the side. What could have been a hackneyed snore was actually fairly enjoyable thanks to the sheer amount of polish the designers gave the story. It's obvious they have a passion for this material, and it comes out in every witty NPC or unexpected plot-twist.
Who *you* are within this story is, of course, completely up to you. NWN 2 offers the same overly-flexible character creation system as the original. Since 3.0, D&D has gotten a lot more complicated, and this is reflected by the sometimes-overwhelming array of options you'll have when choosing your class, feats, skills, and magic spells. Every one of these, though, can be circumvented by using the 'recommend' option the game offers. While I tweaked my characters the way I wanted them, I checked in on the recommend option each time and can honestly say it would not steer you wrong. If you have no interest in choosing a 6th level feat for your dwarven Fighter, you can click right through the level-up process and not feel as though you've been cheated. At higher levels you can choose from prestige classes which offer unique gameplay styles. Some are holdovers from the original NWN, but there have been some new additions as well. It's hard to argue with the degree of customization you can achieve with the character creation system. They even have a fairly robust avatar-maker. Here, at least, there is little to complain about.
Let's go back to talking about that cute tiefling, though. She leaves something to be desired in the brains department, unfortunately. There's an option to manually tell your cohorts what to do, and in dungeons it is a requirement that you turn it on. While traveling, giving your NPCs a little free reign is fine; they'll engage the enemy and there is an option to ensure they cast the appropriate spells. In dungeons their enthusiasm will send them dashing right through traps, past big evils, and into the waiting jaws of death. What I'd really like to have seen was the option for the game to auto-pause after every 'round' of combat. Given that the game's AI is not up to the task of dungeon crawling, I would have preferred to use good-old turn-based combat to ensure maximum party survivability.
Another (much discussed) frustration is the in-game camera. To say that it is curiously designed would be to give a great deal of credit to the game's developers. I'm usually fairly sympathetic to UI problems; making something that everyone will agree is useable is very challenging. A camera, though ... this is 2006 folks. 2+1/2D games have had a useable camera for almost half a decade now. Why Obsidian felt the need to re-invent the wheel is beyond me. Thankfully, you can select yourself and your teammates via use of the F1-F4 keys; a requirement since it's quite challenging to pin them down with the mouse. If we, as gamers, can't complete the 'looking at fun stuff' part of gaming, where does that leave us? This was an inexcusable oversight, and makes you wonder how much QA Obsidian had the chance to do before the game shipped.
Graphically, Neverwinter Nights 2 is visibly better-looking than its predecessor ... if you're playing on an extremely high-end system. On my own system, I found that the game was playably smooth with almost every option turned down and a screen resolution I would have found useable in 1997. With the graphical elements turned up higher than that, my (not terrible) system began to grind and sputter. Slowdowns weren't even solely during combat. Somehow, moving from place to place also caused molasses-like framerates as well. I will say, in the games defense, that the high end XPS laptop I'm currently reviewing from Dell played the game with absolutely no hiccups. This is a laptop I could never afford to purchase for myself, but it played NWN 2 at a very high resolution with no problems whatsoever. Somehow, that's not much of a consolation.
Aurally, the game is fairly forgettable. I always looking forward to a D&D CRPG's musical accompaniment; if it's any good it's likely that it would go well with a table-top session too. The generic fight music is the highlight of the game, more's the pity. This, too, felt like a game element they just didn't have time to give full attention to. Thankfully, the voice actors that bring the NPCs to life are fairly animated. Aside from the tiefling and the dwarf, you'll find a host of unique fantasy-types awaiting your canned questions and plot-related annoyances. The voice acting is one of the strongest parts of the game, and it's a shame that the rest of the title couldn't rise to that quality level.
In fact, it's telling that the components of the campaign (the story, the voice acting, the characters) are the most polished elements here. Neverwinter Nights 2, it was hoped, would offer RPG fans another solid platform on which to make their creations come to life. In quality, the mods created with the original NWN toolset easily match he FPS offerings created in the Quake or Unreal engines. Instead, Obsidian here seems to have produced a more singular game experience. They've focused on offering a single tale ... perhaps ultimately to the detriment of all future tales that could be told with the toolset. There's already been a patch for the game, and it has improved things somewhat. Only 20/20 hindsight will be able to tell us if NWN 2 is up to the task of being the next platform for RPG modding. For now, as a singular game, Neverwinter's technical problems outweigh the story and quality of character acting that might have made this a favorite of 2006. Table-top RPG fans will still find a lot to like here, but the game is going to make you work for your fun. That's nothing new for Dungeons and Dragons players, but those with a lower tolerance for this sort of thing should probably wait for the first expansion. One would hope that by that point these issues will have been corrected, and everyone can enjoy another trip to the not-so-Forgotten Realms.
- Title: Neverwinter Nights 2
- Publisher: Atari
- Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
- System: PC
NWN 2's story sees you beginning life as a 'Harborman', a person adopted by a local luminary in a small village along the Sword Coast. This is the same region of the Forgotten Realms that played host to every other D&D CRPGs you've played, so you're likely to see some familiar names in both locations and characters. There's a big evil, of course, and within the first hour of play it has interrupted your village's quaint little carnival in order to kill and maim. Once the battle's done, you're tasked by your adoptive parent to head north to the city of Neverwinter, to figure out exactly what's wrong and set things right. Along the way, you meet a cast of crazy characters who aide you on your journey. Though they mostly play into the usual D&D stereotypes (grumpy dwarf, annoying druid), there's some originality here as well. I particularly liked the aforementioned tiefling (a union between a human and a demon). She's a rogue (and thus very handy to have around), and punctuates her annoyances by exclaiming "Hells, Hells, Hells". It isn't Shakespeare, but it isn't grade-school D&D either. The story itself develops from these humble beginnings with the usual dramatic scaling that table-top gaming requires. Before long, you're fighting horrific monsters and doing a bit of world saving on the side. What could have been a hackneyed snore was actually fairly enjoyable thanks to the sheer amount of polish the designers gave the story. It's obvious they have a passion for this material, and it comes out in every witty NPC or unexpected plot-twist.
Who *you* are within this story is, of course, completely up to you. NWN 2 offers the same overly-flexible character creation system as the original. Since 3.0, D&D has gotten a lot more complicated, and this is reflected by the sometimes-overwhelming array of options you'll have when choosing your class, feats, skills, and magic spells. Every one of these, though, can be circumvented by using the 'recommend' option the game offers. While I tweaked my characters the way I wanted them, I checked in on the recommend option each time and can honestly say it would not steer you wrong. If you have no interest in choosing a 6th level feat for your dwarven Fighter, you can click right through the level-up process and not feel as though you've been cheated. At higher levels you can choose from prestige classes which offer unique gameplay styles. Some are holdovers from the original NWN, but there have been some new additions as well. It's hard to argue with the degree of customization you can achieve with the character creation system. They even have a fairly robust avatar-maker. Here, at least, there is little to complain about.
Let's go back to talking about that cute tiefling, though. She leaves something to be desired in the brains department, unfortunately. There's an option to manually tell your cohorts what to do, and in dungeons it is a requirement that you turn it on. While traveling, giving your NPCs a little free reign is fine; they'll engage the enemy and there is an option to ensure they cast the appropriate spells. In dungeons their enthusiasm will send them dashing right through traps, past big evils, and into the waiting jaws of death. What I'd really like to have seen was the option for the game to auto-pause after every 'round' of combat. Given that the game's AI is not up to the task of dungeon crawling, I would have preferred to use good-old turn-based combat to ensure maximum party survivability.
Another (much discussed) frustration is the in-game camera. To say that it is curiously designed would be to give a great deal of credit to the game's developers. I'm usually fairly sympathetic to UI problems; making something that everyone will agree is useable is very challenging. A camera, though ... this is 2006 folks. 2+1/2D games have had a useable camera for almost half a decade now. Why Obsidian felt the need to re-invent the wheel is beyond me. Thankfully, you can select yourself and your teammates via use of the F1-F4 keys; a requirement since it's quite challenging to pin them down with the mouse. If we, as gamers, can't complete the 'looking at fun stuff' part of gaming, where does that leave us? This was an inexcusable oversight, and makes you wonder how much QA Obsidian had the chance to do before the game shipped.
Graphically, Neverwinter Nights 2 is visibly better-looking than its predecessor ... if you're playing on an extremely high-end system. On my own system, I found that the game was playably smooth with almost every option turned down and a screen resolution I would have found useable in 1997. With the graphical elements turned up higher than that, my (not terrible) system began to grind and sputter. Slowdowns weren't even solely during combat. Somehow, moving from place to place also caused molasses-like framerates as well. I will say, in the games defense, that the high end XPS laptop I'm currently reviewing from Dell played the game with absolutely no hiccups. This is a laptop I could never afford to purchase for myself, but it played NWN 2 at a very high resolution with no problems whatsoever. Somehow, that's not much of a consolation.
Aurally, the game is fairly forgettable. I always looking forward to a D&D CRPG's musical accompaniment; if it's any good it's likely that it would go well with a table-top session too. The generic fight music is the highlight of the game, more's the pity. This, too, felt like a game element they just didn't have time to give full attention to. Thankfully, the voice actors that bring the NPCs to life are fairly animated. Aside from the tiefling and the dwarf, you'll find a host of unique fantasy-types awaiting your canned questions and plot-related annoyances. The voice acting is one of the strongest parts of the game, and it's a shame that the rest of the title couldn't rise to that quality level.
In fact, it's telling that the components of the campaign (the story, the voice acting, the characters) are the most polished elements here. Neverwinter Nights 2, it was hoped, would offer RPG fans another solid platform on which to make their creations come to life. In quality, the mods created with the original NWN toolset easily match he FPS offerings created in the Quake or Unreal engines. Instead, Obsidian here seems to have produced a more singular game experience. They've focused on offering a single tale ... perhaps ultimately to the detriment of all future tales that could be told with the toolset. There's already been a patch for the game, and it has improved things somewhat. Only 20/20 hindsight will be able to tell us if NWN 2 is up to the task of being the next platform for RPG modding. For now, as a singular game, Neverwinter's technical problems outweigh the story and quality of character acting that might have made this a favorite of 2006. Table-top RPG fans will still find a lot to like here, but the game is going to make you work for your fun. That's nothing new for Dungeons and Dragons players, but those with a lower tolerance for this sort of thing should probably wait for the first expansion. One would hope that by that point these issues will have been corrected, and everyone can enjoy another trip to the not-so-Forgotten Realms.
I loved the big parties (which was axed in NWN1 and brought back to a whopping 4 in NWN2). I also loved the plethora of side quests, I am just in the beginnings of NWN2 and it seems a bit linear so far, just got into the Blacklake district. With BGII you could spend days playing and never see the main quest. This is one place I think Oblivion got it right. Is there a reason they pulled away from that gameplay?
Of course I could be biased as BG was one of my first D&D experiences, and as most of my friends are FPS type people so my exposure is limited.
But clean up the graphics to BGII, apply the new ruleset, give me a new storyline and I am happy. Zelda has been using the same playing style since the first game.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
The camera problems are inexcusable.
The frame rates are atrocious.
The pathing is horrible. The workaround to the horrible pathing is micromanaging every character. I spend so much time in the other characters I spend next to no time trying to get a feel for my own class.
If you're in combat and for whatever stupid pathing reason can't reach your target, you get neither an error message nor any automatic movement.
If your character isn't a healer, you'll have a way harder time advancing since you pick up two damage dealing characters first. Prepare to go through every potion you pick up.
All in all, it's marginally above Bejeweled while I'm waiting for my WoW server to restart.
Many people can't even complete the OC due to crashes and corrupted save files, there are many feats and spells which aren't working or bugged, the need for a downloadable PWC file without in-game support is killing the PW community, and worst.. No linux dedicated server, with hefty requirements for the windows server.
The required memory to host a PW-sized module is in the 4GB range, and modules over 2GB cause the server to crash.
Obsidian claimed they'd have PW support as a priority, but it seems to be just lip service.
Atari released this game before it was ready, and it has nowhere near the polish NWN1 had when it was released.
Sad, sad sad. I pre-ordered it based on years of enjoyment building a PW with NWN1. I'm having to tell my players NWN2 is going to be impossible to work with.
Let's hope Bioware's new project, Dragon Age, is better.
Mmm, well, okay, you can compare them, if you talk strictly about the single-player built-in campaigns, in which case NWN is a mediocre wanna-be at best.
The thing that makes NWN head-and-shoulders superior to Baldur's Gate is the toolset and, more importantly, the Dungeon Master Client.
NWN is special because it gives you the ability to re-live the table top experience as best as possible by having an actual human being in control of the game world. NPCs can be directly role-played by the DM, just like they would be if you were sitting around a card table instead of spread out across the Net. If the players want to exhibit some burst of ingenuity, they can and the DM can make things proceed in a reasonable fashion.
Baldur's Gate is great, and so are many other computer RPGS, but they are all fundamentally limited by what the programmers allowed you to do. NWN is different -- with a DM, you can do things the makers of the game or module never imagined you doing, and the DM can tell you what the result is. Although this was also limited by the tools, which was the most obvious place for the game to be improved.
Which is why this review is basically useless to me. All it tells me is that played as a single-player CRPG like Oblivion, it's a neat implementation of 3.5 D&D rules, but basically "meh" both in content and in presentation. Okay, but so what? NWN 1 was a pretty bad single-player RPG, the original campaign was terrible, but it was on the basis of the tools and the DM client that the game became an awesome, unique experience in gaming. Since the toolset is barely touched upon and the DM client mentioned not at all, this review doesn't cover the things I actually care about in determining whether or not this is a good game.
Oh well. I don't think it runs on Linux either, so no skin off my back regardless.
The enemies of Democracy are
I played the game through the practice quests and found I couldn't take it, simply because of the camera.
The bulk of my play time was spent struggling to get my character from point A to B, or getting the camera to pan, turn or tilt to make quests do-able or npcs viewable.
After the walk through quests I promptly uninstalled the beast from my system and tossed the discs away. All the beautiful scenery, engrossing quests, and amazingly customizable characters in the world won't save a game in which the basic camera and movement control is hosed. Shame on developers to allow the game to ship in this state.
IIRC, Bioware has relinquished development of most titles that aren't their own IP these days. Hence, why the only new Bioware games anyone has seen developed (or to be developed) directly by them are: Jade Empire and the soon to be Dragon Age and Mass Effect.
I've surely just scratched the surface of the campaign, but I've reached level 9 and have been having a great time of it. My system is far from top-end (AMD 2100, Radeon x300) but I haven't noticed any performance issues and I haven't tweaked any settings.
I can echo the complaint about the camera - it can be a pain to juggle. In NWN, we complained that it was too restricted - in NWN2 it is no longer restricted, but requires a fair bit of shifting to catch everything. Perhaps a more static camera but a game that's designed around it is better?
I made the decision early on to leave the AI characters to themselves as much as possible, and I've been pretty happy overall. As noted in the summary above, they sometimes need babysitting when near traps in dungeons - but I tend to avoid this problem by having that wonderful tielfing rogue scout ahead while stealthed.
As an aside to the discussion of mechanics: I immediately loved the dwarven fighter when we met - he made me literally LOL. And yet, he pales before how fantastic the tiefling rogue is. She is by far the best character in the Baldur's Gate/NWN series. The druid - as in BG - is annoying and was promptly dumped for the aggressive sorceress. She's a bit annoying too, but I can't argue with her effectiveness.
My religion forbids the use of sigs.
Another thing they haven't gotten down yet is the spell scaling. I need to manually grab control of my casters every round and tell them what to do (Qara: You have other spells besides Fireball. Elanee: I gave you Natural Spell and Combat Casting for a reason). There's also the issue with modes: If you don't remember activate Combat Casting right away, it will wait until after you've cast your next three spells before arbitrarily deciding to activate it (assuming you're even alive by then).
It's still a fun game, but I'll be even more impressed in a couple of years when Atari and Obsideon finally get the bugs worked out.
but i'm a solid FPS'er, so don't take my word for it! ;)
There is an unofficial AI patch for NWN2 that makes your companions considerably less retarded. It's a must install for anybody who wants to use spellcasting classes (like Qara) on the harder modes because otherwise they'll spend most of the fight tossing spells into the middle of your party. It also fixes Neeshka's retarded behavior mostly.
Here's the lowdown on it
Unfortunatly, there's not much review for the online creation stuff because online play is still quite buggy (even with the enormous patch that came out a few days ago). If they work the bugs out though, it should be quite a good game.
I read the internet for the articles.
There is also a boycott going on since they have effectively eliminated Linux and Mac support for the game and have publicly stated that there will be no version for these platforms. This comes AFTER Linux and Mac gamers kept this game alive and on the shelves LONG after most games have gone the way of the dinosaur.
.NET 2.0, but this is strictly for the toolset. The game is written in vanilla C++ with DirectX. While OpenGL support would have been an option when they started development, porting now is not viable from a monetary standpoint. Maybe it is from a 'good will' standpoint, but that's another discussion.
Eliminated ? The engine was rewritten from scratch, with some game logic kept from the original. They didn't eliminate the support because it wasn't there in the first place. As for the fact that Mac+Linux gamer kept it alive, any sources ? I'd argue that there was still more people playing it on Windows near the end of the lifecycle than there was on OSX/Linux.
The company that manufactured NWN2 CAN support these platforms with MONO + TAO but refuses to (or doesn't realize it can).
Where does Mono come in ? People are confused by the fact that the installer bundles
Also, the frame rates and overall speed were terrible. It's rendering much less than Oblivion and doing it much slower. This is on an Athlon X2 4600 with a 7600GT.
A real bummer, because I had a blast playing NWN coop with a buddy. We were looking forward to this, but as it stands I can't recommend it. Anybody got suggestions for good coop-able RPGs? I am not asking about MMOs, I can't afford that much time, and anyway I can't compete with 12 year olds at games anymore.
Heh heh. I guess Linux and Mac owners actually have no choice but to boycott it.
And there was much rejoicing and celebration in the hamlet of slashdot, as their foe was finally vanquished.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I'm not sure why this is is modded flamebait. This is something that is on a lot of our minds right now. I can't say I'm very pleased that this game didn't receive the port that most of us wanted.
Hey, I'm okay with Zonk slaying.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
But the fortune quote I got at the bottom of the page is: "What a strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
Yay, patch 3. Pity I probably won't be able to use it, at least not without more work than I care to put into patching a game. For those who haven't played NW2: the publisher has made the bizarre decision to have the ONLY way to patch be with the official patcher. This would be an inconvenient (at times) bit of trivia if the damn thing worked; but as many, many posts on the official forums will attest, it will often error out with little (even if you turn on debug mode in the registry) indication of what went wrong. How, then, did I end up having to patch the game to its current, still-quite-buggy state with patch 2? Well, first I spent a couple hours of attempted workarounds, registry hacks, and various other jury-rigging; then I checked the official forums, and spent another hour trying a number of user-suggested fixes listed there. In the end, I actually had to download a fan made patch program which, combined with direct links to the hidden files the official patcher targets, allowed me to slowly and with much difficulty shoehorn on these updates.
Just exactly WHY they chose to go with this system is a matter of much debate. The optimist in me hopes that they didn't forsee the problems and hoped it would be a convenient solution. However, the realist in me, noticing that there is no official manual patcher or workaround despite many users with unpatchable games, believes it's the other option: their patcher is designed to only patch official versions of the game, and just occasionally misidentifies legitimate copies and quietly refuses to work. That's right, folks: the goddamn PATCH SYSTEM is crippled by anti-piracy measures.
It's a good thing the game sucks balls, or this whole mess would be a real shame.
I have such mixed feelings on this game. However, I think I'm now tending over towards the positive end of the spectrum.
If I was reviewing this today, I'd probably rate it at an 8.5/10, or even a 9/10. Had I reviewed it a week or so ago, before the 1.03 patch, I'd have rated it a 6/10 at best. I cannot emphasise enough how much the latest patch has improved the game. The camera is usable now, the worst of the plot-breaking bugs have been fixed and the addition of anti-aliasing has improved the graphics significantly. I'm not saying that all of the issues have been addressed - not by a long stretch - but this now resembles a playable game (a late-beta, maybe) as opposed to the hideous pre-alpha mess that it is out of box.
The system requirements for this game are *harsh*. I've actually had 2 systems to run this on, as I upgraded my PC shortly after buying the game. Before going any further, I should emphasise that I believe "acceptable performance" for an RPG such as this to mean "40 fps or higher". This is, by many standards, a rather forgiving measure.
The first system I ran NWN2 on was a P4 3.4, with 1 gig of RAM and a Radeon x800 Pro. Not exactly a cutting edge system, but certainly a solid enough machine. Performance in 1024x768 full-detail was appalling. Below 10 fps, even in small areas. Only by reducing the detail and view-distance to well below the mid-point could I get acceptable performance.
My new PC is a Core 2 Duo E6700 2.66 ghz, with 2 gigs of RAM and a Gefore 7950 GX2. This manages acceptable performance in 1280x968 full detail the vast majority of the time, but does dip below 40 fps in some of the larger areas when there's a lot going on. In other words, this game is actually *heavier* on the system than Company of Heroes.
However, what you have to bear in mind is that Company of Heroes looks truly spectacular, while NWN2 looks... well... not all that much better than NWN1. If you look closely, you can see where the slowdown is coming from. Some of the models have a ridiculous number of polys. Unfortunately, little has been done from the actual visual design perspective to make them look particularly good, with the effect that they still look angular and stilted, with little realism in their movements.
In terms of environments, things vary dramatically. Some of the outdoor areas do look pretty good, particularly in the game's final chapter. However, all areas, particularly indoor areas, suffer from the same problem as areas in NWN1; as they're all crafted using generic tilesets from the toolset, they're all essentially just the same few graphics repeated over and over. This isn't always obvious outdoors, but it's a bit disappointing when the game's final few dungeons are exactly the same as the first dungeon, just with different lighting. Many of the tilesets aren't even especially pretty. Spell effects are ok and have moved on a bit from NWN1, but they're nothing to write home about. After seeing the explosion effects in Company of Heroes and... well... pretty much anything in Gears of War, this is all a bit flat.
Fortunately, the sound is much better. While the sound effects are largely recycled from NWN1, they are more or less adequate. They're supported by a really great sound-track and voice-acting that ranges from the inoffensive to the truly stellar.
Now, the gameplay...
This is where things start getting a bit more positive. The initial release was crippled by numerous UI frustrations and a near-unusable camera. However, the 1.03 patch massively improves things here, allowing the player to focus on the actual game.
Character generation is excellent, with a huge range of customisation options. More classes and races are available than in any previous installment and your choices at this point will have major consequences later. It would have been nice to have more control over how your other party members develop as they level up, for example in giving them prestige classes, but this is a fairly minor gripe.
The return to
I have a bad feeling about Obsidian's future. This is the second game they've released with severe playability issues for many people (and a seeming lack of strong QA KOTOR2 also had tons of bugs. I couldn't even finish the PC version because of a CTD, even on a clean Windows and driver install.). Whether this has been because of publishers rushing them (which was the big rumor over KOTOR2), Obsidian still runs the risk of struggling as a company if they continue to down this path (whether its their fault or not, sadly.)
.exe!). The help I received on the forums (From Obsidian people) was "Try reinstalling."
I've spent multiple hundreds upgrading my PC this year and can run Quake 4, FEAR, Company of Heroes, etc wonderfully. But I've uninstalled NWN2 because it ran for crap and more recently I was running into an inability to patch to current (FFS release a standalone
Try releasing useable software.
No sig for you!!
Actually... boycotting the unobtainable is pretty much an exercise in futility, if you think about it.
Guy: Hey there gorgeous, let's get it on!
Girl: Uhm. I don't think so.
Guy: Well if that's your attitude, I won't have sex with you!
Girl: Exactly.
#SickNotWeak
I'm really sad about NWN2. I was really excited about it. I pre-ordered the collectors edition, and went to get it on launch...and there was already an 87MB patch out for it... I expected the actual game to be pretty average (in terms of story), which it is; but I also expected the engine and toolset to be really spectacular (which they are not). The 1.02 patch entirely broke the game for me, such that it would not even load, the 1.03 patch has made it playable again, but the engine has not gotten much better. My system is well beyond decent, it's almost brand new, high end, designed specifically for gaming...I spent a good deal of time and money putting it together...and NWN2 is sluggish, at best. I tend to run games with maxed settings at 1600x1200, and have never had a problem before. My system doesn't struggle with any other games. I can run HL2, Civ 4, and WoW with all settings maxed at the same time and swap between them...I stop every unnecessary process on my machine when I'm playing NWN2...and I still have to turn the settings down...and it's still sluggish. Oblivion doesn't have these problems. Sure it doesn't run too well on the 360 (and excusing their god-awful character animation), but on my machine it runs just fine with everything maxed, I never drop below 60FPS....With NWN2 I tend to get around 16. Something is very wrong with the engine. It's like they didn't profile it at all. Building for machines that don't exist yet is one thing...this is far worse. The toolset is pretty bad too. I had to go online and find a bunch of plugins just to get it to be as functional as the NWN toolset. With the NWN toolset, I just sat down and started making things, it was pretty intuitive and it made sense. There is NOTHING intuitive about the NWN2 toolset. I had so much hope for this game, but unless they really make some changes in future patches I don't see it getting much better. I'm still hoping though. And I did actually play through the entire game despite my irritation. Please Obsidian, fix this thing.
Frag 'em all...
... it's going to suck until they release two expansions & "borrow" a lot of custom content from players. Oh yeah, good luck running an immersive Persistent Online World with it. I was thinking about converting the PW I run to NWN 2 but realized that the average area size was around 15MB which would in turn put the NWN2 version of the my module up around 5GB in file size. Sorry, but I don't feel like buying $3000 in hardware to run a game server.
Oh yeah, the DM client also crashes the server upon entry. Way to go.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Holy crap! That has to be the longest article I've ever seen on Slashdot that didn't contain a single link.
Agreed: horrible. I loved NWN but I couldn't even stand playing NWN2 long enough to get my party to Neverwinter. I've certainly learned my lesson about preordering games based on their reputation.
I have a high-end dual-core PC with GF7900. With all the graphical effects turned up to the max the game looks barely passable for 2006 (except maybe for the terrible textures and icons), but runs like a slideshow, and the cursor lags so it's impossible to click on anything.
With all effects turned off the frame rate is tolerable, but the game looks even worse than the original NWN did -- maybe about as good as Baldur's Gate 2.
And the inventory icons -- how the hell did they manage to screw that up? They are all identically colored and shaped 16-by-16 pixel blobs on a huge ugly grid. I'm just a programmer but even I know that humans recognize icons by their shape and color. How is it possible that their art director wasn't aware of this? (See World of Warcraft for icon-based inventory done right, or just give up and use a list-based system like Oblivion's, which was perfectly acceptable.)
Neverwinter Nights was like an arrow of Zonk-slaying aimed directly at my gamer heart.
It hit you in the Wii?
meh
I've never understood this line of thinking. Nobody reviewed Half-Life 2 by saying "the singleplayer campaign sucks, but Valve Hammer Editor is awesome, so I'm giving this 10/10." NWN's editing tools are absolutely no different from the editing tools of other games, yet they're always granted a special status for some reason.
Well, since you missed the entirety of what my post was about, the reason NWN's tools are different is because they not only let you create your own "maps" just like every other toolset, you are then able to direct those maps in real-time for the people playing them. That's a huge difference that very few games -- certainly none of the ones mentioned in this review or your post -- allow.
Other toolsets let you make a map that others can play in the same way they play the built-in maps, as set-in-stone creations that can only do what the map-maker originally allowed.
NWN's tools lets you be a Dungeon Master who can create your own campaigns, manage them in real time, and modify them to suit unexpected player behavior allowing for true creativity and role-playing -- not the computer version of "RP" meaning "kill stuff for exp to gain levels", but actual taking-on-a-persona role-playing. Just like a real table-top Dungeon Master with a home-made adventure module.
Does Half-Life's tools let you do that? I thought not.
Putting the toolset on a pedestal makes even less sense for NWN2 because it was strongly hyped for its supposedly awesome singleplayer campaign.
Yeah, because the single-player campaign of the original was cited as a major weak point. That doesn't mean I give a fuck any more now than I did then. NWN is not special as a single player game, and neither is NWN2 as this review makes amply clear. However as a game which allows a table-top-like experience it is absolutely unique and completely ignoring that which makes the game unique in a review is what doesn't make any sense.
The enemies of Democracy are
Then get going, create an account on the Atari forum and voice your dissatisfaction. Quite frankly, the probability that we get a Linux port is paper-thin, but it does'nt hurt to get counted.
:wq
I bought this game as soon as it came out, and yes, I noticed many bugs at first. At least patches can fix that. My biggest gripe is with the entire multiplayer gameplay system. Never before have I had so much trouble playing a multiplayer computer game. Four of us got together for a LAN party and immediately started frusting each other to the point where one of us just up and left.
One example: if one member of your party starts a conversation with someone a mile away, everyone else's screen is suddenly useless as they wait for you to finish talking with that person. Apparently no one in this game is allowed to move while someone else is chatting.
Another conversation problem: it's difficult to tell what answers your party members give to NPCs. Once they click an answer, the NPC immediately responds, giving you no time to figure out what your party member just said.
Or how about this: every clickable doorway "warps" your party without warning. This is really irritating when you're managing your inventory or collecting treasure and suddenly interrupted with a "LOADING..." screen. I can't say how many time we've had to go back (LOAD), walk ALL the way to the missed treasure, reprimand the party member for strolling off, and then go ALL the way back to the exit, only RELOAD the next map again.
Then there's pausing. Ugh. NWN2 is not a turn-based strategy game. It does not have a mode for pausing after each round. In general, I like the ability to pause. But for some reason, people that play tabletop DnD want to pause ALL the time. I have 3 problems with this:
1. At least with tabletop role playing there's stuff to talk about and decisions to be made before each person's turn. In NWN2, however, everyone is just stuck waiting for that cleric to pick a spell to drop in favor of a healing spell.
2. Pausing mars the 3D animation effects. And especially for fighters who usually just slash the nearest enemy, pausing ruins the experience.
3. The "Woah, what's going on?!" factor. You can't tell who paused or why. It's frustrating.
So why not just turn off pausing altogether? You can, but believe it or not, there are actually good times to pause. So I think a better solution would be that players have to agree to the pause. Kind of like a votekick.
That's my two cents.
I don't think it has anything to do with piracy.
The patcher requires lots of free space to run - practically as much as the game install takes up (~7GB) - as it creates the patched versions of all the data while preserving the old versions until it finishes the patching successfully.