My review of NWN2

[xarontas84]

Here goes my own review of the game: Neverwinter Nights 2

I got the Enlish DVD version. I will give you a "walkthrough game" review and by that i mean to give you the whole experience as i lived it pace to pace.

To begin with the game installed without problems on my PC : P4 2.6 multithreading ,GeForce 6600GT 128 MB 1GB RAM,250GB HD WindowsXP PRO SP2 updated with the latest patches.

After the instalation and while i was patching the game i opened and browsed through the manual of the game.Thought it would be wise to get a quick look on the new rules Feats spells etc.. There came the first negative impression. The manual apart from the trivial subjects it covers (that you really don't need to have a manual for them) it covers NOTHING about the game. It doesn't mention anything on races ,classes, prestige classes, feats, toolset functions, not even the spell list or spell progress!!! The game supposes you already posess probably the Ad&D Rule books with the spells and all. Well i am an experienced AD&D player but what if i wasn't? So first BIG negative hit is the manual. Really makes me feel like having a pirate copy since the whole box apart from the valid CD key it gives me nothing else!

The update after 30 minutes had finished and i was ready now to start the game. The starting screen with the options appeared with a minor negative thing. The options to chose from Play ,Toolset ,DMclient (at least that is there) ,readme , update, exit wouldn't highlight when my mouse cursor would pass over them like it is happening on NWN1 making me a bit uncertain to wether the game "understads" or not where my mouse cursor is. But this in really minor....

So i started the game. Made a tiefling rogue. The controls keys seemed same as before to me. The game sounds ok. Of course they kept most of the old voicets for the characters with the addition of 2-3 new ones that gives a bad taste in the mouth. Too lazy obviously to hire some actor say some extra line for voiceset.

The animation gives an impression this is an old game made by amateurs. It's just that the way the character is moving around gives a feeling as if playing BG . The character has only 3 modes. Standing walking and runing. From standing to runing there is no indermediate "accelerating" fase so it somehow gives a jerky impression. Also the character model doesn't "feel" like is actually touching the ground but instead that his feet are slightly hovering over the surface. Also when moving around into single player you get constant lag hits as if playing on a heavy traffic multiplayer world a Saturday night. And i mean it's in single player! Imagine what will happen to a multiplayer module. Also the keyboard turning controls are too sencitive so in practice is very hard to navigate the character using them.

The general enviroment and the forms cursor takes when hovering over items reminds me much of BG or Icewind Dale etc. Somehow the whole visual feels old. You have to see it to get the exact feeling of it. The examine item option is tricky and takes too slow. I reallly don't like the mini map that has this round form so i can't have the whole area so to plan properly but only a fraction of it even on total zoom out. Also the way the mini map is drawn is not helping the player much. Brings in mind Morrowind's mini map.

The way the inventory is looking feels old as well. Brings us back to Icewind Dale series once again... The items are small and rectangular no matter what they are. From an armor to a dagger they all take the same space into the inventory and it doesn't feel right. Also the icons on the inventory are very small to distinguish between them. And when the inventory starts to get filled up it becomes a real mess to tell what is what.

I have heard some of you complaining that there is no walk feature. Of course you can press Shift and click but it is hard to do it all the time. Someone suggested to use Search in order to make the character walk. Well you forgot to mention that when you activate search the message "you seek the nearby area for traps" appears all the time floating your dialogue window!!! The dialogue window by the way lacks the option to be splited in 2 so to separate the battle rolls from the talking. This would create a mess in multiplayer having players losing the other players lines between combat rolls and search messages. Very disapointing.

Another disapointing factor was in single player that while the characters are supposingly talking to you their facial expression never changes. No matter how dramatic or nice the voice is sounding the faces have always the same expression and when the open their mouths it looks as if in there are not teeth or a tongue but just an empty hole. Also the cliping of the models is heavy. The zooming that the camera that the game does automaticly isn't helping the player to forget this. These visuals make me unable to immerse into the story. Give me instantly the impression that this is a game and all these are in fact fake.

The character models don't look so bad after all but they are still looking old. Not acceptable for a game of 2006 with such high hardware requirments. The way the outside areas surfaces look is without detail. In fact i prefer the way NWN Avlis area surfaces look like compaired to this. To get you the idea. The ground looks the way the surface looks in a flight simulator when you get the plane too low to the ground. Without detail. At least NWN1 had grass. This hasn't! The surface looks as if NWN1 without the grass more or less.

When you drop items on the floor they don't appear as they should but always into a trasure sack. When you hover yout mouse cursor over it it gives the name of the item: "chainmail" for example. And speaking of items on the ground forget the TAB key that could make you see in one glance what are the items on the ground and where they have droped. Now the items can't be highlighted any more. The lacking of this feature is the most annoying thing to me. If NWN1 hadn't this feature to highlight i wouldn't be playing NWN multiplayer. Simple as that. I am not good in observing every single detail on an area. On a multiplayer mod i would create litter without wanting and of course would lose many many drops
Same counts for the characters present in an area. No way you can tell who is who. Need to get closer and hover mouse cursor over them.
Same with targeting . It needs high accuracy and speed to click the enemies right. Hard to do when you fight small things moving around. There is no ALT or CTRL or TAB key to highlight them in any way . you have to target them and have to do it fast. I really tried but after some point it is too demanding and not real fun.

The camera makes things difficult and unfun. Needs constant tweaking but for me it wasn't the worst thing of the game.

Another disapointing factor is that the areas are in fact much smaller than they look. In the first areas for example both the map and the visuals give you the impression that the area you can explore is much bigger. Well in fact it isn't. Do you notice the little fence around the place? Well it is made for a purpose. The area extends till the fence.At some points there is no fence either...so you think you can move over there. doing so will lead the character to smash himself into an "invisible wall" .this would make very hard for the player to realise the true limits of an area making effectively the exploration very difficult. So the actual area that the players can move or interact is very small.The rest is more or less a wallpaper giving a pseudo-3d impression.

To make the long story short. I think after this experience i will go and play the NWN1 original campigns once again. Far more fun for me. Even people's mods seem better for my eyes and give me more fun. The single player story of NWN2 being nice or not makes no difference since i lack the patience to wrestle with the controls and the chaotic visuals.

There it goes. I bought NWN2 tried it hated it and decided not to wrestle with it any more. I ll stick to NWN1 and Avlis1 as long as you guys keep hosting it. If you go for Avlis2 on NWN2 i wish you good luck, i ll probably head to play something else.



PS If at some point you decide that you no longer wish to host Avlis1 i would like to let me download the modules because it would be a waste to get deleted or let rot into an old hard disk. And perhaps then someday when i will be rich or i will have a bigger upload i ll be able to revive the world again ...who knows....

[Silverdragonams]

The animation give an impression this is an old game made by amateurs. It's just that the way the character is moving around gives a feeling as if playing BG . The character has only 3 modes. Standing walking and runing. From standing to runing there is no indermediate "accelerating" fase so it somehow gives a jerky impression. Also the character model doesn't "feel" like is actually touching the ground but instead that his feet are slightly hovering over the surface. Also when moving around into single player you get constant lag hits as if playing on a heavy traffic multiplayer world a Saturday night. And i mean it's in single player! Imagine what will happen to a multiplayer module. Also the keyboard turning controls are too sencitive so in practice is very hard to navigate the character using them.

Agreed 100%. It's slow and clumsy, and it's not just a frame rate issue.
It seems like every time you click the game lags slightly, probably to calculate pathfinding. And you're lucky if your target is what you thought you clicked on.

Combat is even worse.

The way the inventory is looking feels old as well. Brings us back to Icewind Dale series once again... The items are small and rectangular no matter what they are. From an armor to a dagger they all take the same space into the inventory and it doesn't feel right. Also the icons on the inventory are very small to distinguish between them. And when the inventory starts to get filled up it becomes a real mess to tell what is what.

Once again, agreed. It certainly doesn't help that many of the icons don't resemble the item they represent in the least.

At least NWN1 had grass. This hasn't! The surface looks as if NWN1 without the grass more or less.

Are you sure you have the right video settings? I see grass everywhere. You are right however. The exterior areas are about comparable to the Tir nor'og (spelling??) tileset used in Darkness over Daggerford. On the bright side I've seen some areas already built by the community that look astounding. So, maybe the problem is that the developers did not have time to use the toolset to its full potential.

When you drop items on the floor they don't appear as they should but always into a trasure sack.

Yuck yuck yuck. From what I understand this is hardcoded too. In NWN1 you could change this feature in 2das. The same trick doesn't seem to work for 2.

Code: Select all

 And speaking of items on the ground forget the TAB key that could make you see in one glance what are the items on the ground and where they have droped. 

I found a hot key that highlights everything but I don't remember what it was and I don't think it displayed the names.

Another disapointing factor is that the areas are in fact much smaller than they look. In the first areas for example both the map and the visuals give you the impression that the area you can explore is much bigger.

This is a "feature" in the toolset. Every area comes with a huge unwalkable border that has to be decorated by the builder.
It can make things look pretty, but I find it wasteful and adding unnecessarily to the size and load times of areas.

To make the long story short. I think after this experience i will go and play the NWN1 original campigns once again. far more fun for me. Even people's mods seem better for my eyes and give me more fun. The single player story of NWN2 being nice or not makes no difference since i lack the patience to wrestle with the controls.

There it goes. I bought NWN2 tried it hated it and decided not to wrestle with it any more. I ll stick to NWN1 and Avlis1 as long as you guys keep hosting it. If you go for Avlis2 on NWN2 i wish you good luck, i ll probably head to play something else.

Don't give up! NWN1 had its faults too when it first came out. NWN2 has plenty of room for improvement--but that's the great thing about it. There is a huge community with many very talented people out there waiting to make this game better. I think we will be seeing some amazing things come out for NWN2 in the next year.

[xarontas84]

The general enviroment and the forms cursor takes when hovering over items reminds me much of BG or Icewind Dale etc. Somehow the whole visual feels old. You have to see it to get the exact feeling of it. The examine item option is tricky and takes too slow. I reallly don't like the mini map that has this round form so i can't have the whole area so to plan properly but only a fraction of it even on total zoom out. Also the way the mini map is drawn is not helping the player much. Brings in mind Morrowind's mini map.

Small clearence. The way the mini map is made gives you actually the whole are within it. It is just that it is "lieing" in a way. What it shows you is not the playable area but the play area along with the visual illusion. The old simplistic rectangular map was geting the job done. Informing the player of his position in relation to the actual background. This one simply misinforms the player.

[Pathos Street]

It doesn't mention anything on races ,classes, prestige classes, feats, toolset functions, not even the spell list or spell progress!!! The game supposes you already posess probably the Ad&D Rule books with the spells and all.

My manual has races, class, prestige classes, feats, spell lists and spell progressions in it (exactly like the pdf that was posted here a few days ago). Maybe you did get a pirate copy?

The controls keys seemed same as before to me.

They're not.

The animation give an impression this is an old game made by amateurs. It's just that the way the character is moving around gives a feeling as if playing BG .

I kind of agree. The animations all look unfinished, like they were placeholders for when the real animations went in.

Also when moving around into single player you get constant lag hits as if playing on a heavy traffic multiplayer world a Saturday night. And i mean it's in single player! Imagine what will happen to a multiplayer module.

This is video lag, completely unrelated to the lag you get when playing multiplayer. Try turning down your graphics settings or closing other programs that are eating up memory.

Also the keyboard turning controls are too sencitive so in practice is very hard to navigate the character using them.

Not really, just takes some getting used to.

The general enviroment and the forms cursor takes when hovering over items reminds me much of BG or Icewind Dale etc. Somehow the whole visual feels old. You have to see it to get the exact feeling of it.

Yeah, that was kind of neat. It definitely has a "classic" feel to inventory management. I liked it.

The examine item option is tricky and takes too slow. I reallly don't like the mini map that has this round form so i can't have the whole area so to plan properly but only a fraction of it even on total zoom out. Also the way the mini map is drawn is not helping the player much. Brings in mind Morrowind's mini map.

Agree on examine and minimap... they could have been done better.

I have heard some of you complaining that there is no walk feature.

You can change the keyboard settings via the in-game menu, to give you a walk key.

When you drop items on the floor they don't appear as they should but always into a trasure sack. When you hover yout mouse cursor over it it gives the name of the item: "chainmail" for example. And speaking of items on the ground forget the TAB key that could make you see in one glance what are the items on the ground and where they have droped. Now the items can't be highlighted any more. The lacking of this feature is the most annoying thing to me. If NWN1 hadn't this feature to highlight i wouldn't be playing NWN multiplayer. Simple as that. I am not good in observing every single detail on an area. On a multiplayer mod i would create litter without wanting and of course would lose many many drops

Same counts for the characters present in an area. No way you can tell who is who. Need to get closer and hover mouse cursor over them.
Same with targeting . It needs high accuracy and speed to click the enemies right. Hard to do when you fight small things moving around. There is no ALT or CTRL or TAB key to highlight them in any way . you have to target them and have to do it fast. I really tried but after some point it is too demanding and not real fun.

Press Z instead of Tab to highlight. Tab now toggles enemies, and is actually easier than point-click-point-click battles once you get used to it. Like I said, the controls aren't the same, other than the WASD directional controls, and if you want them to be the same, it's very easy to change them so they are almost identical to NWN1's control layout.

The camera makes things difficult and unfun needs constant tweaking but for me it wasn't the worst thing of the game.

Camera wasn't any different than NWN1, once I got the settings right.

Another disapointing factor is that the areas are in fact much smaller than they look. In the first areas for example both the map and the visuals give you the impression that the area you can explore is much bigger. Well in fact it isn't. Do you notice the little fence around the place? Well it is made for a purpose. The area extends till the fence. The rest is more or less a wallpaper giving a pseudo-3d impression.

Better than the bare, repeating, shaded tile off into infinity in NWN1, don't you think?

[Final Shinryuu]

I got NWN2 last night, and it blows me away. It's meeting all of my expectations and more.
My computer doesn't meet all of the reccomended specs, but I had no trouble installing, patching, and now playing the game.

I love the new interface. Ten quickbars to use! No more mucking around with radial menus, either. You can drag, say, the Slight of Hand skill from your character sheet to the quickbar.

The areas are beautiful. There is plenty of swaying grass, even on the lowest resolution.

I love the character models and clothing. They strike me as very well done.

Controls? All easily changed with keymapping in the options from the main menu. The "Z" key by default now serves the function that Tab had in NWN1, but you can change it if you want.
Now added are keys to target the closest or furthest hostiles. Plenty of new handy controls like that.

If you're at all familiar with WoW, which has an intuitive and simplistic interface, this reminds me a lot of that, and the inventory, also.

With just a little option tweaking, I had the controls exactly as I like them. So far the campaign seems good, and I'm already engrossed.
I encourage everyone to pick it up!

[tindertwiggy]

So far, it is near impossible to tag an enemy with a click while moving. In NWN 1 I could be on full run with a sorc and still manage to click my target to start casting. In NWN 2 if I am moving the game doesn't want to let me click on highlightable things. When I click on them the target cursor always defaults to the ground somewhere around them. To even click on npc's to talk while I run up I have to stop moving, then click on them, or pause the game and click on them. I can't manage it on the run, and I am a pretty quick and accurate clicker (hello years of fps's). It is hard to explain but extremely annoying.

Also you character turns too fast. When WASDing if you do more than the barest tap of A or D you will pull a complete 180.

[xarontas84]

I just now saw the reply...

We need to just think.

If today it was 2002 and we had these 2 games NWN1 and NWN2 but with different names . What would we preper for multiplayer? The one or the other? Being new doesn't mean being better. I know there was a lot of hype but

new =! (not equals) better

If we can really realise the importance of this equation we can realise then the true nature of this matter

Honestly. I f i had no idea which of the 2 was the new one i wouldn't be able to tell. I would think that the NWN1 looks more spartan and is targeting to a different group compaired to the NWN2 but there is no way i would have said that NWN2 has come from the future.

I think the real reason that people are so exciting about the NWN2 Avlis has nothing to do with the game but mostly with the fact that on the new seting the characters will start all from 0 . No more1%s and the like. We can all start as equals and advance in a more balanced economy.

Hell guys! If this is your problem with NWN1 it far simpler to get a character vault erase and start all over. Or an inventory erase. No need to wreste with a broken game only because you are too afraid to ask this for Avlis NWN1!

PS I am against character vault wipe as well as inventory wipe. After all most of 1%s don't play their 1% characters any more ,bored or moved on.
and even if they do it really don't mind. After all they are cool guys and good RPers. But if for the majority this is the "real" reason of the excitement just say damn it!

[Woody]

NWN1 wasn't perfect out of the box either, man.
A dozen patches and years later and it is what it is.

I remember fighting with the controls of NWN b/c I was used to something else (BG2) so, I am taking the move to NWN2 in stride.

I'd seriously consider going back to the store you bought this game from and ask them where your "real" user manual is. Maybe then you can read it and find out how you can customize it to make your gameplay (controls) better. Pathos made some good counter points.

Yes, I happen to have a more positive view than you and I've probably played it less. It seems that you're quick to dismiss, but you seem very set on your views too. Sorry that you're going to garbage a game with such potential. If you want, you could probably sell it to someone here ... at a discount of course.

[Melakin Skywieder]

And my comments

Also when moving around into single player you get constant lag hits as if playing on a heavy traffic multiplayer world a Saturday night. And i mean it's in single player! Imagine what will happen to a multiplayer module

I suspect your GPU isnt up to snuff. I never had any of this but I have a 7000GTO 512 Meg so it's pretty beefy.

You can change the keyboard settings via the in-game menu, to give you a walk key.

Well that is interesting because I cannot. The keyboard maps only run forward/backwards/turning left/right. There are no other options like there are in NWN1. I am still have a big problem with this and it will make MP very tough since I don't generally run everywhere. It almost sounds like there are different versions out there.

The items are small and rectangular no matter what they are. From an armor to a dagger they all take the same space into the inventory and it doesn't feel right. Also the icons on the inventory are very small to distinguish between them. And when the inventory starts to get filled up it becomes a real mess to tell what is what.

This is another thing I hate...a spear should not take up the same room as a dagger and for those of us with older eyes, seeing what things are is hard...I rarely figure out what my crossbow is. This was never an issue in NWN1

I agree that the animations could be better but personally don't think they are too bad. As has been said it is a heavy resource game but doesn't come close (so you say) to games with similar requirements. I did notice that it runs only 50% CPU compared to 100% for NWN1 (believe they do a better job at handling dual core systems).

I'm not giving up on it yet. I think the community will improve it as will some patches since the design team seems open to feedback. To be fair to NWN2 you really need to compare it to the initial release of NWN1 not the current version (for things like gameplay etc).

The presence of 1%ers is not the reason why people are excited about Avlis/NWN2. The 1%ers and other older PC add the history to the world that makes it unique. The thing (IMO) that makes Avlis2 exciting is that the current group of players can build new legends themselves and not have to be compared to all those that have come before. In addition Avlis2 will have learned much from what went wrong and right with Avlis. As well as the challenge of the new software and what it might be able to do that we cannot do with NWN1.

[Tigg]

"If they were both new, which would we prefer for multiplayer".

That's an excellent way of looking at it. Multiplayer's all I care about... before there was multiplayer I could content myself with single player, but that's been awhile. (For you who still enjoy single-player I respect your position of course.) Anyways I'd love to weigh in but I can't even be bothered to plunk down the $50 or whatever it costs to find out, until there's some decent PW action out there.

I do have a question for you fans of single-player adventure games:

How does this stack up against other new single-player adventure games?

Being as an undeniable advantage of NWN2 is that it's on shelves in the store and NWN1 generally isn't, I'm rather curious as to how long NWN2 is going to be on those shelves.

[xarontas84]

new =! (not equals) better

Absolutely. I myself consider NWN1 even LOOKS better than NWN2, but that's IMHO.

I think the real reason that people are so exciting about the NWN2 Avlis has nothing to do with the game but mostly with the fact that on the new seting the characters will start all from 0 . No more 1%s and the like. We can all start as equals and advance in a more balanced economy.

Got your point clear here, methinks. But guess what, a lot of people intend to stay here, on Avlis1. Because of the community amongst other things. So, we'll see.

I agree with you 100% .To my eyes as well the overall graphics of NWN1 look more pleasing .And I am one of the lots of people who will be staying on Avlis1

[Baralis Truthbender]

Haven't played it long but NWN2 definately gave me the old BG feeling when it came to inventory and such...which I thought as kinda good since I loved BG 1 and 2. If you're talking single player game experience I'll take BG2 over NWN 1 and 2 any day to be honest but that's personal taste. It has it's flaws but what game doesn't...in the end you make your own fun.

[Kerrick]

My two cents (FWIW):

The good:

The graphics are gorgeous. Just... beautiful. I didn't take the time to look at things ultra-close-up, so I don't know if they really break down that close, but they look good to me.

The conversations are really good - I was laughing out loud at several points. The cutscene-like conversations are kinda cool, but sound files take up a huge amount of memory - I'd have preferred a smaller game with less of them, personally.

The customizability of the character builder - you can change hair, eye, eyebrow colors. Really cool.

And the people and monsters actually LOOK like people and monsters, not a bunch of polygons slapped together. Of course, some of them are fugly (the PC's foster father springs to mind), but that can be fixed with new heads and hair.

Items that you wear appear on your character model - gloves, boots, cloak, whatnot. On the bad side, the armor all looks the same, like that Avlis elven armor that hangs to your knees, and the cloaks look like giant neckties worn backwards. (The Neverwinter Watch cloak actually comes to a point at the bottom, like a freaking tie!)

You can open multiple windows without having things close. For example, if I'm perusing a merchant's wares, I have the shop window and the inventory open. I can also open the character's sheet (which appears over the shop window without closing it) if I want to, say, check feats and see what kind of weapon to buy.

The crafting system. I haven't actually tried it out yet (though not for lack of motivation), but it looks really neat. It's a lot like the Avlis system, or the NWN1 system - each item has a recipe; you place the items onto a crafting station (varies according to what you're making) and use the specific tool for that type (a mortar/pestle for alchemy, a smith's hammer for weapons/armor). Crafting ingredients are very easy to find - shops sell all the basic stuff, and you can find others from certain monsters. I've also found a couple books of alchemy and wondrous item recipes. Yes, I said wondrous items - the ones I have are for bracers of armor and amulets of natural armor, +1 to +4. The recipes for armor, weapons, and traps are obvious - just right-click on a mold, and it tells you what you need.

This is only a minor thing, but there are lots more gems now - I've found obsidian, canary and blue diamonds, and a few others that I can't recall ATM.

And another semi-minor thing - the new materials. Not only do we have mithril and adamantine, but there's cold iron, darksteel, and couple different kinds of wood, but I haven't seen dragonhide (not sure if it's in there or not). All of these are craftable.

This is a really big one for me - you can control ALL the characters in your party. Want the rogue to disarm the trap? Click on her and send her ahead of the party. The sorcerer has a higher Diplomacy than you? No problem - just have her talk to the NPCs. This is a really badass addition to the game. Along with the Behavior tab on the character sheets, it makes things really fun. (A word of advice - DON'T click "Off" for "Defend Master", otherwise your companions will run all over the map killing everything they can find - I nearly lost my two (at the time) companions because they did that.)

The influence and alignment system's kind of neat - you can gain/lose influence with your companions, depending on how you talk to them, and your actions can affect your alignment (a lot more so than NWN1). On the downside, there's no percentage thing for alignment on your sheet (at least, I haven't seen it), so you can't tell where you're sitting on the alignment chart. This could be bad for restricted classes like paladins, bards, etc.

Paladins and monks can multiclass! Taking a level in another class doesn't preclude you from taking more levels in paladin or monk. I always thought that was a stupid rule, and we got rid of it in our PnP campaign years ago.


The bad:

Lack of voicesets. Been mentioned before, I know, but really... they brought over all the ones from the OC (not even the expansions) and added 3-4 new ones. Whoopee.

The portraits are... eh. They're just screenshots of the head, like someone said. I can see a lot of metagaming coming out of this in a PW setting...

The combat animations are bleh. I liked the "dance of death" in NWN1 - in a real combat, you're going to move around a lot, but in 2, you stand in one place and swing your weapon, and it makes funky swishing noises and leaves a trail. Woohoo.

The spell animations are uninspired at best - it brings to mind a much older game. I mean, come on - NWN1 had all kinds of cool animations, right out of the box, but 2 has these craptacular flashes of light and cheesy bell sounds.

Clicking on enemies while moving is nigh unto impossible, like twiggy said - I keep missing them too. Really annoying.

The inventory system is so-so. I like that items take up less space, but with the squares being so small, it's hard to tell what things are unless you mouse over them.

Magic bags are... all right, I guess. I just got one last night, and it works like a normal container - it brings up a window to the side, and the items are listed like they would be in a chest, instead of in squares like the inventory. The downside to this is that you can' tuse items straight from the bag - you have to take them out, use them, and put them back again (this includes quickslots - you can't quickslot items in a bag, which makes them pretty well useless for anything other than carrying loot). The upside is that everything's labelled - it's much easier to find things.

<Slight spoiler>
Something that annoyed me is that you're 3rd level by the time you finish leave the village - they give you huge amounts of XP for doing little stuff, just to "gloss over" the first levels or something, I don't know. It just didn't sit right with me, though.


The ugly:

The camera. The keys are inverted, and if there's a way to fix it, I haven't found it. Not only that, but several times I've gotten the camera "stuck" somehow, where I'm suddenly looking up at the sky and can't move. I've had to rotate the camera for up to a minute before it "unsticks" itself and I can move it around normally. Also, I had to move the speed almost to max to get it to move at a halfway decent rate (i.e., faster than a slug on Valium).

[Czarcasm]

So far, it is near impossible to tag an enemy with a click while moving. In NWN 1 I could be on full run with a sorc and still manage to click my target to start casting. In NWN 2 if I am moving the game doesn't want to let me click on highlightable things. When I click on them the target cursor always defaults to the ground somewhere around them. To even click on npc's to talk while I run up I have to stop moving, then click on them, or pause the game and click on them. I can't manage it on the run, and I am a pretty quick and accurate clicker (hello years of fps's). It is hard to explain but extremely annoying.

This is going to be the biggest killer for MP and I whole-heartedly agree with you on every comment you made. You can't pause when in MP, which is almost required to click on an enemy to attack while moving.

My only other huge complaint is the inventory. Apparently Obsidian made it this way because people complained about inventory tetris, which I far prefer to the indiviual, square icons. I also had a problem with merging items that were inside bags. If you have a stackable item in a bag and drag another of that item into the bag, it doesn't stack. Even dragging the item directly over the other stackable doesn't work. I had to put them both in my inventory, merge them, and put them back in the bag.

I'm not a fan of the "drag feats from the character sheet to the quickslot." It's almost counter-intuitive. Another stupid thing is that you can drag ANY feat into the quickslots...even ones that are automatic and do nothing. I was able to drag the Aasimar Elemental Resistances onto the quickslot! I also can't figure out a way to clear out quickslots without overwriting them...and I can't figure out how to put text commands or voice commands on the quickslots. And speaking of quickslots, the NWN2 boards have proved that you cannot make a double-wield or sword/shield quickslot...and clicking the quickslot button does not unequip the item.

I just hope Obsidian provides the level of support Bioware did...at least initially.

[The Nomad]

Even though I won't be able to upgrade my comp to be able to play NWN2 untill after the xmas holidays, the views expressed make interesting reading.

One thing (from the screenshots) that strikes me is the similarity in looks between the character heads in NWN2 and the original *posette* character for the Poser program.

Does anyone know if they're related as it were, seeing as Obsidian have indicated that they *bought in* existing software to cut down on the developement overheads.

*IF* they are, and the heads can be replaced like in NWN! I'd be willing to create custom heads for Avlis2.

[xarontas84]

Here follows a compilation of reviews by other people.

I was reluctant to post this at first, as I'm sure someone else has mentioned it. Even if they have though, I think this deserves repeating.

Level 1 spells. Piddly little mystical acts used for blowing up rats and other low level gribbles. So why the fireworks?

The spells effects are totally over the top, or just plain wrong for the spell they're associated with. Divine Might on my Paladin produces an angry red cloud. Lathander's sense of theatrics has gone to pot these days.

I'm not sure of the exact spell on this one, but I've also cast something that gives me a sci-fi esque sequence of cubes that looks completely daft.

Seriously guys... who the hell designed this junk, and what idiot approved it? To me this looks like someone's made the half-wit decision to try and attract the attention of 8 year olds with pretty light displays. You have players >10 years old, so please cater for them.

Start by having spell effects that increase in 'flash' as they get higher up the arcane ladder.
__________________________________________________________

I got my copy yesterday and have been playing it constantly. Because it's good? No, because I am furiously searching for the reason I parted with hard earned money for it.

What the HELL have Obsidian been doing all this time? Sucking their thumbs? Lest take the last two words off of that last sentance and leave it at "Sucking" shall we?

Re-Using NWN1 Voice-sets? Lazy. Creating the bare minimum kind of character customisation? Lame AND Lazy. For a game that has been released AFTER Oblivion and Dark Messiah, you'd think they would make an effort in the character customisation field, especially as NWN2 is also multiplayer enabled. I'm going to have trouble distinguishing my Half-Orc from all the others out there. It has even less options of customisation than WoW, and look at how long that has been out!

The game itself? Well the interface is just bloody disorganised. Look at the NWN1 interface: Radial menus, easy to use quickslots etc. NWN2: Everything is cumbersome and tedious to use. Horrible!!! HATEFUL STUPID BLOODY INTERFACE! I haven't even tried Multiplayer yet, I dare not with the stupid interface. "Quick you moron, we are being attacked, what the hell are you doing?" "Uh, yeah, be right with you, I'm trying to get this thing to do so-and-so."

Lame


LAME


I had been looking forward to this for a very long time, and Obsidian have ripped down all my expectations and defecated all over them.

Horrible, stupid, slow game.

A note to Obsidian: If it aint broke, don't fix it. I.e, next time leave the easy-to-use interface as it is, just spruce it up a little visually and you'll be laughing.

I think the game developers have turned what should be the most superior game this year into a great, lumbering clumsy wreck.
________________________________________________________

How Gamespot rated this game so highly shall continue to be a mystery especially considering their 'good' comments being related to things such as an easy toolset (it is not), excellent voice acting (I'll get into that later), and interactive dialogue (if you find an actual RPG without interactive dialogue, wouldn't you be a bit surprised?).



I hate to harp on the same things that everyone has harped upon when it comes to graphics, but it really has to be said: this game's 3D graphics are incredibly sub-par for a game requiring this much horsepower. Many will happily jump up and say "Graphics don't matter!" They are, to some degree, correct. Graphics don't create an incredible game. However, good graphics can certainly make a mediocre game a little more entertaining, and bad graphics can most decidedly detract from an otherwise good game. With the system specs required, and the graphical capability one is supposed to have, one expects far more. The character models are quite poor, the lack of antialiasing is almost comical (making 3D models appear more like bitmaps in a MUCH older game), and the lack of anything resembling modern graphical advances takes what could be an incredibly immersive game and makes it into a trip down memory lane. I'm forced to think back to my days playing Ultima 6 with funny character movements and a bitmapped appearance to all the characters in the story.

Let's move on to the user interface. Honestly, if the UI team at Obsidian okayed this interface design, they need to be fired. They may be incredible UI coders, but without a decent design, the most elegant code is just a mess of elements. The entire interface is counterintuitive save the most basic 'click here to move' methodology. Everything from spellbook management to combat to camera controls is just well below the usability I would expect from any game. The developers took a good, concise, and well-thought-out system and replaced it with one that just, from any perspective, doesn't work.

Character customisation, one of the places that such a game should truly shine, is laughable. Here we have DnD, a game designed to have almost infinite possibilities of character design (within the framework of the rules, of course), and we're given incredibly limited options of shape, size, colour, and features. Perhaps six to eight different faces to choose from. The same for hairstyles. A couple of dozen skin tones to choose and a few hair colours and highlight styles, all of which suffer in application from the same UI failures as the rest of the game. It leaves the entire game feeling cookie-cutter and dull. I've seen bad MMOs with more customisation for their characters than one has in a game in which customisation is supposed to be a key element. Don't even get me started on the voices, though. The one or two women who did the several different character voices may have done an incredible job, but it still sounds like one or two women reading lines in different 'styles' and far from anything resembling unique.

Movement is terrible. Some people complain about jerky movement in the game and, while I've only seen that briefly once during a scene in which many people were doing many things -- a clear example of poor coding for multiple activities, the movement overall is just handled poorly. Characters move in an inhuman fashion, making motions that would force a motion-capture expert to cringe. The way they react to their surroundings is bizarre, and the motions they achieve are anything but smooth. It's as if we're watching claymation creatures wander about in a world. Nothing feels quite right, and frankly, it's distracting. I hear those people clamoring again in the background that the game isn't about such details, but it most certainly IS about such details. The game is a role-playing game. It's supposed to immerse you into a world in which you're no longer you, you're a character in a story. If the level of immersion is high, you tune out the rest of the world and the story becomes all-consuming. If the character motions are eccentricly unrealistic, and the graphics sub-par, and the character voices identical, you fail to truly create that level of immersion that a game such as this should, by all means, have.

Voice acting, something of which the Gamespot review speaks highly, is both good and bad. The voice actors themselves sound as though they have a good deal of experience doing voice acting; however, the voice acting sounds as though each sentence were recorded separately without any tie-in to a storyline or context from which the voice actors could work. It creates this disjointed feeling that, in any conversation, the characters speaking have simply had their words sampled from everyday life and pieced together into sentences and conversations by someone with a non-linear sound editor. Nothing flows. While it's very common these days to have the actors read a line at a time, usually they're given the lines in an order that allows them a context from which to act. It doesn't sound as though this were the case here. I keep wondering what the intonation and expression will be like in the next sentence as I KNOW it will be completely unrelated to the sentence before.

Game mechanics leave a great deal to be desired. I understand that the mechanics of the game are based rather strictly upon the DnD 3.5 edition rules. However, where the original Neverwinter excelled was in recognising when these rules were made to be broken, and this is most decidedly important when dealing with game flow. There are times in combat when I wonder if anything is happening at all, as we all pass unmovingly through segments of inaction by all party members. It creates a jerky, unrealistic feel to the game that doesn't exist in the real DnD, as people don't simply sit around and twiddle their thumbs in blank segments. There's an assumption that action is always occurring in some form or another, be it dodging, bobbing, weaving, shifting weight, breathing heavily -- whatever. In this game, though, there are points when the entire world simply freeze-frames while waiting for the action to resume. It's far worse and more noticeable when someone gains a high initiative and someone a very low initiative, as, in between, time stops mid step while waiting for the round to pass. It looks, and very much is, quite silly, and further detracts from the immersive quality of the game.

Storyline is a rather nebulous concept, and it's difficult to be truly objective about the story. I will say this, however: this story is no more immersive and creative than any series of half-baked quests in a giant MMO. The same goals apply and the same reasoning: Bob says you need to go to X, kill Y, and get Z. There are more choices about how you respond to 'Bob' in the game, of course. You can be good, neutral, or evil. You can intimidate Bob or try and influence him to give you more information about Z and why you need to go to X to get it. But overall, the end result is the same -- a cookie-cutter game in a cookie-cutter world. The problem with this, of course, is that this is all that people have come to expect from computer RPGs. If you give them anything more complex, they complain about the complexity and a developer is forced to dumb it down to the tried and true formula of a series of tasks involving going to X, killing Y, and getting Z. This game's campaign storyline is in no way any different. It's no more immersive, no more unique, no more a pinnacle of game playing than Everquest. Or WoW. Or City of Heroes.

And last, but most certainly not least, the bugs. Every game has them upon release -- this is to be expected. In the software industry, there is a concept known as 'good enough' software which has, among other things, been the only reason the US market has been able to compete in the international software market. This concept is that there are a certain number of bugs that the public will simply accept when they buy software. One issues patches later or perhaps new revisions, but the idea is simple: people have just accepted that bugs are a natural thing to have in software and they're happy to pay for the features even if it comes with more bugs. In almost no other market has this concept occurred. It would be like buying a car that has doors that don't always close or brakes that didn't always work. The manufacturer would go out of business.

In software, though, bugs are something people expect, and this game is no exception. The Artificial Intelligence is more than a little suspect. Several times during the game, my party members decided to stop following the leader. If I switched leaders, everyone would follow the new leader, but if I switched back, the same party members would stop going along. Sometimes, it was hard to switch back and required multiple clicks and reclicks for the leader selection to change. Often during combat, the characters forget they're fighting, and I've even seen a party member wander about as though there were nothing to do in the middle of a combat, requiring me to jumpstart his actions by taking control of him and attacking the beast that was killing him.

There are dozens of little things, though, that affect the appearance of quality of the game that may not classically fall into the realm of bugs as just omissions or design flaws. The lack of any fog of war upsets some people. I find it incredibly annoying that something as simple as changing one's key mappings has to be done before or after game play, as it can't be done during the game. The inability to rid one's self of one's party members is tedious and tiresome. The poor camera controls, be it because of a bug in coding or a simple poor design, make for frustrating gameplay.

Overall, I would give this game a 2/10. Some of this is patchable and bugs, I imagine, WILL be patched as time goes on, but even with all the elements of the game working exactly as they're supposed to work, it still might only rank a 3/10 overall. There are so many poor design choices or poor decisions about the aspect of the game that no amount bug fixing will solve. This game had such promise, and delivered so little that I would hesitate to recommend it to even the most die-hard DnD fan (though I daresay they'd buy it anyway, and that's all that Atari is banking on).

[Manuel the White]

Nice review. You forgot to give it a 9 out of 10 though.

9 out of 10

There. Better.

[SplankNon]

xarontas: what do you prove by solely copying the negative reviews?

I won't be able to get NWN2 for a couple of months, so have no clue of what it's like... but that does seem to make it harder to get a good idea of what it might be like.

[Aloro]

So far, it is near impossible to tag an enemy with a click while moving.

Tab then quickslot FTW.

e.g. Tab then 1 fires off my Warlock's Eldritch Chain at the nearest target. Clicking on a moving target is indeed difficult, but it was in NWN as well. It gets easier with practice but I find Tab targetting much much much easier.

- Aloro

[Landrin_Mard]

So far, it is near impossible to tag an enemy with a click while moving.

Tab then quickslot FTW.

e.g. Tab then 1 fires off my Warlock's Eldritch Chain at the nearest target. Clicking on a moving target is indeed difficult, but it was in NWN as well. It gets easier with practice but I find Tab targetting much much much easier.

- Aloro

And for you melee-ers out there, 'T' performs the "default action" on the selected target, so for enemies its "attack". There's also '\' which selects the "closest" enemy, in case Tab is selecting someone far away (I believe press it repeatedly cycles through all enemies eventually). I'm not sure '\' is all that great a mapping, I remapped it.

[xarontas84]

My manual has races, class, prestige classes, feats, spell lists and spell progressions in it (exactly like the pdf that was posted here a few days ago). Maybe you did get a pirate copy?

This PROOF is my reply.

http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/vi ... m=109&sp=0

[Marijn]

wtf! We europeans dont get the 177 page thick manual..

[Pathos Street]

177 page thick manual in pdf form

http://nwn2.warcry.com/scripts/news/vie ... 1&id=65715

[Thalarian Arc'Thass]

guys, I really think some of you are a bit too fast with your judgement here.

Many things are new, and we're not yet used to them.
That doesn't mean its worse. If you cannot target someone with the mouse while moving, apparently there is another way then, with the keys. It's not necessarily worse, it's just different.

Let them bring out a few patches, get used to the game and the new controls and give the game a chance.. before you rant it down.


It's after all just an engine, the actual game will be released eventually, and is called Avlis2.

[xarontas84]

177 page thick manual in pdf form

http://nwn2.warcry.com/scripts/news/vie ... 1&id=65715

No,no no. That is not the point here.
The point is i got less than you paying the same money only because i am in Europe.

The other point is that i had you call me a pirate version buyer, without me deserving such a title in the least, in your efford to create negative impression about me and make my words lose credibility, which was low.

And last but not least point is that the PDF manual version is what the pirate version will provide as well for only a fraction of the sum i paid .
I hate PDFs . Why you must have a manual of 177 pages and i must be content with the bloody pdf? Why should you be able to read it siting on your comfortable armchair while i have to hurt my eyes in the screen?
After all i paid the same money as you did!

So no it is not ok. Not that a good manual would save the game that looks horrible in every aspect. But it is just an additional stone adding weight on the scale of fraud that is called NWN2