Neverwinter Nights 2 (DVD-ROM)

Customer Reviews:

I Think I Can I Think I Can I Think I...Can't?
I just received this game from myself as an early Christmas present. I hardly knew what to say as I eagerly opened up the box and began to install. Afterall, I thought overall the first NWN was excellent. A bit clunky but fun and that's what counts. This one starts with you installing *six* discs. I was impressed. I mean it MUST be good if it takes so much room to install, right? *coughs* This game has high ambitions but falls far short of the quality of the first NWN. Where to start...

*Technical Issues: It's laggy. I have a semi-powerful game oriented pc. I have and do play most of the highest end pc games out there today and have a decent vid card...yet this game has me feeling like I'm swimming through heavy water to press a damn button even on the lowest settings. As almost everyone else has said, the camera setup is extremely bad. You spend half your time just trying to see what the hell is going on. Last but definitely not least, the AI that controls the actions of the other characters in your group is HORRIBLE. I have yet to see a good AI in any game but in any other game, these people would be considered the village idiots of their respective races, as should the programmers. Bad coding, pure and simple.

*Interface/User-Friendliness: This game's ease of use is...well, not. You have to take a round-about route to access many of your character's options and many things you'd take for granted in today's games of the same sort simply aren't there to be had. On the upside, my fingers are getting plenty of exercise.

*Content: Well, it's not bad. It's just...not very...good. It aspires to being luke warm. I don't expect a convoluted, brilliant plot in these sorts of games but come on, at least freshen up the cliches just a little. Also, your npc helpers (the pc run companions you pick up over time) are fairly boring and in the case of the Tiefling, just plain annoying. The story itself has you thinking more and more as you go "if they just did this...". ((SPOILER: I will admit being part of the Watch was fun though))

In short, this game falls well short of it's hype. The opening movies are the best thing about this game. I did give it three stars but this is for two simple reasons...I love the series and have hopes that the expected expansions for this stinker will improve it dramatically. Let us all hope.

--2006-12-18

Requires a huge system to run
I recently purchased this machine to play on my 5 month old Dell Dimension E510 with 1GB of RAM, dual-core processor, and 256MB video card. Nevertheless, the game is choppy and doesn't run well.

This is probably due to poor programming, and one should realize that these problems were in another game (Temple of Elemental Evil) by the same company.

To run this game correctly, you are going to need a high-end, possible server-class machine with a 768MB video card ($700), dual-processor (add $500), and at least 1.5GB of RAM (add another $200-300). So if you are willing to throw $1400 in upgrades into your machine, or purchase a new machine for $4000-5000 you are good to go.

The game is massive and took hours to install. Downloading the 80MB patch from the Internet took an hour in itself.

So word of warning. The game will not run on 98% of computers out there. Don't waste money thinking you can run it -you can't.
--2006-12-16

Make Sure Your Computer is Up to Par

I was quite a fan of the baldur's gate series and was quite pleased when I saw a lot of the storytelling and control sceme from that series make it's way NW2.

Gameplaywise, pretty good. Controls...eh...camera...bleh..but not bad enough that you can get used to it.

This game is a total resource hog, I have an aging gaming rig, however this game is not doing anything that should require so much bandwidth....They were really lazy with the optimization in my mind....

Overall if your into these kinds of games, have play the BG's and NW1, your going to like this one too....
--2006-12-16

Released Too Soon
I bought three copies of this so I could play with my wife and oldest son. We normally beat RPGs like this together. Unfortunately, Obsidian didn't seem to care much about the standard campaign being played in multi-player, much as Bioware goofed with the multiplayer in NWN1's Hordes of the Underdark.

Apparently, when you set up a module, you choose whether or not the game pauses during a conversation. This is turned on in the included campaign, so if another player goes to talk with an NPC, you can't do anything until they're done talking, which gets very annoying. Sure, I guess it's ok for single-player, but not multi-player.

Also, when a party member goes to a different area, whether it's someplace different on the world map, or just a door to a house, everyone in the party is transported. So if you had pressing business on the other side of the map, forget it. When your companion walked through the door, they just teleported you to their location whether you wanted to go or not.

Thankfully, like I typed earlier, these settings are defined in the modules. This means that player-developed modules don't suffer like the included campaign. Unfortunately the toolset still needs a lot of work, because it's still very buggy.

Visually and technologically, NWN2 is superior to NWN1, as it should be. But the graphics requirements are totally inflated for what the game delivers. Scaling everything down to the lowest settings makes the visual quality about what you could expect in NWN1, but even so, it runs terrible on a system that could run NWN1 beautifully. With the "recommended" hardware, you should be able to set everything on maximum, however. Just be sure to read the System Requirements before buying, because they're not joking. (Also, the system requirements printed on the box differ from those in the manual.)

There's no denying that NWN1 was one of the all-time greatest RPGs. Unfortunately, Obsidian changed some of the essential mechanics in the sequel. We waited until the 1.03 patch came out before playing, to give Obsidian a few weeks to iron out the initial bugs. They've still got a long way to go.

I think the game will be terrific in another couple of months, if they continue to work on it and iron out all the glitches that should've been caught before release. It has an impressive assortment of skills, classes, races, etc. The ruleset is fantastic. If you have the hardware for it, it looks great too. A few more toggleable options would've been nice, and I don't think there are any players of NWN1 who would've approved of the settings that hinder the multi-player experience. I guess that's just what happens when you release it too soon.

Overall I recommend it, but give Obsidian a little more time first to bring it up to the quality we expect from a game that bears the name Neverwinter Nights.
--2006-12-15

Not a complete waste of time
For the most part I like this game... a lot. And I have apparently overlooked a good number of it's problems because it was a fun game. Now I am getting to the point that the problems are harder to overlook and the fun-factor isn't really there anymore.

The quests can be really annoying. I have left a bunch of them to finish later and the links on the world map to the locations have dissapperared, so I guess they'll never get done.

The game has gotten lost so many time during quests. I believe I have completed the task, but perhaps not in the way the game expected so the next step, or movie is not triggered and my party and I just stand around looking at each other going "wtf?!?", but the game prohibits forward progress. This requires playing over and over until the right sequence is performed and the next step is triggered.

Most of the game is easy to progress through, but every once and a while bosses come along that are damn near impossible. Not really that fun to play over and over and over hoping for different die rolls or for Ammon to actually succeed at reading that stupid scroll of real names. Almost done with the game and I don't think I'll finish it because once again it's impossible.

I like playing the same sort of character in most games (usually a ranger), but in this game in order to succeed, you have to play all characters well. I never really cared to play a spellcaster effectively because it's usually not of interest. You have to play every member of you party well or the game is pointless. If you like this idea, you will be very happy. If you like me, focus mainly on one mode of fighting and ignore the rest, you will struggle with this game.

Oblivion was much more fun. Dungeon Siege was much more fun. This has been fun, but also really aggravating.
--2006-12-15

- Atari