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Reviews » Neverwinter Nights 2 [PC]

Good RPGs are few and far between. The market is pretty thin these days When compared to the golden era of the late '90s and early '00s. Only games like Morrowind and Oblivion stick out to me as being on-par with games like Fallout, Planescape: Torment and the Baldur's Gate series - all regarded as some of the best PC games ever made, and all products of the BioWare and Black Isle development studios.

Bioware, developer of the original Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate, mostly produces console RPGs these days, and Black Isle no longer exists as an active game development company - Interplay gutted the studio and laid off the staff a few years ago. A lot of former Black Isle employees responsible for games like Fallout, Planescape and Icewind Dale wound up at Obsidian Entertainment - developers of Knights of the Old Republic 2 - and they have recently been working on Neverwinter Nights 2.

The game is set after the events of the original Neverwinter Nights, and you start off in the small village of West Harbor south of the city. After the village is attacked one night by mysterious enemies, you set out to the city of Neverwinter to discover the importance of a silver shard they were searching for. There's not a whole lot that can be said about the story without spoiling it, but needless to say you'll meet plenty of demons, Orcs, wizards and such as you play.

It's impossible to talk about this game without mentioning the classic games that came before it, but how does it hold up by itself? The answer is very well. With Obsidian's developers behind it, it would be no surprise if NWN2 turned out to be a very old-school game, and it definitely has a great deal in common with old-school PC RPGs, but at it's heart is a mix of old and new that results in a really solid, well-made game. I wasn't a huge fan of the original Neverwinter Nights - I thought the single-player campaign and story were both pretty dull, the environments were often repetitive and I also hated not being able to command my own party. These were all big downers for me, but NWN2 does a really good job of rectifying a lot of them.

So what does Neverwinter Nights 2 bring to the table that makes it better than the original, and what makes it worth playing?

The biggest thing is the return of the party. In the original Neverwinter Nights you were limited to a single companion that behaved kind of like a robotic bodyguard, but in Neverwinter Nights 2 you are again able to travel with up to three (increasing to four later in the game) companions. Your party members are all individually controllable, allowing you to root around in their inventories, give them specific orders or use their spells and skills. There's no shortage of NPCs to choose from and most of the classes I wanted were covered pretty early in the game.

Much like in Knights of the Old Republic your party members all have their own stories to tell. Your influence with them can start up new sub-quests or reveal new information about themselves or the story, and they'll offer their opinions on the best course of action in certain situations. There's plenty of interaction between the NPCs themselves - my companions regularly argue with each other, and me. I'm really glad parties are back.

Graphically NWN2 is fairly dark and gritty when compared to the original, and character models have a more classic, medieval look than the somewhat cartoony models of Neverwinter Nights. Environments are much the same way. Spell effects are very cool - jets of flame, lightning bolts and magic missiles all look great when they fill up the screen in a magical battle.

The game seems to naturally gravitate towards an isometric view. The camera is a little hard to get used to, and it took a bit of tweaking for me to make it work properly. There's also a chase-cam that can be made to work something like the camera in Knights of the Old Republic. Your control options range from point-and-click, holding your mouse button down kind of like in Diablo, or controlling the game with your keyboard or perhaps a joypad. Like I said, NWN2 seems to have been designed with the isometric click-to-move controls in mind, and the other methods are kind of clunky and cumbersome to use.

One of my biggest gripes with the original NWN was that the tiling system used to design levels made the game feel repetitive I haven't felt that way at all in NWN2, and while a cave full of Orcs is going to be a cave full of Orcs no matter how you dress it up, Obsidian did a good job making areas feel distinct. This is a good thing, since you'll be revisiting old areas a bit. In the original NWN the game followed a pretty linear path that was almost like Diablo 2 - you would complete a chapter of the story in one area and move on to the next - but NWN2 has a much more open, varied world that can be explored, with zones and towns that can be re-visited. This also adds a nice feeling of size, and the world feels pretty big. NWN2 is still split up into chapters, but most old areas stay open so you can head back to find something you missed, or perhaps return when something new can be found there.

About halfway through the game, and once you clear out all of the demons, you'll be given ownership of a partially ruined castle. The player stronghold was something that was touched on in Baldur's Gate 2, and while it was kind of cool and gave you access to a few side quests as well as some extra money, there wasn't much else to do with it. Things are a little different in NWN2. Once you have earned the castle it'll be your job to fix it up - you do this by making choices about how the castle, and the surrounding lands are to be rebuilt and maintained - do you turn a tower into a thieves den or a mage tower? Do you recruit only the finest men for your garrison, or will you take even the dregs of society? There's a decent amount of stuff to choose, and it all affects what kind of stronghold you wind up with.

All in all this is the biggest new thing that NWN2 brings to the table, and it looks like a lot of thought was put in to integrating it into the game rather than having the stronghold be just a place on the map with no real role in the story. While the player stronghold has been done before, NWN2 brings it to a whole new level and makes it an important part of the story. There's plenty to do when it comes to rebuilding the castle, and it doesn't come cheap - I had 200,000 gold once I moved in and I blew through the fruits of my adventures in no time. You administer your castle through advisors who will implement your decisions, as well as employees (Including a band of dopey adventurers you can employ with hilarious consequences) such as blacksmiths and miners who will help upgrade the weapons and armor of your men. Eventually all of this will come into play as armies of undead march on the land. The battle scenes are very cool.

I tried to think of some negative aspects of NWN2, but there's not a lot I can legitimately complain about. Even the voice acting is surprisingly good, which is rare. The most glaring issue with the game is the NPC AI. My party members tend to make really stupid decisions - like my druid that, in combat, transforms into animal form and doesn't cast any heals (What is this, World of Warcraft?), and occasionally the AI randomly breaks down entirely and stops working altogether. This leads to a certain level of micromanagement being necessary in combat. It's by no means game breaking, but if I have the AI switched on I would like it to work and for it to not get me killed.

In terms of gameplay I would have liked the dungeons to have had a few more puzzles, and I'd say that dungeon design in general isn't very creative and offered few surprises. Dungeons tend to follow a predictable, boxy design and with a couple of exceptions they're all quite short. I suppose I just prefer the long dungeons of something like Icewind Dale, but since this really isn't a dungeon-crawl oriented game and the vast majority of the game occurs outside of them, I can't complain too much.

Overall Neverwinter Nights 2 a solid game - it's well-written, well-made, it looks good and plays well. There's not a lot more I could ask for.

Neverwinter Nights 2 - PC

Presentation

NWN2 Looks great, the spell effects are impressive, character models are fairly detailed and have a more medieval/fantasy look to them than in the original NWN, as does the entire game.

Gameplay

Adventuring, quests, dungeons. Tons of character interaction and room for multiple paths through the game. No huge surprises here, but what it does do, it does well.

Replayability

You have 12 base classes with 17 prestige classes that can be unlocked. You have a large pool of companions to choose from, several with their own side-quest chains. There's a tool set that will no doubt be used by a highly active modding community to produce player-made addons. There's even a difficulty slider. I'd say the replayability is pretty high. I won't be uninstalling this any time soon.

Value

The single player campaign (Estimated at around 50 hours of gameplay) is so nice it makes NWN2 worth it even without all of the trimmings mentioned above.

Overall

Whether you're a fan of older RPG games like Fallout or more recent games like Knights of the Old Republic or the original Neverwinter Nights, NWN2 is a winner for anyone that likes a good, well-made RPG. It brings a lot of classic gaming elements up-to-date with slick modern technology and throws in a few innovations of its own.