steve kwan user experience designer

Review: Neverwinter Nights 2

(December 28th, 2006 - 4:32AM)

I attack...the darkness!

(3 / 5 stars)

One sentence summary: An entertaining and lengthy RPG bogged down by technical issues.

First of all, Merry Christmas! I'm been off work this week and have been enjoying the downtime with family, food and Neverwinter Nights 2.

This game feels a lot like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and no wonder: it's made by Obsidian Entertainment, the same company that did the second of that series.

If you enjoyed Knights of the Old Republic, it's a pretty safe bet you'll also enjoy Neverwinter Nights 2. However, there's one thing you need to know about Neverwinter Nights 2: it assumes you have a working knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons. If you have no idea what to do with a six-sided die, this game isn't for you, and it's certainly not going to give you any help figuring out how to play. That's not to say you need to be a D&D guru - with my minimal knowledge of the technical details, I was able to play it. But if you don't know what 4d6 or +2 AC mean, think twice before playing this game.

The game begins with your player living in a small village, which in typical RPG fashion gets burned to the ground within about ten minutes of gameplay. From there on, you gain levels, equipment and new party members as you trek through a story about a broken sword and an evil bad guy. The story certainly won't win points for originality.

Things I liked:

• It's a big game.
  Neverwinter Nights 2 certainly has a lot to offer. It's a long game, which is to be expected, and carries the feel of an epic quest. The game takes you through a wide variety of environments, and even though the combat rarely changes, it never feels boring.
• Character customization.
  Your main character can be extensively customized. In addition to choosing regular classes (rogue, bard, etc.), you can also choose certain prestige classes if you meet various requirements. Although your teammates are somewhat set in stone, you can customize the main character as much as you like.
• Holding the fort.
  Partway through the game, you get your own keep and become responsible for its development. It's up to you to control policing, taxes, building development, and so on. Later in the game, the keep falls under siege and you have to defend it. This throws a whole new element into the game that makes it much more interesting.
• The voice acting.
  It's pretty solid. I noticed an oddity in the epilogue, but the rest of the game was quite good.

Things I disliked:

• Retarded teammates.
  Your teammates can figure out what to do in combat if left to their own devices, but sometimes their AI doesn't behave in the most helpful manner. This isn't such a big deal early in the game because it starts off easy, but as you progress it becomes increasingly burdensome to direct your characters. They continuously run in the wrong direction, refuse to attack when told to do so, and so forth. As you get near the end of the game, the enemies begin to get far stronger and you have increasingly little margin for error during your battles. At this point, the stupidity of your teammates grows very frustrating.
• The linear plot.
  Although you can configure your main character extensively, Neverwinter Nights 2 doesn't give you a lot of room for decision-making. Regardless of what you say or do during the game, you'll be pushed down the path the game wants you to go. By the end of the first chapter, it's very apparent that any choices the game gives you are somewhat superficial.
• Weak relationships with your teammates.
  Your teammates are ultimately disappointing. You have little control over how they progress and develop. Other than the dwarf fighter you meet early in the game, the relationships with your teammates are dull. Their dialogue will give you pointers and fill in gaps in the plot, but you don't really care about them.
• Bugs.
  My biggest disappointment with Neverwinter Nights 2 was its blatant technical glitches. This game is bug-ridden, which shouldn't surprise me because it's from the same developer as the equally troubled Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2. Not all of the bugs I encountered were harmful - in fact, some of them were helpful - but they certainly pulled me out of the experience. Few things are more irritating than finding bug workarounds when you want to play a game. Here are some of the more interesting bugs I found:
  1. When selecting party members to join me on a quest, the game would sometimes completely remove my selected characters. This would render me unable to ever use those characters again. I didn't experiment with this too much, but it seemed like this tended to happen if I clicked through the menu options too fast.
  2. Items in my inventory kept duplicating. I have no idea why this was happening, but it turned out to be quite convenient. Near the end of the game, my character's most powerful sword duplicated for no apparent reason, allowing him to dual wield both.
  3. I found a character who would give me 1,000 experience points (and that's not a small number) every time I talked to him. (I'm not sure if anybody else will be able to reproduce this, but if you want to try: in Ammon Jerro's haven, get Zaxis' real name and use it on him; he'll open a portal for you and you'll get 1,000 experience points. Talk to him again and try to use the name again. When I did this, I got another 1,000 experience points.)
  I suppose the moral of the story is to save often.