Neverwinter Nights 2 Review

Let's not beat around the bush here. Neverwinter Nights remains to this day one of my favorite RPGs of all time. Bioware's classic D&D-flavored game successfully maintained a huge fan base over the years and still stands out as an exceptional achievement in gaming history. Up until Neverwinter Nights arrived, players seldom got a chance to enjoy a game that had brought forth such an imaginative and detailed depiction of the intricate Forgotten Realms universe (with the possible exception of oldies like the Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate series). The industry has also seen major "Forgotten" flops. I'm sure you all recall the somewhat disappointing hack'n'slash RPG, Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone. (Ugg. Thanks for reminding me about that turd. -Mo)

Anyhow, while Bioware focuses on Mass Effect and Dragon Age, they made a choice to leave the Neverwinter Nights license in the competent hands of Obsidian Entertainment, who have already proved their worth with games such as Knights of the Old Republic 2. As it turns out, this was a good decision by Bioware.

Neverwinter Nights 2 kicks off with a basic tutorial and several plain tasks that explain the game's many traits to those of you who are unfamiliar with the gameplay. Experienced NWN players, however, are sure to feel right at home. Quests, character progression and battles are handled pretty much the same way as in Neverwinter Nights. Another recognizable facet is the dialogue system, which resembles Bioware's Star Wars RPG, Knights of the Old Republic, in almost every way. In line with this, Obsidian has incorporated a deep and involving storyline to keep you on your toes. The narrative takes you on a lengthy voyage through many perils and that means your character has to face heroic challenges around every corner. Commendably, the writers at Obsidian transformed the plot and gave it a more personal spirit. Hence, the story-telling has less of an epic undertone to it (compared to the first NWN, that is). By all means, immersing yourself in an exciting character-driven adventure leaves a greater impact on the player. It's not necessarily an improvement over NWN, but it comes as a nice and fresh alternative. Discussing specific segments of the story, as well as the characters and events in it, would only spoil things. So, I'll leave you to enjoy the ride and discover all the details on your own.

Gameplay wise, there's a lot to enjoy. Progressing through the chapters unlocks an impressive amount of skills, henchmen and a wide variety of quests to go through. The coolest thing is that the development team was smart enough to include practically all the skills, feats and special abilities that were present in Neverwitner Nights, Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide and Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark. Familiar prestige classes and base classes were also included, but some of them require special conditions in order to be unlocked.

Throughout the game, I managed to notice a few things. To begin with, you'll have your hands full on all your journeys and you'll have a lot of fun while battling against a variety of foes. In addition to that, I found that the new-fangled "Puppet mode" made things a whole easier when you head off into combat accompanied by several battle-eager NPCs. The feature allows you to take complete control of your characters and prohibits them to do anything without specific orders. This was handy since my henchmen were often rushing into certain death without heeding my commands. The AI, apparently, needs additional fine-tuning. (As always, in nearly every game ever released. -Mo)

At some point in the game, your character achieves a certain standard that allows him to own a personal stronghold, or Keep if you will. Possessing a stronghold definitely changes further endeavors. For one thing, besides handling main quests and side-quests, you'll be preoccupied with various chores that any respectable castle-owner ought to be dealing with (Mucking out the stables? -Mo). This denotes several responsibilities such as training troops, improving weapons and armor, maintaining and repairing everything within your territory, instituting taxes, and even signing up merchants to flog various goods for you. NWN fans will surely find this to be a rather noteworthy improvement over the original.

Even though Neverwinter Nights 2 sees a few inventive components, the game actually doesn't amount up to anything groundbreaking in terms of gameplay. Quite simply, the development team decided to draw on all the aspects of gameplay that made KoTOR great and implement that in NWN 2. As you'd have thought, Obsidian came up with a gripping and well-balanced plot, which holds your attention the whole time. In a nutshell, Neverwinter Nights 2 is like Knights of the Old Republic enveloped in a well-known D&D universe. Apart from inserting plenty of elements that will surely keep RPG buffs happy, Obsidian also re-introduced the character alignment system (i.e. good vs. evil). Once again, making various choices through dialogue and warfare defines your character, allowing you to set the border carefully between good and evil personalities. Of course, you can always take the situation to the extreme, either by being an ultimate goody-goody hero or a merciless villain.

NWN 2 doesn't exactly feature any jaw-dropping visual moments, although it certainly shows off a satisfying range of visual effects and spell effects (some of the later battles will look very epic in scope). Well-designed and highly detailed models make it a pleasure to watch your characters as they develop into valiant high-level avatars. You'll also watch them as they make their way through vibrant and colorful sceneries, such as forests, canyons, swaps, dungeons, etc. Unfortunately, some areas clearly lack more polys and richer texture patterns, which did come as a slight disappointment. It also appears that a great number of players experienced some difficulties tweaking Neverwinter Nights 2 and optimizing the game's performance. From our own experience, the games runs best when you tone down certain shadow effects. That's, of course, if you happen to be playing on a relatively weak rig.

Obsidian did a splendid job on the soundtrack as well as the voice acting. Many familiar tunes from NWN are back, setting the appropriate atmosphere for a fantasy RPG (courtesy of composer Jeremy Soule).

There's more to the game, of course, than the single-player campaign. You'll have plenty to do once you start fiddling around with the newly implemented toolset. Obsidian has left the field open for users to experiment and use their imagination to come up with diverse and exciting new adventures. We have yet to experience NWN 2 from the perspective of sharing modules and enjoying an endless choice of challenges.

With all this on offer, Neverwinter Nights 2 will surely keep RPG fans busy for a long time. You won't regret buying the game, especially if you've played through the original as well as the expansion packs. On the other hand, Obsidian obviously hasn't made any real breakthroughs, which is a bummer, really, seeing as the original brought quite a lot of fresh ideas to the RPG scene.