Neverwinter Nights 2

[rabb1t]

Played a bit today. Maybe... mmm... 4 to 6 hours.

So far it seems more like a total conversion of NWN1 than it does a true sequil. If someone was not familiar with the campaign they could very easily not notice a difference between the player playing NWN1 on one PC and a player playing NWN 2 right next to them on another.

The sounds are almost all exactly the same. In fact, the only different ones so far are the NCP voices. Player voice and all the combat noises seem exactly the same, zero newness there.

Style of play... tile based, click to move here and there, rotate camera this way, click to attack him... *click* no god damn it not move over there I said attack him... *click* oh god damn it...

I don't know, but I'm not really seeing a whole lot new outside of the graphics and some sub-race choices.

There is a new type of conversation system with some NPCs which is kinda nice, but that's really the only thing that seems to stand out for me. Oh and there is a thing for casters where their spells are nicely organized into a window thing, but I don't play casters. :rolleyes:

And, although I do have it maxed in 1920x1200 the framerate seems... well... crappy. I could swear I'm probably not getting much over about 20 FPS. For a single player game this kind of astounds me.

Seems very 'so 5 years ago' so far. Which I guess isn't a bad thing if you really really liked the first one and didn't want anything to change.

[AdamSessler] I give it a threeeee.... out of fiiiivvvvve.

[Slide]

The toolset is completely revamped, and it's tile based by neccesity of having a toolset for people to make their own stuff easily.

These aren't your ancestors tiles tho - the engine handles rolling terrain etc.

Haven't got it yet, will pick up a copy next month but i'm pretty stoked by it. Hopefully the new changes don't kill off the multiplayer persitant community.

[Meran]

I just played some this morning before work. It does have a lot of the Look-And-Feel(TM) of NWN1. I hate the GD camera with a passion. Can't we have more of the MMO-style camera? Is it that hard? Can we at least write our own camera code *cry*

Anyhow, some of the bigger differences are in the ruleset ~ moving to D&D3.5 is really cool and they've changed a lot of the mechanics to fit. Power attack now works properly; when your offhand is free and you have a 1-her you 2-hand it. Lots of new classes and stuff.

Having the same character voices is a) pretty lame, and b) would have been easy to fix IMHO.

I do like having more than one character w/ a lackey; I'm all about character creation/development.

We'll see how it progresses :)

[rabb1t]

I just played some this morning before work. It does have a lot of the Look-And-Feel(TM) of NWN1.

Yeah, like I said, it looks the exact same almost in that respect to me.

Sometimes I think it's ok, and other times (like when I click 3x or whatever to attack something and I just wind up walking different places) I think it would be better more 'turn based' and Final Fantasy-ish (pause for moves, then have nicer animations).

It makes me wonder if they are trying to go Gold Box or something. (Repeatedly make different games with an engine that is almost exactly the same from game to game.)

This is a total sidetrack side note here, but I always thought D&D O should have gone for a more turn-based approach. Gone for like Final Fantasy style level animations, but gone for total turn based 'pause, you have 10 sec to input your move, move, repeat' kind of thing. To me that would have really been more like an 'online game session feel' than what it is. I don't know, maybe I'm crazy, but I'd have much rather had an even higher depth of detail when zoomed in and have the game zoom out a touch when moving, then zoom back in with super cool animations. I suppose that could get repetitive though. :rolleyes:

I hate the GD camera with a passion. Can't we have more of the MMO-style camera? Is it that hard?

Several of the reviewer videos show a more MMOG view. I think you can do like 'chase camera' settings and use WASD to move around. Sometimes on accident I pan down to almost a MMOG view. I try not to do that though because, for whatever reason, the system chokes further. I think they are just drawing too much in too small of a space.

Anyhow, some of the bigger differences are in the ruleset ~ moving to D&D3.5 is really cool and they've changed a lot of the mechanics to fit.

Wasn't NWN1 bumped to 3.5? or was it on base 3?

when your offhand is free and you have a 1-her you 2-hand it.

A dwarf NPC does that. I was wondering if I should give him a shield or not.

Oh one thing does bug me about the companions. In NWN1 I could set Deakin to do various things (don't do traps, etc.) and whenever I went into stealth he followed. Although 1 of my 2 companions can't stealth the one who can seems to just stand there and walk around like they can't whenever I do. It's really odd.

Also, I could swear in NWN when I stealthed I went into a sneaky pose. Here in NWN2 I'm just kind of walking around and shadowed out. it looks weird. (Maybe my brain is confusing it with D&D O.)

[Kobold] Ooooh the Deakins. The boss misses the Deakins something teeeerrriibleee.
:D
(Can ya tell I liked Deakin the best? ;) )

Having the same character voices is a) pretty lame, and b) would have been easy to fix IMHO.

Particularly when you get into a heavy fight. It's like you hear the exact same repetitious voices as NWN1. It's like 'wtf guys, that is so 4 years ago. At least get some new voice work. Say the same stuff if you want, but at least change the voices.'

That really screams 'we were cheap bastards' to me more than anything.

I do like having more than one character w/ a lackey; I'm all about character creation/development.

I don't know if I'm getting tired of the core rules or what, but I'm just not finding making and trying out different characters as fun as I did the first time.

It is a shame so few go for the 'dungeon crawling' game types these days. It can be such a fun thing to play. Ah well, at least there is Untold Legends on the PS3 to peep once I get a fricken unit. :p

We'll see how it progresses :)

Yap yap. Me, I'm thinking I'll probably wind up selling my copy in a few months. I just don't have that same 'lasting appeal' feeling I had with NWN1.

[rabb1t]

Aw poo. Deekin is in as a merchant. He has no interest in joining you as a companion. :(

[Feronia Loba]

Aw poo. Deekin is in as a merchant. He has no interest in joining you as a companion. :(


noooooooo!!
I love deekin :(

[rabb1t]

Been playing in 'Act II' for a while now. Tried to make a new char to tweak some stuff and it appears there is no way to skip Act I. Every character has to be played from the beginning?

Now, I rarely complain, but good god this is a long game and I shudder to think what would become of peeps who aren't familiar with D&D. I've played like 24-30 hours I'd guess and I'm only on Act II? I'd so hate to have to restart due to bad character choices. (I already even kind of did as the DE seem to be leveling up way too slowly.)

That's just dumb. They should let you start in the later chapters and just level up like the 1st game did.

I was pretty sure I was going to delete the game and ebay it when I finished, now, with finding out we are forced to replay the entire thing (instead of just skipping the early bits and trying out different characters in the mid or high end) I'm so totally deleting this and not replaying it. I like D&D and all, but phew, too similar to NWN1 and too slow and ... plodding ... for me to replay through it again. (Should I even make it all the way through a first time. :p )

[Crimson]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/11/06
And don't miss the according news article :)

[Meran]

Yes, D&D allows you to completely gimp your character if you aren't paying attention; which I never really liked. I threw together a baby-module that gives you 2000000 xp so I could test out different builds.

For instance, I was building my Warlock to have the feats Battle Caster + Med Armour prof.... except that my Warlock is completely dex based. Med armour buys me NOTHING, zip, zero, zilch. So after "leveling" my warlock up to 20 and checking out different armours, I can see that light is where I want to be.

In the Players Handbook 2 for pnp D&D, they outline rules for changing feats/skills/etc, which I'm surprized they didn't implement. I don't mind playing another 4 hours to change some stuff on my character ~ would sure beat starting over again!

[rabb1t]

There is one up on Fileplanet, but like I said, since you can't join the single player game at any point outside the start it doesn't really help for that.

http://www.fileplanet.com/170062/170000/fileinfo/Neverwinter-Nights-2---Vordan's-Hero-Creator

[Spirit]

Lofty elf - check!
Annoying teenage female thief - check!
Punch drunk dwarf with switching Irish/Scottish accent - check!
Main character leaves slum of a village to save it - check!

Well, we all expected to see the cliches. That aside, it's a decent enough game. Haven't got to Neverwinter yet, but I'm enjoying to journey so far. Performance isn't as good as what it should be in my opinion. (Random general rant: game makers.. WORK on optimising your engines, ffs. Stop being lazy and expecting the public to pick up the slack with high end machines or put up with crappy frame rates. Optimisation seems to be a lost art.. Titan Quest, Gothic 3, EQ2 also spring to mind).

Ehhh, anyway. Good game :D

[Slide]

Been playing this for a while now, am towards the end.

It's the best NWN i've played as a singleplayer - they put Bioware to shame on the story, but really they need to stop developing game engines and focus on the story. If it had been a straight NWN expansion would have loved it, but the tech side of it is atrocious. The engine looks like ass, and runs even worse.

The storyline is great, and reminded me of BG some in the quality, but there was zero attention paid to game balance, 99% of the game is absolutely trivial with the 1% extra being rock hard - most of the game you can play without even clicking on your companions, but the occasional 1% required for storyline battle is so unbalanced that it takes 15-20 loads of saves with all the rebooting and memory leak goodness associated with that to get through. The whole build the keep up isn't signposted early enough either - so it's a surprise mid game to find you missed all the goodies that are neccessary to the game with no chance to go back.

The serious modders I know for NWN are complaining that this game completely trashes multiplayer, persistent or even shared campaigns are close to impossible.

All in all fairly disappointed in it.

[Zung]

The camera/movement was so clumsy and difficult I stopped playing shortly after the tutorial adventure. It was awful, and the character models absolutely ugly.

NWN 2 was the biggest disappointment of 2006.

[AsheMan]

I'm necro'ing this thread.

I purchased NWN2 when it was released, played for a little while and then uninstalled it for the space. Recently I had grown bored and wanted to play NWN2 again. The only problem was that I had lost the manual with the cd key!

I emailed Atari tech support and told them I had purchased the game but lost the manual and had no idea what my cd key was. Within a few days they emailed me a brand new cd key. I had not given them any kind of proof of purchase or anything. I want to give props to Atari for their great customer support on this issue.

Thanks!

[gtlaxsk8er]

Wow, that's pretty impressive.

I purchased NWN2 when I suddenly had a craving for building a D&D character. I didn't have internet at the time so I went out and bought the game and had a lot of fun playing it. They've patched it quite a bit since launch I think. Camera still needs work but I think it's pretty fun. I haven't picked up the expansion yet though, ?anyone have any opinions on it?

[rhagz]

The expansion is awesome.

[AsheMan]

The expansion is awesome.

Woth getting then? Is it a stand-alone game kind of the way the expansions for NWN1 were? You start all over from scratch?

[xiudin]

They have definitely improved the game since launch. You can play the expansion with your character(s) from the oc, or you can create new character(s) that start at level 18.

I enjoyed the expansion. I thought it was better than the oc. However, if you didn't like the original game you probably would not like the expansion.

[acrobat]

This is the weirdest game ever.

It's fricken awesome, has everything I would ever want from a RPG, and if you paid me to make the ultimate RPG, I would probably make something like NWN2, and yet I just can't get into it... I think I have a mental issue. It's like I was hypnotized and someone said, "I know you love NWN2, but for no apparent reason, you will refuse to make yourself happy by playing it".

I wonder if it's something to do with the camera. Or maybe the fact that you are allowed to pause during combat.. and without pausing it would be too fast.

It's a good game anyway. I'll finish it some day.
p.s. Many people prefer a game called "The Witcher".