Review: Neverwinter Nights 2
Neverwinter Nights was one of the most beloved games in the history of the Dungeons and Dragons franchise. This is quite a feat when you consider the franchise is one of the most established, with PC games dating back to the early 80’s. In fact, one of the earliest video game memories I have is of playing DnD on my Tandy HX1000 – where you were an “X” fighting pound signs (#) and picking up the “phat loot” ($). My how we have come a long way with Bioware and Obsidian’s latest offering in Neverwinter Nights 2.
NWN2 (as it shall henceforth be referred to) is much in the same vein as the original NWN; it so closely resembles its predecessor, that throughout the game it often felt like I was playing a massive expansion instead of an entirely new game. This isn’t a bad thing, per say, but when you consider that an updated engine, and rule set, were supposed to be the games strongest selling points, it leaves gamers a bit disappointed.
Graphics: 4/5
The new graphics engine is good, I think… It’s hard to really know because I spent the majority of the game zoomed out from an overhead view. This is almost a necessity if you want to actually play the game, as the camera system is inexcusably awful. The camera clips on all solid objects often causing a serious feeling of claustrophobia, and when turning in battle to face new foes you often end up with a face full of cape as you are thrust into your characters back. When you finally settle on a camera mode that’s as close to playable as you can get, further frustration sets in from the snail’s pace that the camera turns and pans; the developers must have taken issue with this too, because they thankfully put in a slider bar allowing an adjustment of the camera’s speed – although even at the maximum setting it feels woefully inadequate.
When opportunity arose to get in close (usually just the in-game cut scenes) the graphics were very well done. Faces seemed alive; lighting/shadows were spot on, and animations fluid. The spell effects in the game were incredible – in some of the later sections where you have multiple casters firing off high-level spells, the particle effects are nothing short of breathtaking. The environments you find yourself in, while generic, are well crafted – ceilings are even present for indoor sections if you have the camera set so you can see them (something that was absent from the original NWN).
One issue that did come up repeatedly was texture quality on anything but the highest settings. NWN2 is marred by performance issues (which we will talk about shortly) meaning even on the beefiest systems turning things down is almost a requirement for smooth game play. When the texture quality is lowered, armor textures become noticeably impaired. I’m not quite sure why this affects armor textures and not the rest of the player models (heads, weapons, etc.) – but with lower settings, close up armor shots resemble the blocky, 2D sprites of gaming eras long since passed.
Sound: 3/5
There really isn’t much to say about the sound in this game – it’s good. Players using multiple speakers will be able to detect which direction arrows are coming from, and if a battle is raging around the next bend. Music becomes repetitive, but is well orchestrated and doesn’t get annoying like “battle music” often does in Japanese RPGS.
One major shortcoming in the sound department is the reuse of character voice assets. To drive the story, the developers hired actors for an extensive amount of voiceover work – these voiceovers were outstanding, and are on par with Oblivion and other such games that are in direct competition with NWN2. Where it fell short was the in-game character voices. In a startling display of laziness, the decision was made to use the same voice assets from the original NWN – leaving players of the original feeling shortchanged. The quality of these voices sounded dated when compared to the rest of the sound in the game, and is tired/annoying from level 1 if you played through the original Neverwinter.
Gameplay: 4/5
As I stated earlier, NWN2 plays almost identical to its predecessor. Even with the revised DnD 3.5 rules, there is little change from the strategies and overall “feel” of the original. For my campaign I chose the monk class, which is the same class I played through NWN with – the experience was the same right down to the weapons and armor I ended up with. You basically move from town to town (through the new map system – one descent from the original), helping people solve their own problems as they contribute to part of the larger conflict. It’s pretty standard fare for an RPG, fighting monsters to get loot and gain levels, with a rich storyline giving motivation for the conflict. While some may think that this may be another negative – I would disagree. The Forgotten Realms setting is extremely well established, and having a familiar experience in that world gives the player that warm, glowing feeling of nostalgia.
For those that play the pencil and paper version of DnD, the “feel” is lacking. There are several items that give off light so players can see in darkened areas – these are useless, as even low-light areas are maneuverable. The various tracking and searching modes suffer the same fate depending upon what characters you have in your party, as a capable rogue will always pick up traps when moving at a normal speed. Also included in this list of good-ideas-that-translate-poorly is maneuvering in stealth mode. While in earlier levels you can do a couple extra points of damage by sneaking up on someone – by end game you can pretty much go toe to toe with all manner of foul beast while never feeling in serious danger.
Even though I chose a familiar class for my play-through, I did get to try out the other classes through the party members that you pick up along the way. Your character assembles the usual menagerie of outcasts in his or her bid to smite evil from the land. Most of the time you will have three or four party members at your disposal in addition to the main character. This expands the depth of game play tremendously as utilizing their class-specific skills can form interesting strategies. There is an awesome feeling of accomplishment when you pause the action to queue up your next couple moves, then set things back in motion to watch them play out perfectly – resulting in a pile of dead orcs at your feet.
If there is a complaint about this party system, its that the AI is nearly useless — often times your comrades will just stand still while you get pummeled by a group of baddies. Casters are the worst offenders, usually casting the most useless spells at the worst times. During one battle with a particularly ill tempered Dragon, my wizard decided to restrict himself to level 1 and 2 buff spells, but later when fighting a pack of annoying goblins he decided to release all of Hell’s fury. The solution to this is micromanaging all of your party members; the game allows you to take complete control of anyone at any time. This is extremely helpful, but shouldn’t be nearly as critical as it is, had a bit more time been spent in development making the characters actions reflect the intelligence scores on their character sheets.
Replayability: 3/5
The toolset is what endeared the original Neverwinter to RPG fans everywhere – NWN2 is no exception. While the original campaign offers 30 – 40 solid hours of game play, user designed campaigns allow for endless expansion. Many players will also be compelled to play through the official campaign a second time to try approaching it from the opposite alignment (good/evil) ala Knights of the Old Republic.
Prestige classes also add to the replay factor of the game, as those classes cannot be accessed until the later levels. Prestige classes are a relatively new addition to the DnD universe, and allow players a more focused evolution of their character based upon alignment decisions made as the character was developing. Characters that have been heavily invested in can then be exported to the user created modules.
Multiplayer also weighs in to the replay value of NWN2. Players can team up to go through the supplied campaign, or one of their own creation. To more closely simulate the pen and paper feel, one player can even assume the role of the dungeon master and wreak havoc on fellow adventurers. Unlike shooter games like BF2142, most players will not jump into random games of NWN2 – instead opting to game with a close group of friends, navigating through a campaign start to finish. It’s a slower pace than hack n’ slash titles like Diablo and Titan Quest, but this results in a more rewarding sense of accomplishment.
Performance: 2/5
As I mentioned earlier in this article, the game has some issues. This is yet another AAA title that was obviously rushed out the door to try and start turning a profit, shorting hopes of delivering a polished experience end to end. Character AI is the least of worries, when you consider the crashes, and lockups many have been getting. Often times players report that cut scenes were never “triggered”, quest items/people were never where they were supposed to be, moving NPCs would often prematurely end cut scenes by walking into people, and reloads of saved games due to impassable circumstances is an all-too-often experience.
Lag was also horrific throughout most of the game. While the game has beautiful graphics, they are not so stunning as to warrant the sluggishness that occurred on my reasonably high-end review machine. I had to reduce many of the graphics settings to “medium” levels to ensure that things stayed smooth in larger battles. Part of this may be due to the design decision to only utilize a single core. Gamers with dual core machines will notice that one core is taxed heavily, while the second is almost completely dormant. RAM usage didn’t appear to be anything overwhelming (such as in BF2 and BF2142) so it has to be assumed the lag is due to load on the CPU and video card.
Final Thoughts
After reading all of this, it’s probably hard to imagine how I could possibly give this game a positive overall rating – but the fact is, it’s fun to play. It makes me sad to think that if Obsidian has just taken another couple of weeks to fine tune things, this could have been a tremendously good game. The built in campaign is entertaining with solid pacing, character customization is deep enough to be engaging, and the toolset allows for limitless multiplayer fun. I am hopeful that after a couple of patches Neverwinter Nights 2 will be what I had envisioned after hearing that a sequel was announced.
Even taking the product as it is now, I can hardily recommend it to RPG fans, but the causal RPGer might want to stay clear until some of the bugs get worked out. I mean come on; it’s not as bad as Pool of Radiance…
Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Review System
- Processor: AMD X2 4400+ (overclocked)
- RAM: 2GB Corsair DDR500
- Motherboard: DFI Lanparty NF4 SLI
- Video Card: BFG GeForce 7950GT 512MB
- Hard Drive: 2x Wester Digital 74GB “Raptor” (RAID 0)
Any questions or comments? Please leave them below, or email us!
November 16th, 2006 at 10:18 pm
This review was extremely well written and gives a great understanding of the pros and cons of this game. I’d probably enjoy it, but my computer would hiccup at it in disgust. After reading about your gaming experience, however, I understand a bit better why you spend more time with the game than you do with your girlfriend.
November 17th, 2006 at 10:00 am
I have only one real complaint about this review. And that’s about the performance; clearly this is an issue with the person’s pc in question. I personally have a nice system that has plenty of horsepower and I do not suffer performance issues. At what point does a review have to yield to the fact that its there system that’s not up to date with today’s higher end games that require more horsepower to push the game in stead of blaming the game and knocking down the points on the review just because they had issues with performance? This to me is a mod point to base a review on performance unless these are clearly bug related to the engine not performing well.
- Rick
November 17th, 2006 at 11:01 am
Hi Rick, thanks for visiting. At the end of the article I posted the specs of the machine I reviewed the game on — I think that I should have had more than enough \”horsepower\” to handle the game.
One thought is that the game might run better on an ATI video card — but considering its part of the nVidia \”Way its meant to be played\” program I find that pretty hard to believe.
Motherboard, sound, and video drivers, were all up to date as of the review date above — and the harddrive is defragmented weekly using Diskkeeper.
Just to rule out any other programs running in the background, I shut down everything else that was running which left 1.8GB of the 2GB of RAM on the machine free. I also tried forcing the game executable to run on the second core to see if there was some kind of performance issue running on the first core but that didnt change things. One core was nearly pegged and the other only at 1% - 2% usage.
If you can tell me how to fix my performance issue I would love to update the review with that information.
The resolution I ran at was 1680×1050 for my 20\” widescreen monitor — which isnt an uncommon size these days (not to mention other games like BF2142 run smooth at that res with everything turned up)
I dont want to sound like im bashing your comment, because im not. If I missed something, or if I am doing something wrong, I want to know about it. I just want to offer a bit more insight as to what the testing conditions were. In future reviews I will be sure to put that information into the main article if I am going to critisize performance.
Thanks again,
Tony
November 17th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
Hi Tony, I appreciate your comments and your replying. I did notice your specs at the end after I posted my comments. Im not sure why other then its possible that the ATI drivers are not very well optimized with this game. other that I really cant say, again thanks for the comments.
- Rick
November 17th, 2006 at 5:47 pm
It probably has something to do with the way your drivers are installed. I am running an ATI X700 256k on a modified Dell SC420 mb so that it runs on only 8x rather than 16x and dont have a problem with the game. Nice machine u have though. Sometimes it does crash but it has more to due with a need for a windows rebuild than the game itself. But decent review overall although I dont agree with all u had to say. GL HF
November 17th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Rick: No worries.
Chant: Thanks for the info, im sure some of the other readers will benefit from that comment, and I will *try* to remember to mention that you had better luck with the ATI card when we promote the review on our next show. Im ok with you not agreeing, and appreciate that you didnt flame me because of it.
I usually read a couple different reviews on things myself because I know that different people take different perspectives, or key in on certain things. Regardless, im glad you enjoyed the read through. Reviews are something new for us, and we hope to do more of them.
November 17th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
The performance problem is probably due to the SLI profile being wrong. You have to add nwn2main.exe to it. Otherwise it’s not using both of your cores. I find this a common type of oversight by Nvidia.
November 17th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
Bah! I didn’t realize that was a single core card, I thought it was dual.
November 18th, 2006 at 1:37 am
Good review! I too love a good RPG and as much as I wanted this to be a gem from day one, you rightly pointed out that it needs some shinning. Personally, in recognition of its competition, I thought you were a little kind in giving the graphics a 4/5. I’m going to have to go back I suppose and look at the original’s graphics, but I have a hard time believing they’re that much better. Nonetheless, you gave a worthy review. Let’s hope they iron out these bugs sooner than later. My regards …
November 18th, 2006 at 9:15 am
Hi Jackson, thanks for dropping by. With all settings maxed, and things zoomed in the game really does look beautiful. Our bandwidth isnt capable of supporting the full rez 1680×1050 screenshots that were reduced for the images above in the article, but when looking at the originals the pictures inside the keep are amazing. If you are interested in seeing them in all of their glory, just email us at uncompressedshow@gmail.com and I can send them to you (on gmails bandwidth bill, not ours ;)) Cheers.
November 18th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Your machine is definately up to par, even advanced beyond most users who will be playing the game. When the original NWN debuted it too was buggy, especially if you were an ATI user. Blame the drivers if you want, both companies were at fault for releasing products not ready for use.
I would prefer that a review be done with a mid range PC so we know the game is playable for the rest of us… I really thought the article was well written and saved me $50. I won’t be buying the game. There are currently many options for the D&D enthusiast. DDO is very good, WoW is still going strong and Bioware is developing Dragon Age which promises to be awesome. I’ve done the whole NWN thing, it was cool and I enjoyed it but the massively multiplayer games are where it’s at now. I just can’t see going back. It’s comparable to the feeling you get when you first get broadband, the thought of gettting dial-up again is sickening.
For the D&D roleplayer, the original NWN is still very viable and can be played on a college students budget. The extra content is amazing and the versitlity of options cater the the backroom gamers most of which don’t have cranked up gamming machines.
November 19th, 2006 at 7:49 am
I find that NWN2 plays fine on my (mostly-)4-year-old computer (Athlon XP 1500, 768M, 9800pro 128M). Granted, its at 1280×1024 and most graphics settings are off or low, but the game is still quite fun, and it still looks much better than NWN1.
I’m disappointed to hear that 2 isn’t multithreaded, though. I guess its because its been in development so long.
November 20th, 2006 at 5:19 am
I’m not sure if I agree totally with this review.
I have concerns with two points:
1. You mention that the game feels the exact same as NWN 1. I think the goal of these games is to simulate the real DnD experience. I’d certainly expect my monk to level and play the exact same as it did in NWN 1 and ideally the same as the hours spent playing pen and paper. I agree its a concern though if all the items are the same. Getting new fancy gear is a damn important reason to keep playing.
2. You gave a pretty low score on replaybility. Considering I’m still playing the original NWN to this day, you might want to mention that its early on and no good fan/premium modules have come out yet. I look forward to the wonderful fan creations that are yet to come.
Thank you for your review though, and your experiences, especially about the performance issues, were informative.
November 20th, 2006 at 10:12 am
Hi Amadeo. I stick by what I said and feel no reason to defend things, but I wanted to clarify based on one of the points you made. With the replayability I gave it a 3, which is slightly above average. I dont like how many reviewers use a scale such as 1 to 10, but only use the upper 1/4 of the scale. For example, a good game might get 9/10 but a bad one 6/10 — if its a bad game they should be giving it 2/10. So, on my scale 2.5 would be an average run-of-the-mill game; I scored NWN2 above average in all areas except performance. Also, since it has a single player component (as opposed to games that are solid multi like MMORPGS, or shooters such as the Battlefield series) I need to figure the replayability of the singleplayer campaign into things as well; as in, does the game make me want to play through the SP campaign multiple times? Finally, at the time of review there were no additional SP campaigns available, so that had to weigh in also regardless of the “potential” the game has at some point in the future.
Thank you for writing in an offering your view — we appreciate it.
December 1st, 2006 at 4:00 am
Hi Tony,
Great review. I just finished the game and I felt like you gave me clarity about my feelings about NWN2. I had this amorphous experience with the game; not love/hate but rather really like/really dislike. It’s kind of like meeting a person you used to have fun with, except the things that you’d forgotten that you disliked about them came rushing back. I felt like saying “Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there…”
I also have a decent machine, and found that it wasn’t nearly optimized for it. No multithreading support? (Except for the toolset) Why?
From a plot and production values perspective, the ending was especially horrible.
Thanks again for the insight.
Scrammy.
December 15th, 2006 at 8:55 am
Dont buy this game. In order to get it to run you will probably have to uninstall all burning software you own. Thats right. Uninstall NERO, D-Tools, Alcohol etc because if you have them installed the game will complain, telling you: “Youre a pirate! and cant play! Hahah”
Im not joking, the only way i got to play this game was downloading a hacked NO-DVD patch even when i bought it…. no help on forums
thanks anyway for everyone trying to help, too bad none of you are DEVELOPERS!
When i got it to run…. well… welcome slogginess…. oblivion had 20-40 fps playing… and this has 5-15… ouch. Cant enter any buildings…. about 1/100 of all crates can be opened (no, im serious! not joking). The outside environments are nice but the interials… well… its like NWN1 all over again but with lower framerates.
The camera is AWFUL! Your char cant run while strafing, no no no… Mouse look controls must be middle mouse button (so if you have a 2 button mouse you cant look around properly =P)
The only way i managed to play was using Free Camera, and scroll using the keyboard. If you have played World of Warcraft and wish to set up similar controls you can forget that. Its just not possible =P
Dont buy this game… just dont, its not finished. Lets just hope it will be in the future…. Im going to wait a bit before i demand my money back.
December 15th, 2006 at 10:13 am
I havent played extensively with the newest patch (1.03 I believe) to check how performance has been impacted — according to the changelog they made a lot of optimizations to get things running smoother. Also according to the patch notes they increased the speed of the camera.
I have Nero Ultimate Edition installed and had no issues installing or playing. I also had no issues with entering buildings or smashing crates. It is correct that some crates are simply scenery and cannot be smashed, but this is easy to figure out by pressing the key on the keyboard you have mapped to highlight things you can interact with — this also helps you find dropped loot that may be too close to a table or whatnot to see otherwise.
January 7th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
good review, I bought the game yesterday and it works terribly. When I first did the auto detect to see what I should be running it on, it set most of the graphic settings to high quality which made the game unplayable with lag so I changed most of the settings down to medium and it plays decently. My only problem is the audio, I don’t know why but at first it starts out good but after 30 mins of playing the audio fucks up, the charachters repeat what they are saying (while they say it which is annoying) the game music starts to sound terrible. I think I need to update my audio drive but I have no clue how, can anyone help?
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processpr 3800+ 2.0GHz
2 GB of ram
GeForce 7900 GS
January 7th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
1) Check drivers. Sound, video, and MOTHERBOARD.
2) To improve performance lower (or turn off) shadows. These seem to make the biggest difference. Also make sure you are patched up to the newest version through the auto-updater as they made changed to the way shadows are rendered in the newest patch.
3) Make sure you are setting the proper audio type in the options (EAX 1/2/3, etc.) for your what your sound card supports.
4) Defragment your hard drive. This makes a huge difference as a lot of things are getting swapped in and out.
5) Shut down any unneeded programs before entering the game.
Hope that helps!