Neverwinter Nights 2 released

**Lemur** · 11-02-2006, 15:19

It runs smoothly on my new rig, but that's hardly a surprise. I was getting some crazy crashing last night, and I suspect it's the Creative X-fi card's fault. Audigy cards are always my first suspect when I get weird crashes. I'll fiddle with the settings if I get a chance to turn it on tonight.

Looks quite lovely as a game. Sorry to hear it doesn't scale to older videocards.

**GoreBag** · 11-02-2006, 17:14

Man, I hate 3rd ed..

**Xiahou** · 11-03-2006, 05:35

I was out doing some shopping today and checked around for NWN2... Target, CircuitCity and Bestbuy were all sold out. My wife wants to check it out, so I still may end up getting it- but from what I've heard so far I might be better off buying the official addons for the original. I understand in their latest update Bioware added mounts.

**Bob the Insane** · 11-03-2006, 14:26

I got it from D2D on the 31st... Almost a 5GB dowload...

Well I have to say it is pretty sweet and the adventure that comes with the game is pretty cool so far.

There has been some whinging about the graphics but I think it is very good in the looks department but you need a pretty beefy machine to make it look that way. If you have the same machine that ran NWN1 okay, then do not expect miracles...

The party members (and I use that term rather than Henchmen because it has more of a BG feel to it than a NWN1 feel) work really well and on the default AI settings (settings can be altered and configured on a per individual level) they will fight and not get to far from the lead character (the lead being the individual you are controlling at the time and not your central PC character). At any time you can hit pause and select the other characters and stack up to 5 instructions for them. You can let the AI do it's own thing completely, broadcast "orders" or disable their AI and take complete control...

The first portion of the adventure is pretty easy (well at least for my good guy fighter and crew) but it starts getting more interesting and challenging once you get to Neverwinter...

I have not played with the Toolset so can not comment on differences but this is definately NWN2, it looks similar and plays pretty much the same way as before.

The visuals are better, not awe inspiring but with lots on new fangled graphical widgets, but this aspect is prectty demanding on you hardware.

The voices of the characters are very well done, but there is quite a lot of disappointment in the recycling of the music and canned sounds (battles, towns, etc) from NWN1...

If you liked NWN1 (and have a decent machine) you should love this. If you are still pinning for BG2 then this story and party system is much better than NWN1 but still more linear and not quite as epic as BG2...

**Lemur** · 11-03-2006, 15:11

I finally got to play a bit. Fixed the crashing (yup, it was EAX's fault). It's pretty great so far, the use of in-game cinematics reminds me of the KOTORs quite a bit. It's astonishing how many dialogues are customized for my character choices. I'm playing a dwarf fighter, and he picked up another dwarf fighter as an NPC. So far I've had three different cinematic dialogues make reference to "a pair of dwarves." Kinda neat.

I've only been able to put an hour and a half into the game; by the time I'm in a position to write a real review, I figure everyone will have played it all the way through.

**Bob the Insane** · 11-06-2006, 14:04

Originally Posted by Bob the Insane

not quite as epic as BG2...

Quoting myself here but having played further through the campaign and it is pretty darn epic!

Still not a broad as BG2 perhaps but plenty epic!!

**Vladimir** · 11-03-2006, 20:05

Originally Posted by GoreBag

Man, I hate 3rd ed..

Come on, it's not that baLKIj342...My keyboard seems to have malfunctioned. 3rd edition is a bit anime but some of the mods for the first one are great. Even though MTW was more fulfilling the wealth of options for NWN is amazing. I recommend A Dance With Rogues, wow

; AND the rest of the adventure is solid. That and other mods make me wish I had continued to learn how to build a module.

I'm really looking forward to this one once it is smoothed out and after an upgrade. I just saw it at Target today.

**GoreBag** · 11-03-2006, 22:36

Originally Posted by Vladimir

Come on, it's not that baLKIj342...My keyboard seems to have malfunctioned. 3rd edition is a bit anime but some of the mods for the first one are great. Even though MTW was more fulfilling the wealth of options for NWN is amazing. I recommend A Dance With Rogues, wow

; AND the rest of the adventure is solid. That and other mods make me wish I had continued to learn how to build a module.

I'm really looking forward to this one once it is smoothed out and after an upgrade. I just saw it at Target today.

>:-(

A friend of mine got the original the other day. There mere fact that he was third level by the time the tutorial had finished left me totally disheartened.

**Vladimir** · 11-06-2006, 16:34

Originally Posted by GoreBag

>:-(

A friend of mine got the original the other day. There mere fact that he was third level by the time the tutorial had finished left me totally disheartened.

What's the problem? All I want is to be level 40 with 1000 hit points.