Neverwinter Nights 2 Review

[frogbeastegg]

Tell the frog more about the plot - but no spoilers, please. I'll be picking up enough of those in the line of duty playing frogmod of the arena. Is it well written? Well acted? Original? A cliche taken in a new direction?

It's been ages since I last sank myself into an RPG with a gripping plot, and it's one of my preferred gaming flavours.

[Reenk Roink]

Honestly, I wish more reviewers actually *reviewed* the game: played it and gave their impressions. Lately I feel reviews are becoming summaries of all the previews a game has had. Little or no personal touch, little or no comments about personal experience or how it actually *plays*.

Read some M2TW reviews, hardly any of them mention anything about the gameplay. Most are just gushing over the 1337 gfx.

Tell the frog more about the plot - but no spoilers, please. I'll be picking up enough of those in the line of duty playing frogmod of the arena. Is it well written? Well acted? Original? A cliche taken in a new direction?

It's been ages since I last sank myself into an RPG with a gripping plot, and it's one of my preferred gaming flavours.

Good points you two.

I'll have a real review done and not responses to whining later today.

I'm still not too deep in the game, but I've played quite a bit of these games (Planescape: Torment, entire Icewind Dale series, and the original Neverwinter Nights and expansions, though not any Baulder's Gate games ), and I'll just say for now that this game has the best features of the above mentioned.

[Spino]

Was NWN2 made with a licensed engine or did Bioware come up with their own engine to power it? For all Bioware's strengths regarding game design and story I swear their in-house developed engines are absolute garbage, especially with respect to their scalability on mid-low end machines. Graphically speaking NWN, KOTOR & KOTOR2 were far from resembling state of the art games when they were released and yet all three ran like crap on mid range systems. The fact that NWN2 looks like it does and yet runs like crap on low-mid level systems speaks volumes about the engine's level of detail routines and overall level of efficiency.

[AggonyDuck]

Was NWN2 made with a licensed engine or did Bioware come up with their own engine to power it? For all Bioware's strengths regarding game design and story I swear their in-house developed engines are absolute garbage, especially with respect to their scalability on mid-low end machines. Graphically speaking NWN, KOTOR & KOTOR2 were far from resembling state of the art games when they were released and yet all three ran like crap on mid range systems. The fact that NWN2 looks like it does and yet runs like crap on low-mid level systems speaks volumes about the engine's level of detail routines and overall level of efficiency.

Actually you're barking at the wrong tree here. NWN2 was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, not Bioware.

EDIT: used the wrong idiom.

[Spino]

Actually you're barking at the wrong tree here. NWN2 was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, not Bioware.

EDIT: used the wrong idiom.

Ok but this doesn't rule out the possibility that they used a Bioware engine to power NWN2. Raven was licensed by Id to create Quake IV and they sure as hell used Id's own engine to do it (Doom 3 engine).

[frogbeastegg]

Oh, go on then. :froggy orders a copy: Not that I'm likely to be playing it for a few weeks - hopefully. I'm getting M2TW tomorrow; fingers crossed it will be good, so good I want to play nothing else. By that time there may be a patch to fix the NN2 performance issues.

[Lemur]

Ok but this doesn't rule out the possibility that they used a Bioware engine to power NWN2.

For the record: Obsidian used the NWN engine, with heavy modification. For some reason the whole thing got shifted to DirectX, hence the lack of a Mac version this time.

So it's fair to blame both Obsidian and Bioware for the poor scalability of the software.

[lars573]

I might get this. But I'll have to try and use my game pad. RPG's+keyboars mouse=suckage.

[doc_bean]

You people are making me want to buy this game
I have 2 more questions though:

1. How long does it take to finish the game ?
2. How 'dense' is the story ? Do you wander around for hours performing stupid errands like in NWN1 or does it actually advance every fifteen minutes or so ?

[Bob the Insane]

Tell the frog more about the plot - but no spoilers, please. I'll be picking up enough of those in the line of duty playing frogmod of the arena. Is it well written? Well acted? Original? A cliche taken in a new direction?

It's been ages since I last sank myself into an RPG with a gripping plot, and it's one of my preferred gaming flavours.

Plot overview... No spoilers... umm... tricky

You are a village lad (or girl of course) living with your quiet and cold elf (ranger type) foster father. Game starts with the day of the harvest festival (it is the tutorial) where you meet your friends and triumph against your rivals in the friendly village way. There are references to a great war in the past and a giant battle (not distant past, more like 20 years ago). The vilage is attacked later that night and your father sends you off on a journey...

The journey is fully of adventure and meeting new people and stuff... But you also get to find out why your foster father is so cold to you and who your parents where and why you are so important...

I have not got to the end yet but I think I will be definately saving the world at some point...

You know I just wrote a mass of stuff before I realised I had given everything away so I deleted it...

Let me say while the story is not a broad as BG it is just as epic (so far)...

I can't even explain the basics without giving stuff away... It is really very good...

edit: and thanks to the quality of the voice acting it is really not a pain sit back and listen through the other characters stories...