Games Review

[Appy]

Since there isn't a thread like this yet, I have to create it. I guess this'll be about Computer Games and Console games the most, but don't hesitate to throw in the occasional board game. In fact, I could add one myself, but that will have to wait.

Why I'm creating this thread is because everyone and there mom (looks at two particular people and winks) wants a review of Neverwinter Nights 2. It'll be a comparison to NWN, because that's the only way on how I could actually write this review.

 

So here goes.

 

(note: Some of this might come over a bit technical. I've spend so much time fiddling around with the editor for both NWN and NWN2 that I have a hard time NOT to refer to technical terms.)

 

Requirements. NWN2 is a HEAVY game. We bought two new computers because of it actually.

The requirements are as follows, straight from the box:

 

Operating System: Windows XP

Processor: 2.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon XP2000 or equivalent processor

Memory: 512MB RAM (1GB RAM Recommended)

Hard Disk Space: 5.5GB free

DVD-ROM Drive: 4x speed or faster

Video: 128 Pixel Shader 2.0 (ATI 9700 Pro or nVidia 6600 or better); 256 MB Pixel Shader Model 3.0 (ATi X1600 or nVidia 6800 GT/GS or higher recommended)

Sound: DirectX version 8.1 compatible sound card

DirectX: DirectX version 9.0c (included) or higher

 

The two most important are processor and video card. We have 512MB RAM and it ran fine for instance.

 

Patch. Once that's sorted out, you can start it, but not before running the updater. Because the day after release, the first patch came out, and shortly after, another.

I have to congratulation Obsidian for being so fast. It deals with some major problems (appearantly) so I wouldn't even try running it without those patches. It will just be frustrating.

 

Characters. First thing you do is create a character of course. They put in several new races/sub-races. You can now play a "plane touched" character (Aasimar and Tiefling), and there are several sub-races to choose from. The halflings, dwarves, gnomes and elves all require that you pick a sub-race (yes, drow is in). The more powerful you are at the beginning, the more experience you need to level up. Although I noticed that this is not exactly true in the Official Campaign. I'm playing a tiefling and level at the same time as the rest of my NPCs, one of which is a human.

And Valdar? The ears look alright by me, definitly longer than in NWN, but (unfortunatly for you maybe) they don't stick out sideways nor are they higher than the actual head... but at least you can see them clearly.

On that same note: Elves are ugly. I don't know why, but they all seem to have a squint or something similar. It just looks wrong. A real pity I think.

 

There are also various new prestige classes to choose from later (Duelist and Arcane Trickster for instance). But this is more a subjective subject and it's best to read up on them yourself.

One class which you can pick from the beginning has been torn apart thouroughly on the official boards and this is the Warlock. One says it's too powerful, but this is only true in the beginning, when any character is too powerful. Mostly, it's rather weak in my opinion but again, subjective.

 

Look and Feel. After we started it the first time we had to take our time to look around and drool a bit. It. Is. Pretty.

They put a lot of detail into interior environments with lots of different things lying around in houses and the such. They put maybe even more detail in the exterior surroundings. (No more tilesets which made everything look the same as in NWN, yay!) The water actually reflects the surroundings and the trees look grown (which they were, in a sense). In other words: Shiny!

There is an actual horizon (no more looking into fast amounts of nothing at the edge of a map) and it really pays off to look at the sky every now and then. Especially at night, when the stars come out and the Moon follows your every footstep. The day and night cycle is not as rigid as in NWN, and there's actually a dusk and dawn which lasts. I was and stay impressed.

 

Gameplay. It takes some time to get used to the camera. In fact there was a lot of complaining about the camera, but with trying out the different types (top-down, chase-cam to name two) you actually get used to it pretty fast.. it didn't seem all that different from NWN although the zoomed out factor isn't as big. (I'm guessing that this would have to do with processor time.)

 

They changed the UI (User-Interface) a bit, as every follow-up game seems to do, but actually made it look smoother and less intrusive. Instead of 3x12 hotkeys you can now have 120(!) by switching to the different bars with SHIFT-numbers 1 to =, and using those same keys as hotkeys (on a US-keyboard). You can't change the keybinding of SHIFT, but they might adress that in the next bigger patch (I hope). Also there's already a custom made "patch" out which changes the hotkey bar from seeing just one to seeing three at the same time. Might have to try that one day.

Using the normal row of numbers instead of the F-keys takes time getting used to as well. The F-keys now switch between party members (or in the case of F-12 creates a Quick Save).

The fancy thing I like is that you can move around any window that might be open just like you can in Windows. Even the hotkey bar.

 

There is now a Fast Cast Key, or however you want to call it. If a character has magical abilities/spells, you can press F and it will open up a small window in which you can see all your spells and cast them from there. It is a rather neat feature and one that I use often. The one thing that's missing is that you can't check what a spell does from there. You have to open up the spellbook and right-click a spell in there for that. But that's a minor issue compared to not having your hotkey bar filled with spells and no room for anything else. (Even though you have 120(!) hotkeys now, it's difficult to switch between bars.)

 

Time-consuming and only relativly usefull is the "focusing" as I'll call it. If you right-click on any person or object, your character with "focus" on that, meaning it's portrait or picture with appear in your left upper corner and anything you do, you will do to that character or thing. Which is highly annoying if you're trying to heal yourself, and heal the enemy instead because you didn't notice you had your focus on him!

The one instance when it's really handy is when spell-casting. Instead of pause- pick spell - point where spell should go- unpause you can now just focus on the one enemy in the middle and keep clicking on the fireball icon. Or focus on this really weak character and keep firing healing spells on him/her/it.

Apart from using it like this.. it's rather useless and annoying. You have to rightclick on the icon in the upper left to "unfocus" and before you know it you threw 5 healing potions at your Bag of Holding and died.

 

Inventory. As someone said on the official boards "No more Inventory Tetris!"

Every item occupies one slot in your inventory. Which takes a lot of time getting used to actually, because you really have to look at the picture to find out which item that is, instead of glancing at the size of it. On the other hand, no more growling at a piece of paper taking 4 squares.

Another thing about Inventory is the using of bags. You can't drop something ON a bag and it goes IN the bag. No, you have to open the bag (which opens a different window) and drag the stuff in. Time consuming and unnecessary I think. Also, bags and the likes (containers) don't have a grid, but rather it's a list of things. Which can make it hard to find something again. At least there's a Loot All button.

Another small Inventory related topic is the selling and buying of things. There will be a confirmation pop-up EVERY time (although they say that with the next patch you'll be allowed to turn this off). Double-clicking sells or buys (something you have to find out for yourself).

 

AI. There is a special tab in every character screen which deals with AI settings. You can set everyone to be in Puppet-mode for instance (there's an "all" button), which means that they will only follow you outside of fights, and you have to instruct them manually when fighting (helpful in tougher fights, annoying in easy ones because it's easy to forget that they won't fight on their own).

There are also the obvious Disable Traps and Unlock settings, and a range of others which seem to work nicely. Although this is hard to tell with the Spell casting settings. (Preserve spells, Fire Away or Scale them to the enemy.. I don't think I saw any real difference between them yet.)

The only annoying thing about the NPC behaviour is the lag between fight-start and them actually fighting. But apart from that, it's pretty good and especially the fact that it's highly customisable (always a plus).

Also you have full control over the leveling of your party members, which some find annoying but which I like a lot. They have a lot of story in the OC still and at least I can decide what they learn now.

 

Back to the pretty.

Effects. Spell effects, hitting someone with a flaming weapon, it's ALL good. Fire looks real, disease looks yuck (if a bit weird, since you sprout green tentacles o_O) and basically, all effects look really neat.

I specially like the bit where fighting with a flaming weapon pays off because it has a radius burst now. Hit your enemy and damage the ones next to it for free!

In addition, it looks great. Did I say that already? Fire. looks. Good.

Sorry if it's not very informative, but ey, it's a subjective thing afterall.

 

The OC, or Official Campaign.

Let's start with Death, shall we? In the official Campaign you don't die unless every single one of your party is down on the ground. If one still stands at the end you will all get up again with minimal hitpoints. Even more so, if this one last character manages to lure the enemies far enough away, you will get up again. There seems to be a radius to "In-fight" or "Not-In-Fight". Which makes it a bit too easy if you ask me, but then again, it should stay fun right? You might be able to turn this off by fiddling with the difficulty settings though, I haven't tried that yet.

 

I won't go into detail about the story, but the one thing I should mention is the Stronghold. It was one of the major topics before it came out, and it remains so today.

Yes, you get a Stronghold (little castle type map) all for yourself. It takes a while (at least 1/3rd into the game) but you will be Lord and Master of it. (Or Mistress, in my case )

 

Of course, it is in ruins when you first get there, so you'll need a LOT of money. Save up for it, it'll be worth it. You spend at least 1/4th of the campaign working on your Stronghold, improving it's walls, finding people to populate it (pay attention to conversations, some hint at it before you get the Stronghold), managing security and soldiers. It was interesting, adding the tiniest bit of strategy to the game (should your men patrol the roads so we get more merchants or should they recruit more soldiers from the surrounding villages? And what should your sergeants do?). Also there's something intenstly satisfying in "building" your own castle, since the map and surroundings actually DO change with what you built.

The Stronghold also generates money if you work on security, which in a later stage you can actually take back for yourself. Ka-ching!

 

There is one more thing that I could talk about, which is Crafting. But unless anyone asks me specific I'll leave that up to you to figure out. 'S more fun that way

 

Conclusion. All in all, I don't regret a moment buying new computers for this game, even though there are little things which could be improved upon. The one reason why I don't worry about these things is because there's a huge community behind it (remnance of NWN) and Obsidian seems to actually listen to this community and work WITH it.

They might not solve all problems I've encountered, because some will argue that these are not problems at all... but I can be almost sure that even if Obsidian doesn't do something, the community will.

Custom Content was available just a few days after the game came out. And this dealt with the game itself, not with the editor. Which is a whole different topic, the editor.

 

Now go buy those new computers and the game, and hopefully I'll be able to invite many pennites into our Permanent World soon

Edited November 23, 2006 by Appy