So, just bought Neverwinter Nights 2 (NWN2) as a budget version last week. My opinions are twofold. On the one hand it is countless times better than the aweful first part of the series from a roleplaying perspective. But on the other hand, there are several horrible design mistakes that make my stomach churn all the time. I could go on rambling on this and that, but I guess it'd be better served to just make two competative lists of my personal "likes" and "don't likes" (the latter of which are known as "the designer responsible for it should be whipped to death with his own mouse cable").
Be warned, thou, that my lists may contain some spoilers - so if you haven't played the game yet you shouldn't probably read them. Or read them anyways to know what you expects.
[spoiler]
Likes:
1. Party. You actually have a party, up to 3 (sometimes 4) companions you can completely equip and control in battle. Cooperation and team work play an important task - the same values as in the pnp game. While I sometimes would have liked to have a larger party (especially for carrying all the lewts :D ), a maximum party of 4 works very well in the game and encourages you to keep an eye open for all characters' abilities to match different situations. For example, not having a rogue with you but instead having a second arcane caster is sometimes a tough decision - and sometimes not. ;)
2. Characters. The characters are actually interesting, unlike those half-assed mercenaries from NWN1. The dwarven fighter longing to become a monk, the tiefling rogue looting everything (and everyone) when you don't have an eye on her, and the elven druidess freaking out whenever you get "close" with another woman (I'm playing a male character) really got to me. I nearly burst to tears when Neeshka tries to help me convincing the balor that I'm male by saying "from what I can tell he actually isn't diminuitive at all" and Elanee going "What have you just said?!" :D This is what makes a good rpg in my opinion.
3. Crafting. While not crafting as presented in the rulebooks, it's actually quite fun. You can make great weapons and other gear for your party (like +6 ability boosters, or +5 adamantine weapons with +2d6 elemental damage) without having to amass a ridiculous amount of money or crafting materials. Compared to other games where you're grinding like 2 hours to find enough of a given material to make a single sword, it's quite interesting. Also, the idea with having to find books and manually combined recipes is imho much better than predefined combinations.
Dislikes:
1. GUI. The interface is a nightmare. Not being able to buy multiple potions is a real pain and becomes a click orgy whenever you're restocking after a tough battle. Also, there's no real party management, and transferring items from a current party member to a character not in your party always involves going to your base, switching the party makeup, moving to a different location, transferring the item, moving back to your base, switching party makeup again, and then continuing your journeys.
2. Autosave. They could just as well get rid of it, as it's highly inconsistent. Sometimes you do get an autosave, but when it's really important (like say, when entering a new chapter of the game or something like that) you don't. Why didn't they make the autosave function make a save whenever you successfully completed a quest (and named the savegame after the quest you just finished)? At least that would make the feature somewhat useful.
3. Forced party membership. I hate it. When I don't want to adventure with a chaotic "must kill everything" evil ranger or runaway paladin, I just don't want to. I'll get someone else for tracking or smiting, thank you very much. Party makeup should NEVER be forced upon the player, not even in a computer game. Baldur's Gate could do without, why can't NWN2?
4. Boss fights. I really don't understand the designers. They do put spells like death circle and finger of death into the game, and yet make important "boss" characters immune to those spells without reason? I mean, I could see their point if I got a ring that says "Immune: Death Magic" or something from their corpses, but I don't. Best example: Moire. Was immune to paralyze (so no hold spells), and regenerated like mad - the loot I got from her included a non-magical silver ring and a +3 rapier. WTF? It's just annoying to have enemies being scripted immune to your most effective attacks to artificially prolong and complicate battles. (See also screenshot proof at the end of the post).
5. The warlock. What the hell did they smoke? A level 16 human warlock being powerful enough to bind a pit fiend and a balor to his service - in the same dungeon? Seriously, at that level he'd get his ass handed to him from a sorcerer 4 levels below him. Also, when you finally beat him and can take him into your party, he doesn't even have the same invocations he used when fighting you. Add to that he's still at an alignment of 50/0, even after showing a little remorse of slaughtering his own granddaughter. I would have at least expected a LITTLE(!) improvement there when he's already sorry about it. :-/
6. Logical errors. Why just can't the designers put some more attention to that? I mean, for example Shandra bleeding herself in the haven to break the ritual circles containing the fiends is great and all... but with like 40 potions of cure moderate wounds in her inventory? Couldn't the designers have at least tried to give a reason why she wouldn't use any of the roughly 80d8+200 points of healing in her backpack (like eg the infernal aura of the place spoiling all potions or something?). And that you'd take the warlock who killed her in cold blood into your party - just doesn't make any sense. In a pnp game, I'd cut off his arms and legs and stuff him into a bag of holding with a bottle of air, pull him out when I'd need him, and then let him lie where he is to die a lone, miserable death.
7. Endgame. NWN2 is a perfect example of a game that starts out great and degrades quickly in the endgame. In the first 2 chapters the game's really great. Character development for your main character and the NPCs, intrigueing story, interesting quests. But then, after the point when West Harbor was destroyed the game quickly went downhill imho. Everything suddenly seems rushed and forced.
8. Bugs. Finally, yes, this game has them too. And lots of them. Duplicated items, items you can't move to other characters, scripts not firing correctly and therefore putting already completed quests back onto your to-do list or not spawning important NPCs. I was also caught by the "Sea Ghost" bug, when the second wave of Illuskan spies would not be spawned correctly and the game grinded to a halt as no further progress could be made (because this was part of a main quest). Cost me around 4 hours to replay from the last savegame I had before the bug. A good autosave feature could prevent such problems, but see point #2 for further details. x.
[/spoiler]
So, what are your opinions about the game? Am I wrong? Did I miss something completely? Or did I hit the nail on the head? Discuss! :)
PS: Here's the screenshot I was talking about above. A cookie to the one who finds the error.
(http://img377.imageshack.us/img377/8841/nwn2cheatyr1.th.jpg) (http://img377.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nwn2cheatyr1.jpg)
Quote4. Boss fights. I really don't understand the designers. They do put spells like death circle and finger of death into the game, and yet make important "boss" characters immune to those spells without reason?
sneak attacks[/i]. Yeah, rogues were
awesome.
Also, how are fear effects in this version? I remember in NWN1 EVERYTHING panicked you, so where a dragon should have given you a -2 to attacks, instead your character ran into a corner where the dragon ate him. So instead you had to buy a belt of fear immunity, meaning the dragon's fear did
nothing. :P
Quote from: brainface[...] Also, how are fear effects in this version? I remember in NWN1 EVERYTHING panicked you, so where a dragon should have given you a -2 to attacks, instead your character ran into a corner where the dragon ate him. So instead you had to buy a belt of fear immunity, meaning the dragon's fear did nothing. :P
Well, so far I really haven't encountered any fear effects. :?: Or at least I didn't notice them happening, despite playing on "D&D Hardcore" mode.
Also, I forgot one point on my "Dislike" list.
The AI/path finding. I hate it, I utterly hate it. I hate it so much, that I gave up and turned it off completely. Having to micromanage your party even to breath is ultimately preferable to having to babysit your companions from doing all sorts of completely retarded things all the time. Like running away and pulling half a dozen new enemies into the fight when ordered to attack a single opponent. Or standing there shouting "unable to reach target" on an attack order, while being perfectly able to be moved up to the target by hand. From my experience, only commanding your party with the voice commands is impossible, and if you don't micro/babysit your comrades you'll never make it past Fort Locke at all - they are that good! *rolleyes*
</rant> :P
I don't play many games anymore. No time
So I am actually responding to what you wrote. I am astounded that this game made it to market. I always like what you write and enjoy your stuff, but the fact that no one like yourself was ever asked what they would say if they bought this game is mind-boggling.
I think reading your opinions of this game might be more fun then playing it. At least I don't have to autosave.
I didn't like it one bit. I didn't like the controls, I didn't like that my otherwise good computer was only able to run it at the lowest graphical settings (so it looked bad and irritated me), and I didn't like that it still frequently froze on me.
[blockquote=Brave Ra]The AI/path finding. I hate it, I utterly hate it. I hate it so much, that I gave up and turned it off completely. Having to micromanage your party even to breath is ultimately preferable to having to babysit your companions from doing all sorts of completely retarded things all the time. Like running away and pulling half a dozen new enemies into the fight when ordered to attack a single opponent. Or standing there shouting "unable to reach target" on an attack order, while being perfectly able to be moved up to the target by hand. From my experience, only commanding your party with the voice commands is impossible, and if you don't micro/babysit your comrades you'll never make it past Fort Locke at all - they are that good! *rolleyes*[/blockquote]
This might win the unintentional comedy award of the month. Anytime 'artificial intelligence' is described with the perjorative term 'retarded', it can't be very bright AI.
Quote from: LordVreegI don't play many games anymore. No time
Sorry to hear that. :(
Quote from: LordVreegSo I am actually responding to what you wrote. I am astounded that this game made it to market.
Actually, it's not the
quality of the errors, it's rather their
quantity that gets at me. I could live quite well without a good party management functionality. I could live quite well without a quantity slider when buying potions or scrolls (for ammunition you actually do get them :?: ). But I would rather not have to bother with all those things at the same time, which - sadly - happens in NWN2.
Quote from: LordVreegI always like what you write and enjoy your stuff, but the fact that no one like yourself was ever asked what they would say if they bought this game is mind-boggling.
Well, thanks... I guess. ;) Actually, I was so far pleasantly surprised with the single player campaign so far. I mostly compare it to NWN1, and in that case NWN2 wins hands down.
Quote from: LordVreegI think reading your opinions of this game might be more fun then playing it. At least I don't have to autosave.
:D If you can grab it somewhere off a budget table for like 10 bucks or something, I think it's very well worth it. So far, I've spent almost a whole week on it - including several gaming sessions starting at 2pm one day, and ending 11am the next day. ;)
I've laughed my ass off about the dwarf, the tiefling, the elf druid. I've actually felt quite bad when Shandra was killed (especially when looking at the portrait I encouraged her to get painted of her). I tried to ignore the gnome bard whenever possible. :-|
Quote from: LordVreegThis might win the unintentional comedy award of the month. Anytime 'artificial intelligence' is described with the perjorative term 'retarded', it can't be very bright AI.
I know. :D The basic behavior is not really that bad. The rogue automatically tries to disarm traps you've found, and tries to open locks once you've failed on it. Fighters automatically use Power Attack on weak opponents and casters actually do quite well with the spells you make them prepare.
However, sometimes really silly things happen. Eg, the fighter is surrounded by weak opponents, but below the treshold that makes him drink a potion. He drinks the potion, draws a crapload of AoO, and is still below the threshold. Therefore, he tries to drink another potion, draws lots of AoO, and is still below the treshhold. Therefore ... I guess you get the idea. I've had my fighter go through like 2 dozens of potions before I could get my attention to him again. Or the wizard who casts
Enlarge Person on himself instead of the fighter and wades into melee. :-/
It's just this erratic targetting behavior that really gets on my nerves. When I tell the whole party to attack a single enemy, usually 3/4 of the party runs off to find themselves other targets. This not only unnecessarily prolongs combat, but also leaves my wizard sometimes in the very unfavorable position to melee with 4 dread wraiths or something. x.
Quote from: Kapn XeviatI didn't like it one bit. I didn't like the controls, I didn't like that my otherwise good computer was only able to run it at the lowest graphical settings (so it looked bad and irritated me), and I didn't like that it still frequently froze on me.
I must agree that the controls are also a bit worse than in NWN1. I actually liked that radial menu thingy from NWN1 quite much once I got used to it. However, I haven't had any freezes yet. The game crashed twice on me (which may have to do with it running on Vista), and once my quick save was corrupted and unloadable (which may have been caused by me because I just turned off my computer instead of properly shutting it down as I was in quite a hurry).
I got it a while back, played about 1/3 of the way through the story, didn't like it and went back to Oblivion.
Quote from: Higgs BosonI got it a while back, played about 1/3 of the way through the story, didn't like it and went back to Oblivion.
Now that's interesting. How far did you actually play? And to be honest, I have a hard time starting up Oblivion again. It's not a bad game, quite the opposite. It's just that the beginning (especially the dungeon right at the start) is just so damn dragging on and on and on with apprently no progress going on. And all those friggin' Oblivion Gates in the endgame.... gaaaah! ;) :D
Quote from: Ra-TielAnd all those friggin' Oblivion Gates in the endgame.... gaaaah! ;) :D
Eh, yeah. By the end I was just running around invisible all the time and destroying the gates without actually fighting anything.
[spoiler]Only sucked in the end when you have to protect the prince and all my skills were stealth and illusion and so forth, with a bit of archery. Killing demons en-mass wasn't something I had ever expected to need to do, which I saw as questionable design--if you're going to set up a game so it supports multiple play styles, it has to support them all the way through, otherwise you get the shaft at the end.[/spoiler]
Quote from: Ra-TielI know. The basic behavior is not really that bad. The rogue automatically tries to disarm traps you've found, and tries to open locks once you've failed on it. Fighters automatically use Power Attack on weak opponents and casters actually do quite well with the spells you make them prepare.
I have to keep my main character on puppet mode because he's a wizard and if I go to another player who's being retarded (such as my rogue who's attacking one step away from where she'd get her sneak attack bonus), when I get back he'll have cast all his useful spells on the least efficient people (like his only fireball, to hit a single, almost dead opponent).
I never played the first nwn, but I compared it to Baldur's Gate 2. I think it was better. I got kind of bored after a while and deleted it, though. I didn't have the money to buy it, so the key-code I was using had actually been banned. So, I couldn't play online. But I really wanted to x.