NWN 2

[leng]

Just curious, anyone thinking of playing Neverwinter Nights 2? I'm not - I never bothered with the original NWN - but I know some people were keen on it.

[noptov52]

I might check it out depending on the reviews. I never did like the original though, felt like it lacked a lot of polish. I know there was a good game in there somewhere, but took to much effort to get to it.

I'm looking forward to Elder Scrolls IV though, out soon!

[Aequi]

NWN 1 was/is great imho, esspecially the ease with with you could revisit content with different charecters was great... allthough problematic(lack of) multiplayer support in some of the expansions was annoying. I was very hyped about getting NWN 2, because the origional was so great.

So i bought NWN 2, annouced a break in EQ2, played around with it for a few weeks and eventually labelled it as a huge disapointment.
...eventually i plan to make a cheat charecter and rush through the story for the sake of the story, then place it on the the dusty shelf with a sticker reading "content consumed, do not revisit".

[Raveneye]

Why did you find it dissapointing? Just curious.

I've been playing it off and on since buying it in January. I'm about halfway (maybe a little more) through the main plot and so far I think it's BETTER than NWN1. Even though parts of the main plot and character background stories are horribly cliche and contrived, overall it's a much more interesting and deep plot than the NWN1 campaign.

The interface takes some getting used to, and the camera angles are never really spot on and can get annoying at times, but liberal use of the pause button helps alleviate those issues. I think the spell and feat choices are pretty good, and I feel like my characters each bring something unique to the party. Only the bard seems truly useless so far.

My only real complaint is the monty haul loot. I've literally equipped every character with magical weapons, armor, dozens of wands and scrolls and tons of special trinkets by level 9. So much magical loot drops that I've had to leave behind valuable +1 armor and weapons because I simply can't carry everything out of the dungeons. It makes the game a lot easier than it needs to be, and it feels like to compensate they just throw larger parties at you more often, resulting in even more loot drops.

[Aequi]

While bugs is to be expected i did't expect them in the places i found them... i mean geezz the charecter-generator was bugged, you could create charecters that failed the "legal" check. The inventory often left items "stuck" as ghost items.

Even the equipment managment, ok so they fixed it so you could hotkey both hands in 1 button, but these bugs imho clearly showed that testing/QA could't even find simple things... and they had pretty good baseline comparison to work with.

Quests steps must be solved in the currect order otherwise they get bugged and you can't complete them... which ex. means if i accedently skip part of the theiflings city quests (lucky coin) i can't complete it.

Your forced to be acompaneyed by uncontrollable npc's (or suffer pauseing hell) for many of the main plotlines... not to mention the sidestories you miss out on if you leave them all at the tarvern.

I found the 2 main quests paths in the city really fun... and wanted to do them in multiplayer with my friend who also bought the game... but the host of a game can't change class... and you can't restart the game at chapter II ... you have too do it all from scratch (noooo!)

Think i finished the bit about the shards, and started the next bit with clearing my name and just did't feel like clicking the icon on the desktop anymore.

[deadhorse]

[noptov52]

I was playing a co-op campaign with Sweeman and eventually we quit in frustration. The interface/camera* is bad at best and the engine performance (fps, lag, loading times) is poor. That might be bearable, but party AI is awful on a regular basis and sometimes party NPCs do things even if they've been directed not to (ie cast spells, close to melee range, etc). We were playing the campaign on "hardcore" mode and instead of making the enemy AI harder, it just magnifies the horrors of your party's bad AI. For example, hardcore mode enables friendly fire damage/effects for AOEs... and results in caster companions becoming TK'ing machines.

The plot had my interest, although trying to roleplay evil was mostly a lost cause - the "evil" options that we'd come across so far were almost entirely of the petty thug variety and the remainder were the bat**** insane type. Where's the options for a logical, calculating, evil doer?

*- I admit, I value good controls and camera more then most. If I'm fighting the camera to see what is happening and/or having to fight the controls to get my character(s) to do what I intend, I lose interest quickly. It kind of kills the immersion when you have to reload an encounter, because a member of your party took the long cut from point A to point B and in the process managed to attract the attention of a horde of enemies (this happened far too frequently in nwn2).

[Aequi]

ditto on noptov's bit...

I so wish Bioware had not let their baby go...

[Raveneye]

I haven't played multiplayer, so can't vouch for that part of the game, but I can say I've had zero of the problems you mention above in the single player campaign. It's been remarkably bug free for me.

I am running the latest patches though. Have you updated recently? They fixed A TON of stuff in a recent patch, like back in December/January I think...

[Tulenyre]

From what I heard (buggyness) I'm still waiting.. will probably pick it up in the cheapo bin when it reaches it.

Can you still create adventures like in NWN1 ?

[Shiz]

Yes you can. I read they made the module creation easier (and less flexible, probably).