Neverwinter Nights 2 - Worth a purchase?

nessin

I may have missed it, so forgive me if its been said, but why in the world is no one touting the enormous amount of player-made content for NWN2? I think there is even more for NWN1, but there is still A LOT for NWN2. Ignoring all the official material, you could probably sink a crazy amount of time into the various player built modules, including several high quality ones. Definitely not 50 bucks worth since you can probably get it cheaper, but still worth getting just for that alone.

Sorenson

It's been a while since I last looked around for modules, but I think the reason's a three-way of nod quality varying greatly (though often for the low-end as with any user content) the biggest site for finding NWN2 adventures having a shittastic search system that makes it a pain to find something good and that you like (why the fuck was catagory condensed into fucking player amounts instead of the actually-useful adventure types like in the NWN1 search?) and that it's even money when you boot up a mod that the developer is going to try to force some hot chick down your pants - granted, you had a lot of that in NWN1, but the lack of mods has a distilling effect, so to say.

EDIT: I will say this for the OC, it actually did make some of your skill and background choices worth a damn - I actually got to use the Lore skill for something other than instantly identifying loot! It let me solve or outright bypass puzzles! It opened up new branches of dialogue and the verbal smackdowns that came with them! Granted, Storm of Zehir and probably MOTB did the same things, but coming from the first games where dialogue was diplomacy or nothin' that was a very nice change.

EDIT: Ugh, now I remember one of the reasons I hated looking for new modules, stupid fuckers who package the hakpacks in seperate files from the actual mod (or worse, require some god damn finite and specific general-purpose hak from the hak section). BUNDLE THIS SHIT INTO ONE ARCHIVE YOU FUCKS.

EDIT: And pretentious assholes who feel the need to split shit up into fucking trilogies or sagas or whatever the fuck. ONE MODULE, ONE STORY, GOD DAMMIT.

EDIT: AND DON'T FUCKING RELEASE SHIT UNLESS IT'S ACTUALLY FINISHED AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Fiaryn

Sorenson wrote: »

It's been a while since I last looked around for modules, but I think the reason's a three-way of nod quality varying greatly (though often for the low-end as with any user content) the biggest site for finding NWN2 adventures having a shittastic search system that makes it a pain to find something good and that you like (why the fuck was catagory condensed into fucking player amounts instead of the actually-useful adventure types like in the NWN1 search?) and that it's even money when you boot up a mod that the developer is going to try to force some hot chick down your pants - granted, you had a lot of that in NWN1, but the lack of mods has a distilling effect, so to say.

Here let me help:

Download Dark Waters. Play that. Profit.

I just reinstalled NWN2 so I'm about to see if there's anything else worthwhile for NWN2. I'll report my discoveries. Or lackthereof.

Mild Confusion

One thing I always kinda wanted to see was someone remake all three NVN1 campaigns with part 2 graphics. While the only campaign I really thought was fine was Hordes of the Underdark, I'd still like to see the other two.

Dissociater

I still love NWN2. Worth a purchase, but it's not worth $50 for a used copy.

jot

Mild Confusion wrote: »

One thing I always kinda wanted to see was someone remake all three NVN1 campaigns with part 2 graphics. While the only campaign I really thought was fine was Hordes of the Underdark, I'd still like to see the other two.

I'm going to admit it
I think Hordes of the Underdark is one of the best CRPGs I've ever played.
Shadows of Undrentide is pretty decent too.

Vic

A friend of mine has been trying to get me interested in a persistent server for Neverwinter nights 1, but getting the game with all the expansion packs here in Sweden at a decent price is looking pretty much impossible. The best alternative I've seen so far is Amazon but including shipping that comes to as much as a full-price game which is a bit steep for me.

Dhalphir

I finally realised what makes the camera in some games so bad.

When you walk under a roof, or something, and the camera automatically zooms in to follow.

On some games, it just swaps straight to the close view, which disorients you and is distracting.
On others, it zooms in. Quickly, but smoothly. That is a far superior method as it lets you keep your bearings.

Dissociater

Dhalphir wrote: »

I finally realised what makes the camera in some games so bad.

When you walk under a roof, or something, and the camera automatically zooms in to follow.

On some games, it just swaps straight to the close view, which disorients you and is distracting.
On others, it zooms in. Quickly, but smoothly. That is a far superior method as it lets you keep your bearings.

The best are the ones where the roof simply becomes transparent, and allows you to see through.

Reboot

The main problems I had with NWN2 were:

1. Terrible graphics. It's an improvement from NWN, but it's still pretty poor. In some ways it's worse because NWN seldom require you to zoom in to the level where you'll actually SEE the imperfections.

2. Graphic lag despite the terrible graphics. To be fair, a relatively competent GFX card these days should be able to handle the game smoothly.

-

I like the NWN2 vanilla, though the expansions were better.

I like the vanilla mainly because of the characters, and I wished Obsidian could build more on them; it seems like every party member has a history to share but you never had a chance to dwell deep enough to learn them.

Spoiler:

Sand is excellent; would love to know more about his time with Luskan.

And I like Neeshka regardless of that squeeky voice. Imoen's voice from BG wasn't that much lower. She has a whole demonic background that needs to be filled up.

What about Qara? I'm intrigue by exactly where her sorcorous powers come from, or from whom.

What about Bishop and his dark past?

Even Grobnar's interesting, if they expanded on that Wendersnaven thing!

IceBurner

NWN2 is only worth getting as a prerequisite for playing Mask of the Betrayer, or playing some player-made custom modules. Mostly Mask of the Betrayer though. It's the fantasy RPG I've always wanted to play. Not warmed-over Tolkien. An honest-to-freaking goodness atypical setting that feels like it's truly another world, in some other plane of existence, and a story that's gripping, with characters that as worth investing in as they are invested in the plot themselves. Choices that really matter, and almost always only in shades of gray, rather than saintly white or pryomaniac-nun-beating-orphan-strangling-puppy-kicking black.

The original NWN2 campaign is exactly the opposite of this, hitting every horribly tired cliche such that it's beating the dead horse's scattered flesh bitlets with a club the size of a building. Attempting to play it was insulting to my intelligence, and it's ridiculous that Mask of the Betrayer managed to pick out a few key elements from this made-for-TV (during the writer's strike) fantasy movie and build something incredible from them.

PolloDiablo

Grobnar was terrible you take that back.

Reboot

Except for Wendersnavens. Everyone loves 'em!

Raggie

I'd like to know where someone has been able to buy a platinum package of NWN2, because I can't find it anywhere. The only places Google finds are torrent sites. The only compilation set being sold and gets a mention in the official site is the gold edition with the first add-on.

Roshin

Dhalphir wrote: »

One of my friends from work has Neverwinter Nights 2 Platinum pack, and he hasn't played it in ages, and we got to talking about NWN the other day and he offered me his platinum pack for $50. Is NWN2 favourably compared to NWN1, or is it not really worth $50?

To answer your question, no, it is not in any way worth $50. If you really want it, you should be able to find a new copy for considerably less.

As has already been said, the game has a ton of issues. Worst is probably performance. It ran like crap when it was released and if you think it has been patched up properly, you're wrong. I recently ran it on a new machine and in theory it should have been flying along, but it was the same unoptimized shit as before. The graphics are better than those in NWN1, but not that much better. It is a remarkable ugly game (for it's time) and the animations are equally bad.

In general, the design is genuinely poor and comes dangerously close to being sub-standard at times. MotB gets praised for not being as shit as the basic game, but that's not really saying much.

big l

Yeah, in regards to "price it is worth", I'd offer the guy $20 and let him bargain you up to $30 if you are into fantasy RPGs. No way you should pay anything like original price. MotB is worth ~$25, the original campaign is probably not worth the time it would take to play it. Read Lt. Danger's pretty darn excellent LP if you want to know what happens and don't want to devote all your leisure time for a month or two.