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Neverwinter Nights 2 - Worth a purchase?
Dhalphir
don't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
don't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
This is somewhat a specific question, but I looked around for a bit and couldn't find a thread for this in the first several pages of G+T.
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?
Basically what I'm asking is...for someone who enjoyed NWN1 is it worth buying NWN2 or is it one of those sequels better left alone like Deus Ex Invisible War?
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?
Basically what I'm asking is...for someone who enjoyed NWN1 is it worth buying NWN2 or is it one of those sequels better left alone like Deus Ex Invisible War?
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Well, if you enjoyed the relatively smooth multiplayer of NWN 1, you'll probably love the clunky, poorly designed multiplayer of 2. And by that, I mean hate.
If you love the deep, engrossing story of NWN 1, you'll probably like the equally enthralling and original story of NWN 2. Well, actually, on a serious note, NWN 2's single player campaign is better than 1's. But that's not exactly a ringing endorsement.
Also, the controls, camera, and UI redefine clunky.
Basically, what I'm saying is play Dragon Age, the game NWN 2 was trying to be. Or replay it.
The camera sucks. Worst third person camera ever devised. It's jerky and awkward all the time.
The graphics look bad. Characters have terrible appearances, really awful hair. Terrain also looks poor.
The performance is shit. For a game that looks that bad, it's a huge resource hog. Very unoptimized.
There's a ton of loot lag. You'll see a bag on the ground but it'll take about 4 or 5 seconds sometimes to get the option to loot it.
The weapons are mostly boring stuff like "longsword +1" or "bow +2."
Obsidian failed its saving throws* with this effort. Don't get it.
*saving throws are things you do in Dungeons and Dragons. Get it? It's kinda like... talking about a thing, but kinda talking about another thing? Hehe... yea.
I wanted to love NWN2, I was looking for a D&D fix and coming off a WoW addiction, but it's as clunky, badly optimised and painfull to play as has already been hinted at.
Perhaps I'll ask him if I can borrow it to give it a go then make a decision.
Just as a note, it is, under no circumstances, worth $50.
The main campaign is interesting, if long, some people really hate some NPC's. It's standard fantasy fare mostly.
See, this is why I'm kinda down on Obsidian. Back in the day, I was alright with KOTOR2. I mean, the story didn't really make a whole lot of sense, cause lots of stuff got cut out, but the gameplay was still fun, and the characters were interesting. So KOTOR2 was generally good. But this game... what a joke this game was.
This is also when I finally lost faith in game reviews. Cause you look at the reviews for this game, it got decently high scores:
IGN: 85
Gamespot: 86
PC Gamer: 84
What were these guys smoking?
This game is entirely why I'm down on Obsidian. You couldn't make a more generic fantasy game and wrap it in a more clunky package. As is, I don't think its ever been done before and will ever be done again.
Is it the worst game ever? Nope, not even close. Does it have any reason for existing? Not really.....nor is there really any reason to play it. It is just that uninspired.
NWN 2: Mask of the betrayer is actually pretty good and worth a look.
Seems worth a week of free play at the very least.
The base game blows, though. There wasn't, and still isn't much functionality to the editor, and the story is generic fantasy fare.
Mask of the Betrayer gets some crap for the seeming artificial timer the game has (It's easy to get past, actually.). But has a pretty entertaining story.
Storms of Zehir is pretty much what would happen if you mixed Oblivion's open-endedness with Neverwinter Nights. After a brief intro after you make your party, and you're set down in a town. Nothing big, right? Well, when you leave that town, instead of going to the field, you're put on an interactable overworld map. And provided you don't cheat and give yourself a max level party at character creation, the world is big, and incredibly dangerous.
From there you can go hunting for monsters in the jungle, look for quests (And there's alot. The game definitely replicates that "PnP session" feel in that regard.) in the murky depths of the jungle, look for resources to sell, and generally just dick around if you don't feel like following the main storyline.
There's also a fair amount of NPC interaction on the map, too. Guards will depart the towns, and hunt down monsters, and I think you can find other NPC adventurers doing their own thing. Monsters will attack caravans and any other friendly NPC's, and you can get your own trade company started up as well. If anyone bothered to mod the SoZ campaign I imagine that someone would have added a crap-ton more stuff to do as well.
One big thing to note is that, if in the future, you decide to play MP, you'll need all the expansion packs, as most servers updated themselves to be compatible with them. MoTB added much more functionality to map creation, and Storms of Zehir added in the overworld and some more minor functionality.
Overall, i'd say if you're going to get it, skip the base game, and just use that to install SoZ or MoTB. But don't pay full price for them. They're not exactly worth that much these days.
If you are just in it for the story, you can get NWN2 and Mask of the Betrayer for about $10 each. NWN2's story is average. MotB is good. Storm of Zehir, the second expansion, does not have much of a story or characters because it is party-based, kind of a throwback to the old Gold Box games.
Borrow NWN2, patch it fully, then decide. A lot of people's complaints have been fixed, or at least made less annoying, by the patches and expansions. SoZ added a new camera mode that has been patched into the original. The AI and performance is also vastly better than when the game first came out.
You can turn off the timer with a quick bit of script manipulation too, it's a mere google away.
This is truth. Mask of the Betrayer is actually pretty good as far as story goes. Biggest problem is that it is a continuation of NVN2 original campaign, so there are a few back story elements you will miss out on (some related to the main plot). Not that the OC was terribad, I would personally call it average. But the camera is truly a horrible thing to behold, especially since NVN2 came out after kotor2.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
That said, Dragon Age is better in every single way other than lack of multiplayer. EDIT: And loot. Fuck DA's dumb loot system and crappy medium and light armours.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Blaming things on the camera is unfair, you are letting the UI off the hook.
You know how smooth it is to switch characters in Dragon Age? To set them to do tasks, then micromanage your party? And how fun that is. NWN 2 is pretty much nothing like that. Controlling the party is a nightmare. Either you micromanage the whole thing, which isn't fun because its not user friendly. Or your party runs in circles provoking attacks of opportunity until they die. No middle ground.
And Mask of the Betrayer is the same engine as NWN 2, so, well, you have to be able to stomach it in order to get any sort of positive experience. I wasn't.
And I'm not someone who cares about little things, I can play Bloodlines unpatched and have no issues. Same with Fallout 2. I don't care about little bugs. But when the entire presentation of the game is such a mess, it really doesn't seem worth the effort.
That's why I just powergame the crap out of it and only use one character. Easy.
I know at least one guy was working on an "infernal planes" server, with SoZ's overworld implemented. It was going to have the characters taking on the roles of demonic entities, and would have a fully featured Hell that they could traverse to war and RP in. It actually sounded kind of badass.
Last I heard, about a year ago, another guy was working on a "Planescape" server too. Complete with multiple planes with explorable overworlds. The SoZ expansion really opened the game up to some interesting ideas developer-wise. It's just a shame alot of the players who are into that stuff didn't pay attention to the game after SoZ came out.
I don't compare NWN to DA, too much of a time gap for it to be fair IMO, like saying Mario Bros 1 sucked compared to Sonic 3 to me. When I compare NVN2 camera, I was so used to WoW's camera system, that everytime I had to slooooowly mouse turn or scroll the camera around, I wanted to punch a kitten.
While the AI's can be tarded, that really wasn't something that bothered me too much, I was able to overlook it.
Now, the walking and standing animations however.... Ewwww, they look like cavemen with downs. But that was just looks, I can ignore stupid shit as long as the story is entertaining.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
NWN 2 is 3 years older than DA. That's not really a long time. Especially given that none of my complaints have anything to do with graphics.
I mean, if you compare how clunky it is to an older 2d game (the time difference between BG 2 and NWN 2 is twice that of DA and NWN 2), its even more damning.
But whatever, OP's playing it for free. Can't really complain about a free demo.
Here is one really negative review... the review was of course banished by the magazine company. It's archived here. (5/10) http://www.penny-arcade.com/docs/nwn2review.html
I actually can't find any reference to a NWN2 Platinum edition on google except that lead to illegitimate sites. Was there ever even a Platinum edition released?
In any case, you can get NWN2 Gold (which is the original game + Mask of the Betrayer) for $29.99 new at Amazon, and Storm of Zehir new for $19.99, so you're coming out at $50 for both brand new and sealed from Amazon rather than used, even if it is only slightly used. So no, it's not worth $50 to get it used from your friend.
Actually, upon looking further it's cheaper if you buy each separately. NWN2 - $12.04, MotB - $11.08, SoZ - $19.99. You can of course get even better deals buying it new or used on Amazon marketplace if you want to look around there.
Edit: Just realized you're in Australia, so not sure about new/used game pricing there. If $50 is basically what you'd pay for a new PC game, I'd say it's not really worth it.
Yep, that Matt Peckham fella seems to speak for me. And wow, it didn't even occur to me until reading it, but NWN2 actually did come out after Oblivion.
And as for Oblivion. Thinking about NWN 2 makes me realise there were quite a few things about Oblivion that I actually liked.
There are some obvious issues with Oblivion that, looking back in hindsight, you can point to (forgettable main plot, no notable characters, waste of Patrick Stewart, level scaling) but playing through it for the first time, I thought it was a sublime experience.
Other than that it was pretty mediocre.
The NWN2 base campaign and Storm of Zehir are decent, Mask of the Betrayer is amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThczlnIF-MA
This post clearly indicates a deep, uncontrollable descent into madness.
To understand my standpoint, ask yourself, why suffering through a less then medicore 40+ hours "game" when you can simply enjoy all the good parts on Youtube or read the character banter on Dragon Age Wiki?
Oh, the madness has nothing to do with not liking Dragon Age. That's a matter of taste. The mind consuming insanity comes from then mentioning NWN 2, which is the same thing, but worse.
sublimely boring
o zing
Dragon age has very screwed mechanics, but D&D is more screwed to the nth degree.
Any system where the zenith of playing a melee character is autoattacking is sad imo