Neverwinter Nights 2
Neverwinter Nights 2 returns you to the Forgotten Realms, one of the popular campaign settings of Dungeons and Dragons. Emerge from the tiniest of villages into a sweeping tale of danger and war, chronicling your rise from a peasant to a full-fledged hero of the Realms. The story takes place several years after the original Neverwinter Nights, and reintroduces popular characters and NPCs in a new storyline with new challenges.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars NWN-2 OC
The OC out of the box NwN was really amazing. It feels like a next Gen game and has a more custom story line then the first NwN.
5 Stars Good as the rest
If you liked the other NWN games then this will be no suprise that its fun. The story was interesting and the game play was good.
4 Stars A game that has improved with time
When Neverwinter Nights 2 was first released, it was riddled with many bugs that left it almost unplayable in certain areas. Fortunately, Obsidian Entertainment did their part and worked dutifully to fix the worst of the glitches and improve play experience. As a result, now is the time to try out Neverwinter Nights 2 if you were wary before. With most of the technical issues out of the way and a bustling community producing excellent user-created content, Neverwinter Nights 2 is finally reaching its potential.
Neverwinter Nights 2 offers several improvements over the original Neverwinter Nights. The most obvious of these improvements are the vastly enhanced graphics and the improved rules - Neverwinter Nights 2 uses the streamlined and revised “3.5″ edition of the Dungeons & Dragons rules and also allows a wide array of options that its predecessor did not, including new PC races and a wide array of prestige classes.
The biggest improvement of Neverwinter Nights 2 is the single player campaign. While the original Neverwinter Nights offered some interesting ideas, it fell flat in terms of story. The sequel goes back a little further than its predecessor, digging into the style of storytelling that made the Baldur’s Gate series so popular. While not as long and in-depth as that series, this game does present the best campaign we’ve seen in a D&D computer game since Baldur’s Gate 2. You now control a group of four to five characters, each with their own personalities. The world is large, with plenty of room for exploration. Most importantly, the dialogue and story are top-notch, with your character deciding the fate of the Sword Coast. The variety of quests is spectacular, ranging from traditional find an item/kill a monster quests to more elaborate adventures, such as defending yourself at a trial or improving and maintaining a full keep.
There are still a few minor technical glitches with Neverwinter Nights 2, but the show-stopping bugs of before are gone. Building custom content is perhaps a little more difficult than in the original Neverwinter Nights, since the toolset can now do so much more, but the community has still put together some spectacular products. Most significantly, the single player campaign alone makes this game worth the purchase price. With an interesting story and near limitless potential, Neverwinter Nights 2 offers an excellent computer role-playing experience.
2 Stars The Most Expensive Video Game I’ve Ever Bought
I bought this game a few weeks ago to run on my new PC. The PC is pretty sick - 4GB of RAM, dual processors, 256MB of memory on the *embedded* video card. Checked the requirements for this game and confirmed that I met (or exceeded) them. Installed the game, allowed the game to automatically set the graphics options, and tried to play it. I got SINGLE DIGIT FPS. Did some reading online (around 2 - 3 hours) and tried some troubleshooting. Ultimately, I had to change my processor affinity so that the game only runs on one, and crank ALL graphics settings down to minimum. The game still crawls at around 12 - 13 FPS.
It is absurd. All of my drivers are up to date and I have no problems running any other software. This game came out several years ago. The fact is that it is a complete system hog. There is absolutely no reason I should be having so many problems running it.
I finally decided to buy a new video card, so I dropped around $[...] on a new card. Obviously not the most crazy card out there but it was a significant improvement over the one I had. Installed it, updated drivers, launched NWN2, and the power consumption from the card forced a reboot of my PC. I bought a beefier power supply and installed it. Now the game runs passably well. I still can’t crank up all the eye candy. So the final bill was $[...] for the new game, $[...] for a new card, $[...] for the power supply, and $[...] for a DVI cable. What a bargain! $[...] for a game that came out 3 years ago.
Now I remember why I swore off PC gaming and bought a 360.
5 Stars Started off solid, got better with time.
There are basically two distinctive games in this box: a single player campaign made by pros, and the crazy patchwork world of online play created by users with the toolset.
It’s been a few years since the game released and I can say by now the online play has struggled. Significant technical difficulties have hurt its success a lot. This is disappointing, since online play has always been the more interesting aspect of NWN 1. Some servers are still out there and doing well, but the higher time consumption, difficulty of using the toolset, and technical hurdles have turned a lot of builders and players off.
I didn’t even play through the single player campaign in NWN 1, as it bored me to tears. This time around, the campaign grew on me. I haven’t beaten it yet, but I can’t put it down. The battles are too easy, the voice acting can be silly, crashes and glitches have been problematic, and yet… I like it. The side quests, neat features like building your own keep, wealth of dialog/character interaction, and crafting have managed to keep my interest where mediocre battles and questionable plot twists would have failed alone.
If you’re really into multiplayer DnD, this game is exactly what you want. Just don’t expect miracles from online play yet; maybe in another patch. But even if the online play doesn’t strike your fancy, the single player campaign is fairly entertaining. Pick up the Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir expansions for even better new campaigns. Between online and off, just about any fan of RPGs should find something they like.
