NWN2 and Old School

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Tada.

I have revived my old account just to ask people thier opinion about the new RPG based in the world most of us love.

I would also like to share my opinion to older gamers whom might have been in the same era. NWN -The first one- was a game that utterly shocked and disapointed me, most people whom were looking forward to it were played BG2 at the time, which still happens to be my favourite RPG of all time.

Loading screens noted something like "The adventure doesn't stop with Baldur's Gate 2! Import your character to NWN." This loading message was removed on a later patch. "WOW Import this character to a new game?" I was very excited, and so I expected something that might resemble BG3 (Lets not go into BG3).

What I got instead was a 'Dodgey-looking even for the time' 3D near console system RPG. Now, I wont knock the system of NWN because some people seem to worship it, but it is really 0% like The infinity engine for BG1-2TOB and IWD. I played it, ever disapointed through the entire game, the stages were dull and lifeless. Two things I did like about NWN was the system (d&d 3.5), Armour, weapon graphics and SOME of the story. I just wanted to finish this heap, and I did at lvl16. With Blackisle down, I thought I would never see a great or gripping RPG, ever again.

A few dulls were released that I was interested in. Lionheart...erm, and some nice strat RPGs for Ps2, but there were totally in a differet genre to what BIsle had created. I turned away from every crappy RPG made inbetween this time, played some Oblivion, then I saw NWN2...

The screenshots looked impressive, a more vamped up system was appealing, and I heard this time, you could control more than 1 character with a dodgey AI character. Wow! And whos making! I scanned the newsflash... Atari... again Noo.

Okay, so I got the game a few weeks ago, and I play it whenever I am home. Here is what I think

The graphics is the first thing anyone has to comment on, I core-duoed up my PC with the latest equipment front and back, the game runs perfect and yet it still looks...like ****! Lets be honest, did they have two different teams on this game for graphics?

Armour, Lighting, Shadow and Bloom placement is fantastic! Some of the best I've seen that rivals PS3 textures and effects on highest specs. Then you have the faces....??? What the hell happened? My guy looks like he should be the mascot for Nintendo64, Half orcs have nice textures, so do dwarves, what happened to everyone else? Im sorry but I need a character that doesnt look like his face was sanded off, then got two buttons stuck to his head for eyes.

The engine IS buggy, characters dissapear from view and appear stuck in a wall that I walked past 30seconds ago. The cutscenes are horrid with people walking out of view, etc etc etc. There is such a lack of detail in the smaller things too, Character's faces dont follow the person they are looking at. So when a dwarf character talks to me, he's look at my Half-orc's crotch. I have to mention how bad heads and faces look in this game just once more... horrible.

Sometimes the game is just UGLY, towershields look like ****, towershields stick through my halforc's shoulder plate. Why is the lighting all the same on my companions, but not on my? Why am I MUCH darker and unlit?

There are small things that (if anyone gave a crap about this game when they were making it) could have been fixed up or worked on. Like dodging of moves, character fighting interation animation, in cutscenes, characters skip frames to their normal stance after an animation. I mean your probably thinking "jeez he's picky." But what about all the other high spec games were are seeing on PS3? Its got nothing to do with the fact it's a PS3 or graphics, they are putting REAL effort into programming for their games!

While I have cameras spinning out of control and appearing inside my character's body when I go around corners, ps3 has games where footprints stay in mud and change the terrain, wood and glass breaks as it should, bodies fly and smash things like real physics, smoke and dust looks real.

ALL my ranting aside, I am having fun, despite the feeling Atari didn't put much effort into this game. I am currently lvl12 and enjoying my character buffed in cool armour and effects.

I would like to say the game is Graphically nice, the system is nice (not the engine) and the story is gripping, but the game is not presented well, nor friendly.

Atari is just milking the license of this game, if the rights got sold to someone who cared, we might see much better. I just can't get over it, such lack of effort.

I will finish this game with more content, unlike the other crap titles Atari I bought. I would like to say "This is the best you have done Atari, but thats not enough, by far." I rate the game 7.5 out of 10 with a much higher 'addictive rating' . Can anyone expect better? What did you think?

 

Excellent Graphics. Good work on magic items and crafting is good. Some good henchman. Storyline not too bad but the ending is absolutely rubbish! And I hate selected haste in later patches compared to permanent haste!

 

I'll agree. While the graphics often just blow me away, other times I'm wondering, "man that looks like complete pants!" Spell effects and clothing are phenomenal, faces and such are very average.

I'm pleased they brought back BG style party interaction. It's just a whole lot better adventuring with mates!

 

I liked it, but I will agree with the bugs and the ending. However the ending is easely explained, thay want an expantion. Somethig to inspire you to buy more of their products... and it worked for me I'm sorry to say. I want the expantion badly.

 

You might want to try NWN again. Meaning NWN multiplayer.

A good NWConnections game, and suddenly NWN is a whole new game. It's not BG2, but in my opinion it's even better than BG2 after you've finished BG2 for the first time.

 

I say we forget all this new crap and get back to basics, With villains like Sarevok amd irenicus, in comparison to "The king of shadows" its easy to see what we should be playing... i still haven't finished NWN2 and its not cause i suck, its because it sucks, sucks all the enthusiasm for living right out of me.


BRING BACK IMPRISONMENT!!!

 

Great post, Vita Morte Cardios, I completely agree with you. Especially the creepy crotch dwarves part.

That's actually an interesting point. Think about Star Wars: replace Darth Vader with Jar Jar Binks and you get a crap movie. Most of the villains in these newer games are horrible. They're supposed to be the intimitating, but charming, nobles, people you feel honoured to kill, not b-class action villains.

 

The problem with the King of Shadows is that there's not so much of a prey-hunter relationship either way. You hear about some King of Shadows, but your immediate enemies are two: the githyanki and the Luskan renegades of Garius's, until about half-game and some 14 out of the 20 levels you will have achieved. Then, you get to learn a bit about the King of Shadows, but you deal with Garius again. And enter Ammon Jerro as whom you have thought to be the King of Shadows himself. The real King of Shadows is not so much a mystery as practically inconsequential. You may well reach level 20 before you even get to see him and it still looks like Black Garius is the real villain, even if KoS is technically his master. So the only enemy you remotely care for is Black Garius, whereas the big bad is just something you have to kill.

The interface isn't as bad as people would have made you think and the quickcast menu is great. What's bad is that shortcuts seem to be dropped without reason.

There are bugs everywhere. The inventory was supposed to be cleaner and neater than in NWN1, but isn't so. It's harder to make out between items or find what you're looking for. Sometimes characters will drop items instead of transferring them or will drop weapons when unequipping them even if there's enough free room in the inventory. Of course, you loose your shortcuts that way. Sometimes items will duplicate and at least one of the copies (or was it the original then) won't move.

Also, if you save while running into combat, if you reload, you'll be right in the middle of it. This is very annoying in certain critical fights and you have to reload before a cut scene or even dialogue and cutscene and redo the battle rather than picking up where you had saved.

 

Nwn 2 is not bad, but i did not finish it. I also stopped playing nwn1 during the words of power. But I did finish SoU and HotU several times and had a lot of fun with the mods like ravenloft or sex and the single adventuress.

A little deja-vu is next when the expansions and mods are at its peak that I return to nwn2.

 

In response to Cevs comment,
the beef with the user interface I have is first of all about party control. That's what xUI fixes for me, and effectively. It allows for quick party rallying and issuing of general and very basic commands like 'follow me', 'stand where you are', 'attack' and 'heal me'.

It allows me to make use of the AI without the fun experiences of them getting wiped out when they - as a result of them being in 'attack mode' - charge into any emeny in sight, no matter how numerically superior they may be. That didn't happen again with xUI. I know about puppy mode and so forth, but xUI is the most convenient fix for me. With that taken care of, the gameplay is fun.

Also, the radial menu from NWN was IMO clearly superior in terms of quick access to the various feats of a given character.

NWN2 graphics are sweet. Hardware reqs are insane.

 

Party control sucks big time, I grant you that. I have beef with that as well. I think I limited it to graphical interface in my mind. The GUI doesn't suck actually and I'll tell you something: even the menu doesn't suck and it doesn't seem to be inherently worse than radial in anything but perhaps the ease of use in multiplayer when you can't pause.

I don't know about higher difficulties, but that's where it matters to have a clear and clean communication channel with your party members, no? I suppose if you actually need them to heal you or something, it matters more. I normally just buff up into oblivion and then come down on the enemies, tearing them apart in less time than it took me to buff up.

Yup, the graphics are sweet if you have the kind of hardware. I haven't tested the lowest settings on my new hardware, but I suppose hardware support of certain things may matter. The game was very pretty as I played after the upgrade. Before the upgrade, I think I liked NWN1 graphics more.