Should I play this?

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...and if I do, should I use any mods for the first play through? I'm almost embarrassed to admit I've never played the game (or its sequel), but it's gotta be dirt cheap by now...

 

It's amply good enough. I recall I liked it at the time. Story is nice, too. My chronic re-starter syndrome had more to do with me than the game. SoU is nice, as for the other add-on, iirc HoU - never finished it. I think it is very much worthwhile.

And aside of it being dirt cheap, it will run well even on older machines.

 

It was dirt cheap even years before now, but yeah I'd definitely give it a swing. The OC is not terribly good, especially the first two chapters consist of lots of repetitive fetch quests, but the characters are fairly well done and the story picks up from chapter 3 onward.

Shadow of Undrentide is generally considered to be a big step forward from the OC, though I must admit I've never really played it much. The second expansion, Hordes of the Underdark, is by far my favorite of the original modules and is definitely worth a playthrough.

Like Tal said, the prestige classes, feats and skills introduced with both expansions are also retro-actively available in the earlier campaigns, so I'd definitely install everything at the same time. Be sure to get the latest patch also (1.69, I believe).

There are no mods that I think are necessary to add on a first playthrough - and the ones I would recommend are stand alone modules anyway, not altering the content or gameplay of the original campaigns.

/edit
Some great modules I would recommend to play after playing the original campaigns (or instead of the original campaigns, if you don't like any of them) are Darkness over Daggerford and Tales of Arterra: The Lost and Tales of Arterra: The Awakening.

 

Somehow I liked SoU best. Never completed the OC but I did finish the two expansions.

 

You can easily get the game dirt cheap from gog.com. As for playing it ive never finished any of the offical mods or any of the player made ones eaither but I would suggest you install CEP tho as it adds a lot of stuff and is needed for a ton of mods to work. I would install version 1 then version 2 on top of it becuase some mods require version 1 and wont work if version 2 is the only one installed. at least thats what happened to me when i was tryng to play a remake of diablo in nwn1. I would suggest playing Tales of a Mage if you want something different as well. You can find a lot of info from http://www.nwvault.ign.com/

 

Thanks guys. This one is next on my list after I finish Wild Arms 3 and Starcraft. I'll probably buy a physical copy, though. Gog is OK, but I like having a physical copy.

 

I too am looking to give this game a try. GOG.com has it The Diamond Edition includes the original Neverwinter Nights and three official expansion packs: Shadows of Undrentide, Hordes of the Underdark and Kingmaker.



So how does it compare to Baldurs gates I & II, and also to Icewind Dale ?



I have been playing both of them off and on. I get tired of one and switch to another.

My biggest problem is I read a thread about someone who solo'd with either a thief or a Mage, or a Cleric/Mage, so I end up restarting the darn game.

Or in the case of the IWD game I have going now, I am heading to Dorns Deep with a Fighter/Thief and a Cleric/Fighter.

I guess I just enjoy running with the smaller parties.

 

Well, in the OC you only have a single companion, while in SoU and HotU you can have 2, so I guess that means you'll have small parties if that's what you wish for. There are some modules out there that give you more party members, though. You don't control your party directly - you only control the PC directly - but you can give your teammates general instructions, like to stay put, to attack, to open a lock, that kind of stuff. They are generally optional, though, so you could solo if you wanted to.

So you don't have the party based combat as much in NWN as you had in BG and IWD, but instead control your PC directly from a sort of third person view. You can expect a leveling system more similar to IWD than to BG, as it's based on 3.5 edition rules.

I did like the game quite a lot, especially to think up a character build and to work it out while going through a couple of modules with them. Mostly I played HotU and a few mods from the NWNVault. In that respect it has much the same kind of replay value as the BG series, where I usually decide I want to create a certain build and then play through the game with it.

By the way, Kingmaker is generally not considered an expansion pack, but what they called a premium module. For instance, the OC was split up into 5 modules (I think), and HotU was split up into 3 modules, so the content in a premium module would be less than you would expect in one of the expansions.

 

NWN forever!

I started playing NWN nearly 11 years ago (!) and still play it weekly (all solo; I've never played on a server. Yet.) on my Linux box. The Linux engine is a gem, playing the game at full speed even on a single-core laptop, and uses all the nwvault mods. The only thing I have to watch out for is capitalized .hak filenames, since Linux is case-sensitive, so they all need to be renamed. The only exception to that is the BioWare mods' own .hak files (interesting). I, by the way, solo as a monk. With a katana.

Gads, but this game is still worth playing, on any system. The plethora of superb adventures available on nwvault makes this a game that has, as the phrase goes, legs. LONG legs.