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I've only lately started with RPGs (the last one I played was Ultima VII), and I found myself drawn into NWN2 the second I started playing it.

Alright, so there are a few gripes (mainly with the camera), but overall, I think this is a really decent effort at putting forth a good game.

The way that the characters interact with each other is awesome, and I like this whole Influence thing.

Graphics aren't what I hoped, but then again, I have a mediocre system, although I can run 800x600 with effects maxed out.

I'm not that far along in the game, but I like it so far.

I was expecting an interesting story but instead got a sandbox in which to try new /different builds.
This game doesn't have....personality. IMO all good CRPG's involve the unravelling of a mystery and that mystery is you. This game put too much emphasis on the plot points and not enough on character development.

I'm in complete agreement with Ningengirai and Dottie, this game is really disappointing. So linear it's like playing in a straight jacket, absolutely no freedom of movement, straying from the yellow brick road is impossible. Which makes the warning your foster father gives you at the start of the game absolutely ludicrous.

As for not being able to get rid of your companions, you don't even have a choice whether they join or not in most instances. For example my lawful good guy wanted nothing to do with the Tiefling thief Neeshka (sp?), but could he avoid having her evil presence in the party (and labeling her as neutral was a joke), no. The dialogue 'options' were a complete farce, no matter what you choose the end result is she joins the party. In frustration I even went back to my save before the combat, and encouraged the guards to kill her, exactly the same result! Pathetic!

I'm not going to find out if all the encounters with NPC 'companions' are as bad as this, this game is too lousy to waste HD space on. Role playing game, my derriere!

Mor eand more disappointed

Reaching the end of the game, I can't say to be satisfied. The only thing that keeps me going is the thought of not wasting all the hours spent and not to see the end.

From this point there will be some spoilers.

Picking a rogue as main character proved to be a stupid choice. Why didn't I stick to the sorcerer or wizard? No answer to this one, but being a rogue doesn't provide possibilities to backstab. I mean to backstab some of the reavers or so. I can't do it since the dialog must be started, for this purpose I leave the shadows, and here it is. Why should I even talk to the reavers, if I know I have to kill them? They're evil, I'm evil, but they're on the other side.

AI is just catastrophic. During the battle my companions just run after the selected character. And I turned the puppet mode on. Looks like if the spellcaster is on the save distance, others think that there is no fighting and just follow. If my mind still works, I believe that this was much better in BG2.

In the fight: sometimes the "puppets" just don't work. There is no spell, no knockdown, no anything on them, but selecting the spell, chosing to fight, or simple moving them has absolutely no result. Incredible. And all the while they are being beaten down.

From my perspective, incredible hard fights. The dragons (the one alone or the two of 'em after Nalaloth or what's the name) are way to tough. No protection works, spells (hastening is ok) last to short etc. I tried like a lot of times, but with the dragons? I was lucky if the disintegrate worked at least a bit. If I understand correctly, this spell should ALWAYS inflict some damage, but this is not the case. Additionally, why do I have to have Zhjaeve in the group (if I do not have her, the cutscene doesn't start).

Well, I will finish the game, no matter what, but not completely satisfied.

I don't entirely understand the criticisms of this game as being too linear - it's far less linear than NWN1, which was a lot of cookie-cutter type tileset areas and straightforward plot development. True, you have to take the NPCs you're given here, like KOTOR2 (which was also a lot more linear than this game), and developers in general nowadays need to get it out of their heads that their job is to tell stories - it's not, their job is to let the player create their own story.

But now that the game is (somewhat) patched, I'd recommend it. I like the new subrace options, the item crafting, the graphics, the alignment roleplaying elements, I think the combat is pretty fun, and the potential for new modules is there as well.

I agree with alot of the criticisms on this thread!

The AI is terrible but I added a new thread because I couldn't find any info on it using the search function. Below is a link to that thread if anybody is interested. The thread is: Changing Party Marching Order___Can You?_SPOILER?? [url="http://www.gamebanshee.com/forums/neverwinter-nights-2-80/changing-party-marching-order___can-you-_spoiler-84319.html#post918439"]http://www.gamebanshee.com/forums/neverwinter-nights-2-80/changing-party-marching-order___can-you-_spoiler-84319.html#post918439[/url]



Kel
***

Hi! Probably there will be some miner spoilers.

I am now in the endgame, and so far I have two major problems with the game. Not with the cutscenes, which I really enjoyed, or with the bugs (although I could never finish neither Eleenie's nor Khelgor's quests), but the fights and the gems for enchanting. What is the meaning of enchanging armors or weapons, if you can't get the necessary gems? No blue diamonds, no jachints, only two rouge stones, and yes, one beljuril (spelling) in where? The Vale of Merdalain! Perfect. The other thing, that annoys me is the fight. Basicly, I don't like spending time with figths. Let's get on with it, then go. However sometimes the fights were way too easy (even I felt that), for example with the fire giants, and sometimes, no, many times were highly challenging, actually impossible.

SPOILER NOW!
Like the red dragon. Then came _two_ black dragons. WHY?
END SPOILER

And the game just kept going into more and more hack&slash. You can't go further if you don't kill those beasties, but you can't go further, because you can't kill those beasties!

SPOILER
There is the lizzard prophet. The Shadow Reaver with the five golems.
END SPOILER

This time I got so annoyed, then I left the game, did the Broken Sword, then came back and tried again. I think, it was simply sheer luck, that I could win at the end. It is so frustraging. And now I am againt stucked with SPOILER three Shadow Reavers. END SPOILER No idea what to do with them. What's good in trying battles for 834th times? Still die? It just ruins everything.

Makes me Worry

All these opinions really make me wonder should I start this in the first place? I'd say that is really bad IMO.

Is there somebody working on a third party add-on for the game remove a tad of bugs? Like that frigging AI I hear complained about?

enjoying the game

The first game I started I had a bug in Chapter 2 where I couldn't get out of town... but decided to start a new game as I was not liking the warlock too much. New game is great so far...NO bugs... enjoying the heck out of it!
Breez

"All these opinions really make me wonder should I start this in the first place? I'd say that is really bad IMO."

Well, waste of money to not start something that you bought.

I think this game is definitely worthwhile; I've ran into a gamestopping bug myself, but I think it's a testament to the game that it didn't frustrate me enough to not want to start over.

Agreed kyle.

I was mainly wondering thought should I wait for few months to get official and unofficial patches for it.

With the amount complains about bugs I would say I'll do it.

A definite improvement over the original, it's good to have the people from Black Isle back in the game.

I would hesitate to label it a classic like Baldur's Gate 2 or KoTOR, but it has it's own charm, certainly the best fantasy single player RPG in years. There were a few hesitant moments, certainly much of the game was fairly tried and tested, and the Module Editor has lost the 'user friendly' style but it's a well rounded game. If most of the bugs are patched out (I've not played since the 1.04 patch) then it should be great.

Now all we need are some expansions and Models with original stories and I'm laughing.

I’m loving it. It really feels like a good mix between NWN 1, Baldur’s Gate and, I don’t know, Dark Ages of Camelot or something. It's the most fun I've had playing a computer game in a long time.

There’s no point to comparing it to the original NWN 1 campaign, but I’m going to do it anyway. There’s no gauntlet style of wading through 10000 escaped prisoners to search 10000 barrels for treasure. There’s no symmetrical plotlines that felt, correctly, like they were individual components created by different designers. There’s no scrolling through some 50 page dialog by Tomi Undergallows so I can get his plus one ring.

NWN didn’t work for me. It felt like a bad arcade game. Sure, I loved Adam Miller’s story and enjoyed Hordes of the Underdark, but that was all despite the overall game engine. Plus NWN 2 has cool characters- a crazy fighter type, a perky female thief, a serious elven druid….er OK that was all stolen from Baldur’s Gate, but hey, it works.

Two complaints.

1. I wish there was a DND rules Nazi option. Get rid of healing kits. Let me decide how many points I can power attack for instead of assigning it. Let me charge. Dump parry. I refuse to use it because it isn’t in the original game. Oh, and when people die, don’t have them get back up two seconds later- make me haul their body to a temple like I had to in Temple of Elemental Evil. NWN 2 represents a good balance in terms of appealing to DND folk and newcomers, but I still want the exact. I loved the ToEE engine, but the game was small and the town interaction was horrifying.
2. The only part of the campaign, so far, that has bored me somewhat was the city guard stuff. Not a bad script, but why not give the 2,000 thugs you fight different titles like “Thug scout” and "Thug bruiser" or something. It started to feel a little bit like the escaped prisoner zone. But other than that, great job.

Ugh.

I agree with pretty much all the issues pointed out by Helix, Ningengirai and Dottie.

The AI.
Some people complain about the AI being too dumb, I complain about it being there altogether and being forced upon the player. The first thing I always do when a NPC joins the party is to deactivate its default script, so I can direct its each and every move manually. Computer AI just isn't good enough: it's inefficient and simplistic and the only reason I can think of why gamers tolerate it, is because the game is terribly easy and doesn't require tactical planning or a well thought approach to the battles. The very least Obsidian could do was giving the player a consistent option to fully control the party, without this irksome ****y-footing around to simulate it.
Try playing some BG2 mods like Tactics and Ascension while letting the AI manage your party...

The control system
Terrible. Seriously. It's perhaps the most userunfriendly interface I've ever tried in any game. The first NWN sucked donkeyballs, but at least the radial menu was the one thing they got right. In NWN2 it took me a while just to figure out how to stop the other party members from tagging right behind my tail. With an effort, but I could still work around the atrocious control system, if it just let me do what I want to do, which it sadly doesn’t.
And what's this? No formations? And I can't even select them all at once and have them move together. Bleh.

The rules.
No permanent death? NPCs coming right back from the dead (no, wait, they were just "knocked down"... jeez) when the battle is over? Resting in six seconds? No fatigue? Free heal everytime you enter or exit an area? What the fish?!
The rules have been kiddified and dumbed down to an extreme and the game just feels like a cakewalk arcade. I want D&D, not its "for dummies" version.

As Helix has noted, NWN2 has been thought primarily as a multiplayer platform, and that means the OC and the gameplay were bound to be watered down and botched in pretty much every aspect. I couldn’t care less about multiplayer and persistent worlds loaded with kids blathering about their l33t skillz, what I want is a huge, detailed gameworld with deep and interesting characters, challenging battles and compelling plotlines. Like Baldur’s Gate 2 and Torment. As far as I’ve seen, NWN2 has very little of this.
It should be noted that, even so, it’s head and shoulders above the load of crap NWN was, but still…

Are these really the same people who created Torment and the Baldur's Gate saga? Guess I was still believing in Santa.

Most of the things that annoy me have already been mentioned, AI and interface being the hardest to swallow, or get used to. Here's a few more (unavoidable comparison with NWN1 expected) :

Speed.
And I mean, simply, how slowly your character moves. This may not be entirely the Game's fault, it propably has to do with:
1) System requirements. Since I used the same system for NWN1 and 2, I was bound to experience some lagging.
2) The fact that last time I played NWN1, I played a monk. An epic and permanently hasted monk, no less, and she moved so fast it was ludicrous.
3) The 8 seconds delay between attacks is driving me mad. Really mad. OK, it's a DnD rule, but for crying out loud, I keep watching characters making a very fancy slashing move very very fast and then... holding the weapon up in the air and panting for the rest 7.5 seconds. It's ridiculous. If they wanted to keep the rule, they should make it at least seem realistic - because that's what the rule was made for. A compromise between realism and something playable.

The Map
Someone said the map is useless, because you can't get lost. Well, personally I can and in fact do get lost anywhere, anywhere at all, real life and Faerun alike, and that blasted moving map doesn't help at all. Where did I enter from again? Where is the exit? Where is the road? I know having a "modern" map is frowned upon and considered meta-gaming of sorts, but it's so useful. I'd like a map like this site's Walkthrough maps, but opening gradually.

Travelling
And if the map is confusing for large areas (for me), the small areas offer you no choice whatsoever. You will go there, because there's nowhere else to go. So why are we merrily stomping around fields and marshes and cities and not simply select Encounter 1 or Encounter 2 from a menu and get done with it?

Influence
I like the Influence concept and I'm all for consequences for your actions. I generally prefer role playing even at the expence of XP - not too many of them, though . But for a game advertised as "playable by all alignments", I find it utterly disgraceful that role-playing as you like may cost you a whole bunch of quests without providing in exchange something else, that fits your character better.

Irreversible Choices
I can't describe this theoretically, so spoilers from now on:

Spoiler

I'm playing a chaotic good rogue, let's call her the Persuader, who prefers to talk herself out of a battle or any complication, if at all possible. At Docks District, she must decide if she will join the Watch, or Moira. Now, this character is indeed good and not at all selfish, but has authority issues, OK? Chaotic, big time. So she talks to Moira's guy and accepts his job "to hurt people", and then Moira's bribing quest as well because, well, she doesn't like the military. But she doesn't hurt anyone at all - except already hostile rival thugs. She persuades / bluffs / lies to every single soul and avoids bloodshed entirely. Then Moira tells her to burn down the Watch. At this point, I would like my character to be able to refuse, attack, or just say "yes madam" and then spill the beans to Cormick. But I can't speak to Cormick anymore.

(Spoilers end here) And thus, due to poorly designed irreversible choices, a role-playing game isn't allowing my character to proceed unless she does something completely out of character. It's a shame...

Now, despite all this, I am totally hooked on NWN2. Stopped to post this, and now I'm running back. It frustrates me in every conceivable way, but I think I love it. Don't ask me why. I may write another big post, concerning the bright side of life, at a later time. Perhaps.

update

Neeska doesn't bug me that much. But yeah, Qara and Grobnar are really annoying. Especially Grobnar. I don't know that anyone could make it through the game with him in their party without turning the volume off.

Also, the person who coded the AI for druid shapeshifting needs to be shot. The reaction to all dangerous situations seems to be to polymorph into a badger.

Zogbert wrote:Also, the person who coded the AI for druid shapeshifting needs to be shot. The reaction to all dangerous situations seems to be to polymorph into a badger.

AI is RPGs has almost always been a joke, and always will be. It's rules-based, not learned behavior, or some combination of the two. Rules can work very well in small, restricted situations, where there are few variables; Betrayal at Krondor is a good example. But when you have dozens of spells, dozens of weapons, armor, and items, and many different kinds of NPCs involved with differing characteristics, the AI simply can't even begin to approach the ability of humans to analyze, process, and apply strategic thinking.

And when the AI has been made better on occasion, as in BG2/ToB, it's been rejected because producers felt it made the game "too difficult." We know it wasn't, just that it gave a very good fight, because the developer who made that code subsequently released it as a mod.

So don't blame NWN's development team for this one. Blame all the kiddies who blindly accept poor AI in such titles as KotoR, Fable, Morrowind, NWN, IWD, etc.

Like most others, my biggests problem is the companion AI and not being able to position party members. With the quick bar I found I'm only using 3 consistently, so that the remaining 7 are redundant. My biggest beef is with the cutscenes. After playing through 3 times, they get tiresome & irritating, like the one in the temple before meeting Lorne. Everytime you get killed, you go through the whole thing again because you can't save between the temple and battle.

Other than that, the game is very good. Graphics are superb, depending on the time of day the outside scenes really show the sun and other weather conditions. Game play moves along good, but more portals, i.e. in the watch buildings and NW castle, or even a portal spell would help in area movement.

Overall 8.5 out of 10.

I'm enjoying the game at the moment with a barbarian, but i'm only at lvl 8, and only a bit through the watch quests, and i can see the annoyances. I mean the henchmen are overly agressive, and sometimes totally dumb. Also, you CAN'T compare the game to KOTOR or BG2 as they are made by different people, and are entirely different games. One is a more roundly balanced sci-fi RPG, and the other is a CRPG, if the term is correct. I reckon NWN2 is an action RPG masquerading as a proper RPG. But, it sure is fun.

Cronstadt wrote:The rules.
No permanent death? NPCs coming right back from the dead (no, wait, they were just "knocked down"... jeez) when the battle is over? Resting in six seconds? No fatigue? Free heal every time you enter or exit an area? What the fish?!

That was my biggest beef with NWN1, and the reason I never got out of Act 1. With NWN2, I am trying to play it under my own (imposed) "hardcore" rules where you can't rest except when you get to the end of a level. I'm not as worried about the imbalance from the free heal as I am from the spells you get back after resting. By not resting until the end, every hit that your character takes is that much more painful. There are some maps (like the Warehouse) where it was pretty impossible to do this, but at least resting as little as possible makes the game more challenging and "real". Also, doing this makes you realize how rare that heal potions and healing kits are... there really isn't enough healing to avoid resting all together.

I've just entered act 2, and am enjoying the game. I agree that you end up using 2 or 3 party members consistently, but my plan is that the next time I play through (as an evil character) I'll pick a different group.