Neverwinter Nights Two Review

I have built worlds.

I am a veteran of NWN1. I had made the Aurora Toolset an extension of my mind; if I could imagine it, I could build it. I learned a lot about game and community development for an online game and made many mistakes as well as achieved great adventures. Looking foreword, I had hoped Neverwinter 2 would build on that. Obsidian, however, has let me down. The theme of this game is: Too many resources utilized to accomplish too little.

The OC

I had low expectations from the out of the box campaign, and those were even undercut. I began my adventure by creating my character, happy to see Drow built in as a subrace. Character creation has improved from its predecessor from the angle of stats and variety of race and class, but it has lost ground in appearance customization.

To designers of character creation screens in all genres: For the love of god, nobody notices the subtle facial features alterations. If you are going to give us limited appearance customizability, the face is NOT the area you want to focus on.

Now we go into the adventure itself. Why does every DnD videogame begin the same? Why am I some orphaned ward under someone’s care? Why are the starting events and quests always so absolutely boring and “every day?” I am tired of being cast as the average Joe who follows the cliché path to greatness. I’d much rather have other clichés. “You and some friends are gathered at the inn, when a mysterious person approaches, asking for help..”

Okay, let’s get through this intro level and on to some real action. After I drop all my graphics options to nothing. That doesn’t help. The game is choppy at its best. My system is up to snuff, I just got a new processor a year ago.. let’s check the system requirements..

3.0 ghz!?! WTF?

Let it be known: I am a gamer. My system is custom built for the games I play. I can run anything on the market.. except NWN2. This game will cost you more than the box price. You will also be spending 3-400 dollars on a new CPU and motherboard. I’ll check the prices again in a year. I fear that by the time anyone is able to actually run this game, it will be obsolete.

Back to my game. So I wrangle my way thru the underperforming intro area. My fear inspiring drow gets responses that vary from indifference to, “Eek! A dark elf! Oh it’s just you.” Two tagalong NPCs continue to think I care about this stupid fare and all I want to do is ditch this little town and find some adventure.

So I participate in the little contests to get it over with, and crash just as I’m about to save. I do the intro and crash before I can save it three times. Then I give up. My machine will not run this game without crashing. If you want to hook me, you’ve failed.

So, on to the toolset.

This is the part I love. More options. More room for creativity. It’s just too bad nobody has a system that can run this game. I like the way you build in NWN2. There’s too many options for the novice, but that’s fine by me, who has years of experience in the preceding toolset. Here is the game’s potential. Here I can create a world that avoids all the obvious mistakes found in the OC. My only problem, I can’t run anything because the game’s system requirements are off the chart and out of anyone’s league. I can’t test anything to see if it works. If I host it, no one is able to play.

So I approach the tools with a project in mind, and ask myself, “What can I accomplish here that I couldn’t in NW1?” I ponder this a bit, as I play with the new layout. The answer I eventually come up with: not much new can be done. I can make prettier zones (at the sacrifice of anyone even having a machine that can play in them. Again, not a good trade off). All the script commands and object properties amount to more of the same with a graphics upgrade. That’s it. No real new functions caught my attention. I still can’t instance areas. The only thing mechanically new and interesting is that I can edit the walk-mesh—and I hate games that have to rely on walk-meshes (as opposed to physics-based games that allow you to jump, swim, and fall off cliffs). So as I consider whether or not it’s worth it to do the work to convert my old world to the new client, my answer is, “NO.” I gain no new functionality and actually loose the ability to play if I do so.

Obsidian, you blew it. In a year or two, I might upgrade my machine, but by then, I hope someone with more experience makes something better.