[donaldscrankshaw] Donald: Neverwinter Nights Review

[Email subscription to blog articles]

Posted by Donald:
Neverwinter Nights Review
http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com/posts/1169613927.shtml


   I promised to do this a while ago, but I never got around to it. I
   finished up Neverwinter Nights 2 right around Christmas time, so it
   behooves me to give my opinion of it.
   Anyone who's familiar with Neverwinter Nights knows that it's the
   descendant of Baldur's Gate, a classic Dungeons and Dragons game. It's
   not the direct sequel. That would have been Baldur's Gate II, a game
   which used a modified version of Baldur's Gate engine, but which was
   overall much better designed, with a much more interesting storyline.
   As the second Baldur's Gate is to the first, so is the second
   Neverwinter Nights to the first. The original Neverwinter Nights was
   an opportunity to show off the new 3d engine. Graphically, though,
   there wasn't much to show off. 3d engines at that time gave you a lot
   of freedom, but they just didn't look very good. Worse still, the game
   was lacking. The designers designed the game to be as non-linear as
   possible, but in practice, that meant that the storyline was weak.
   Typically, you'd travel to a new area, and be given the command to
   gather up the four pieces of some artifact or other. You could do so
   in any order, and then it was on to the next area. A worse fault was
   the missing party system. You could recruit a single cohort, but you
   had no control over their actions or their advancement. Nor did they,
   or any other NPC, have a fully developed personality for you to
   interact with. The problem was that the game was designed primarily
   with multiplayer in mind, and as with most such games, the
   single-player felt tacked-on.
   Thankfully, Neverwinter Nights corrects these problems. There's a much
   stronger storyline, and though this makes the game more linear, you
   still have some freedom in how you pursue your goals. Rather than a
   single cohort, as in the original Neverwinter Nights, you can have up
   to 5 characters in your party (including yourself), and these
   characters have distinctive personalities and interesting
   perspectives. The game borrows the influence system from Knights of
   the Old Republic, where your actions affect what the party characters
   think of you, and this influences how they behave. It's even possible
   for characters for whom you haven't built up sufficient influence to
   betray you. The ability to have a lot of characters in your party also
   means that there's plenty of interparty interaction, often calling on
   the player to act as referee, or favor one character over another,
   thus gaining influence with one while losing it with another. And you
   ultimately recruit characters representing nearly every base class,
   most of whom will wait for you at your home base while you're joined
   by the ones you need. Sometimes I'd go for a well-balanced, dungeon
   raiding party, while at other times I chose for pure offense. It all
   depended on what you were facing. Overall, this was one of the most
   enjoyable aspects of the game. On the downside, while you control your
   characters' leveling and actions, you can't directly control what
   classes they take. This means that the prestige classes are only
   available to the main character.
   Prestige classes are character classes which are a little bit more
   powerful than the regular ones, but which have requirements before you
   can take them. Some of them combine the most important aspects of two
   classes (Arcane Trickster, which combines Rogue and Wizard), while
   others take a character archetype to an extreme (Dwarven Defender,
   which helps dwarves to stand firm against incredible odds). Most of
   them are taken from the D&D 3.5 rulebook, but there are some new ones,
   and some which are strangely missing (there's no mystic thurge, for
   those who want both arcane and divine spells).
   One aspect of the game which I mentioned in another post occurs around
   the midpoint, where your character is given charge of a ruined keep to
   repair, restock, and defend. This I considered great fun, as it gave a
   strategy element to the RPG game. It also gives you a chance to return
   to places you've visited before and try to recruit people to work at
   the keep. Trying to come up with the funds to keep it going was a
   great challenge, but definitely worth it.
   Of course, sooner or later, the main plot catches up, and you have to
   defend your keep against the main enemy. Once that's done, it's time
   to take your party against the enemy, and the final battle involves
   just about every party character, for a massive fight.
   I enjoyed this game immensely. In fact, I've started playing it again,
   with a different type of character, since I wanted to play around with
   some multiclassing, whereas I played straight bard the first time
   through.