What went wrong though is anyone’s guess. After BioWare’s magnificent outing in 2002 with its beautifully addictive Neverwinter Nights, it seems that passing the torch over to Obsidian has only hurt what was quite possibly one of PALGN’s favourite RPGs on the PC. While most of the appeal of diving into the game’s ungodly amount of depth is still intact with NWN2, the developers somehow forgot to include an accessible game, and many other holes that got overlooked.
It would be unfair to not recognize the game’s devotion to providing gamers with eon’s worth of customisation, holding up quite nicely with the classic D&D pen-and-paper game, and the surprisingly accurate placement of the 3.5 D&D rules (from the previously implemented 3.0 rules of the original). The game holds up well with its D&D roots, incorporating the nifty features of dice rolls, + values to items and a healthy new range of playable classes and races found in the traditional game. It is equally appealing to see a nice range of abilities and spells spread across the classes (healing, fire, immobilizing spells etc.) and the ability to distinguish your character and your team mates in a variety of ways.
There's plenty of deep D&D customisation to be had as soon as you begin.
As soon as you begin the game you’re gob smacked with the amount of customisation available for you when deciding to create your character, which still clearly overshadows any other action-RPG on the market. But there’s such a point in this game that the amount of customisation is a little too much at times and eventually makes you realize that there’s very little outside of this to draw your attention. The customisation is fantastic - no doubt about - but when you’re left with a game that feels completely lifeless, and holds a little too strongly to its pen-and-paper heritage, then you begin to question just where the appeal of such a game lies.
The game is based around a rather predictable and clichéd story that is narrow and linear, resulting in a game that only the real patient or D&D purists will find appealing – see, you obtain some magical relic that withholds terrible secrets and magic, and threatens the land. While there is a good mix of uncharacteristic twists and turns, the game is still held back by the game’s linearity and boring dialogue. Characters generally fall into place with your typical generalizations, and there’s very little backbone to them that makes you want to learn more. And while it isn’t unfamiliar for games such as NWN2 to do this, you’re jumping into a 40hr plus adventure that only begins to become interesting once you’ve hit the 10-15hr mark, and up until that point you’ll run into a lot of flaws and uninteresting sequences that’ll test gamers patience; it’s doubtful that many will even make it that far since there’s very little to hold your attention.
The game is plagued by a number of unforgivable gameplay set backs, even to the point where you’ll begin to question whether this game was even tested for faults. You’ll constantly be fighting with the dreadful camera angles, where you’ll eventually be forced to play in an overhead view, largely thanks to the camera’s inability to freely pan once turning corners and getting stuck on objects. This’ll mean you’ll generally miss out on a large portion of the game’s detail and even bypass important items and doors since you’re frequently fighting with the camera. In addition, there are plenty pieces of text missing from dialogue and even patches of white textures scattered throughout the game.
Ice to see you too?
If it isn’t the camera that’s providing gamers with a nice and frustrating experience, then it’ll be the game’s atrocious AI system. Friendly party member AI is the biggest problem, frequently getting stuck on objects and standing idle in areas of the map that you are nowhere near; you can imagine this becoming a problem once hitting a few dungeons where you notice your party members aren’t even beside you whilst fighting enemies. The friendly AI is generally ineffective during combat too, often choosing poor abilities during dire situations and attacking incorrect enemies. The game offers a four-party system, which eventually turns into a juggling act where you try and use their abilities correctly instead of the AI. This ultimately ruins the entire D&D experience, since in the pen-and-paper game you’re playing as a singular character and not an entire party. Not to mention – the game’s interface is a cluttered mess where you’ll be jumping through several windows before being able to hotkey abilities and even to level your characters up. Why should gamers be forced to tolerate these constant problems that are obviously caused by rushing the game out of development? While it is backed up by a phenomenal brand, gamers shouldn’t be forced to be lenient to such an incomplete sequel.
It doesn’t help that the game provides gamers with little exploration and freedom in their adventure either. While you ultimately decide your own path by the decisions you make – whether they are good or evil – there’s very little offered in terms of freely exploring the world; instead you’re in a strictly linear and restrictive game with little freedom. It often appears as though they’ve under-utilized the brand’s impressive lore and previously well-executed stories.
Thankfully, there’s a nice emphasis on the game’s multiplayer and toolsets to create your own unique experiences. You can play the game online or over a local network with up to three other players, and even engross yourself with some rather nice cooperatively play. However, the same constant issues that are found in the single player occur during multiplayer, which diminishes some of the mode’s appeal. NWN2 appears to rely a lot on the community to cater for the mistakes the developers made, and to fill the void with some better created campaigns. The editor program is a tad difficult to utilize its features and seems remarkably restrictive in providing gamers with plenty of depth and freedom, although the ability to share your campaigns is quite nice.
A nice addition is that as you equip new items, your character will change in appearance too.
It is often questionable as to why exactly NWN2 demands so much raw power from your computer though, considering that the game isn’t at all that stellar visually. Characters models are generally fairly simple and lack key details, and even portray a odd shiny look about them. Textures are sometimes missing from areas of the game, or are either terribly bland. However, the game does in fact feature some great special effects, combined with the game’s solid lighting and shadowing techniques. The game isn’t at all that huge world-wise and the visuals are a step-back compared to a game like Oblivion, yet still requires a lot of your system’s power.
The game features a favourable soundtrack with plenty of well-composed tunes, offering a nice balance of harmony and tension throughout the game’s seesawing adventure. Sound effects are generally passable, but the voice acting leaves a lot to the imagination and often fails to create interesting and believable characters.
Neverwinter Nights 2 is frightfully unappealing at times and fails to capitalize on what is a fantastic brand and a series that oozes potential. At the moment it seems as though Obsidian has indeed run into a lot of bad luck and are often forced to rush out potentially better titles than what they finish up with. Black Isle Studios, which is practically Obsidian reformed, developed a handful of fantastic titles but ever since the name change they’ve failed to make games that deliver a polished and complete experience. Possibly with another 6-12months of development time we could’ve easily seen Neverwinter Nights 2 being much more highly regarded - at the moment it’s an absolute mess.
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