Review Neverwinter Nights 2 Developer: Obsidian Entertainment Publisher: Atari Genre: RPG Release Date: October 2006 Platform: Review by Al Giovetti December 13, 2006		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

Overall the game is really a good one with over 50 hours of playing time in the single player campaign.  The story is a good one which is engaging, believable and will keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the story.  The multiplayer features are the same as the ones you loved so much with the original game: free online play and a large group of people playing to choose from using a variety of web launching platforms.  You can create your own multiplayer scenarios with an easy to use, sophisticated editing program.

You certainly cannot discount the rich history of the Dungeons and Dragons game system using the 3.5 edition rules.  The Forgotten Realms game setting is the most popular in the entire game’s history.  Neverwinter Nights 2 does a good job of moving the paper and pencil tradition to computer.

Neverwinter Nights was one of the most highly successful computer role playing games in history with a huge following.  The same people who brought you Baldur’s Gate and the Icewind Dale series of games were contributors to this masterpiece.  The game is good enough to warrant recommendation in spite of some very annoying technical difficulties and some awkward interface features.

The story begins with the protagonist and two friends (You have a three character group at this point.) attending the harvest fair in their small town, West Harbor, which just happens to be situated in the middle of a deadly swamp.  Right after the festival, which the hero and friends win, the town is attacked by bladelings and duergar dwarves.  After the battle your step father Daeghun will encourage you to start on the road to collecting all of the silver shards.

The first stop on the road to Neverwinter takes the hero to the Weeping Willow Inn where he meets a dwarf named Khelgar Ironfist.  Khelgar is a good companion who you have to be careful to cultivate.  If you make the right choices the hero’s influence with Khelgar and the other ten companions will increase.  Bad choices will reduce influence and eventually your companions will turn on you, if the influence falls low enough.

All good stories should not leave loose ends.  Quests should not be left hanging and clues should be available if you look long enough to help eliminate confusion and provide direction.  In one sequence, you are looking for an item that is wanted by three separate non player characters.  There is only one item available and if you give the item to one group the other three quests stay in your log until the end of the game with no possible resolution.  I am not entirely certain of this fact, but certain enough to declare this one quest as incompletely thought out.  There are other examples but considering the number of quests and tasks that the quest log tracks two bad quests out of so many good ones is not a bad score.

The dialogue and accompanying voice acting is well written and well performed by competent voice actors.  I liked the voices so much which were used extensively in the game, and in the numerous animated sequences or cut scenes, in the few instances where no voices were used, I really missed them.  There is a lot of talking in this game and if you are so inclined you can simply say I am tired of all the talk let us fight this out.

If you are the type of game player who likes that story and gets bored of all the hack and slash, this game will give you plenty of opportunity to use diplomacy, intimidate, intelligence, bluff, and charm to avoid many fights.  The results may not be as good as those you get by just cutting a swath in the land and killing everything but the designers should be applauded for having solutions other than fighting to many problems.  Non violent solutions to problems may not be glamorous or heroic on first glance but in many cases they are far the superior solution to most problems.

Character creation is standard Dungeons and Dragons fair with selection of sex, race from 8 base races and 16 sub-races, class from 12 mundane classes (There are 15 prestige classes that the character can grow into later.).  A certain number of points is allocated to each character that can be divided up into the six ability scores of strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma. 

Neverwinter Nights 2 has a maximum of 20 levels.  As the character gains experience the ability to go up a level will come with the required experience points.  Having the points to gain a level is shown by a plus on the character icon shown on the right hand character bar portion of the screen, also the experience bar on the “character” screen will be full and the gain level button will become active.  Going up a level allows the character to choose increase in the six ability scores, add special skills from 27 available, add spells from the entire list of druid, cleric, ranger, wizard, sorcerer, warlock, and paladin spell books in 8 disciplines, and select new feats and abilities from a list of over 300 in the rules.

This level of complexity combined with well over a thousand unique items of armor, weapons, spell scrolls, gems, and special treasure items makes the game one of a sufficient level of complexity to keep the most avid gamer busy for quite a long time.  BradyGames has a Neverwinter Nights 2 Official Strategy Guide that lays out not only the walkthrough of the main plot of the campaign single player game in three acts but all the items, skills, abilities, maps, races, classes, monsters, feats, abilities, spells, disciplines, companions, and other items needed to understand and play the game. 

Of course the game player could do what most of us do and throw the book away and just dive into the game without any problems.  Most of us only look at the game book, and this 177 page manual complete with an index and charts, when we need to go to the bathroom. There need not be a learning curve with this game, just jump right in.

What is new?  The Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 rules are new in NWN2.  There are nine new races in NWN2.  Shadows of Undrentide introduced prestige classes and NWN2 adds six more advanced character classes.  Any main or multiplayer character can have up to four classes using the new multiclass character rules. 

Party size increases as the game progresses allowing for as many as six additional characters in the group, up from the one additional character in the original game.  These characters are included actively in the scripting and often comment and advance the game.  Many times if you experience parts of the game without certain characters in your group, the game will not progress into certain areas of the game – certain parts of the game and game locales might never be opened to you for side quests.

The quest system is basically linear.  I prefer open ended game systems where the hero and companions can go anywhere and do anything as in Chris and Erin Roberts’ Freelancer.   Once the hero progresses past one Chapter of the game, and there are three chapters, certain areas of the game are closed to the group.

Item crafting is also newly supported with alchemy, blacksmithing of armor and weapons, scroll writing and creating magical items.  The item creation feature is a game in itself.  Books of recipes for crafting of armor, scrolls, weapons, potions and magical items are found in the realms as well as crafting teachers.

Gone is the old radial menu replaced with context-sensitive drop-down menus that the designers felt would be more familiar to windows interface users.  A mode bar in the lower right hand corner makes selecting stealth, search, power attack and other modes available to the character.  The hold right-click drop down menu allows for special feats and “broadcast commands” for the entire group.

About the time the game is over in the single player game, the hero is awarded a stronghold that must be improved, garrisoned, and repaired.  The hero must recruit allies, a greycloak army, sergeants, militia, priests, merchants, blacksmiths, miners, farmers, and others to help recruit, train, supply, feed, house and command the troops, patrol the lands, repair constructs, entertain the patrons of the inn, and various other duties. 

The stronghold idea was not as fully developed as it could have been for the game.  There are many times where the game player is confused at how to proceed in the search for ore and gold to support the development of the stronghold.  A more completely developed stronghold would have improved the game immensely.

Also new in the game is the new graphics system.  The tile based graphics are gone and replacing them are beautiful free flowing system that has to be seen to be believed.  Not only do you create the graphics with the new NWN2 toolset but you use it to create dialogue and cut scenes.  Scenarios created with the toolset can be shared online.

The companion influence has been expanded further in this game, but gone are the romantic relationships that you could develop in other games of this type.  I really missed the romantic part of these character relationships.  There was a time when I thought Elanee the Druid of the Circle was going to develop a relationship with me but I was mistaken.  Some games like Peter Moleneaux’s Fable have a well developed relationship system.  I wish NWN2 had more of that type of system.

Animation is pretty smooth except in areas where characters levitate and move without moving their legs when they are supposed to be walking or running on the floor.  In an online game this could be due to warping or lag but in a single player game where the hard drive and graphics card are the only limiting factors, this type of animation glitch should not occur in a fairly fast gaming system.

The music and voice acting are superb.  I really liked Qara’s and Neeka’s voices.  The performance was with a ton of attitude and personality.  The voice acting was very good.

The music is as good as any classical musical score I have heard for a fantasy film. The music rivals the music of any Harry Potter Film or the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  The music composer and the musicians did a wonderful job.

The game has a number of crashes.  I have had several crashes that required rebooting the computer, rebooting the game and reloading the save game and replaying the sequence all over again when the antagonist would not die even with zero health.  For some reason the required cut scene did not get triggered when the health dropped.

Final Grade: A- (find out more about our grading system)

If you liked this game, then Watch: Eragon Read: Eragon, any book by R.A. Salvatore

System Requirements:

• Windows XP
• 512MB System RAM
• 2 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
• 128MB Direct3D compatible video card with DirectX 9.0c compatible driver
• CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
• 4.6GB free hard disk space
• DirectX 9.0c (included)
• DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
• Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework for toolset (included)
• Broadband connection for multiplayer online play
• Keyboard, Mouse