NWN2 review at GameSpy

[suibhne]

4/5 stars - Mikey liked it.

Not much to see, really. Bottom line is that the game was dinged primarily for stability and performance reasons.

 

[Volourn]

Gamespy is DEAD to me.

 

[piydek]

well, i have a 6800gs, nothing really special, and the game runs completely smooth on max details with no shadows in 1152x864 on my system. the rest of the system just isn't really important for nwn2 performance, that's why i'm talking just about the video card.

people who complain about performance obviously have a mess of their windoze installation and heaps of steaming crap installed on their computers, with registries of 50 mb. or don't know how to install drivers for your hardware.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

well, i have a 6800gs, nothing really special, and the game runs completely smooth on max details with no shadows in 1152x864 on my system. the rest of the system just isn't really important for nwn2 performance, that's why i'm talking just about the video card.

people who complain about performance obviously have a mess of their windoze installation and heaps of steaming crap installed on their computers, with registries of 50 mb. or don't know how to install drivers for your hardware.

I have that card. :D :D :D Though it'll probably still run like shit. Ah well.

 

[suibhne]

people who complain about performance obviously have a mess of their windoze installation and heaps of steaming crap installed on their computers, with registries of 50 mb. or don't know how to install drivers for your hardware.

Well, there's also the fact that, just as with Oblivion, the default settings seem to be pretty much shite. I have an ATi card roughly equivalent to yours (X850XT), and I too am running fine at the same res with everything but shadows - but it took a bit of tweaking to get there, and the game looked and ran like ass out of the box.

 

[OccupatedVoid]

Gamespy is DEAD to me.

Gamespy IS DEAD.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

VOLOURN IS DEAD.

 

[elander_]

Yes but nothing makes him shut up not even dead.

 

[aweigh]

Does NWN2 support anti-aliasing?

 

[Gambler]

It doesn't right now. Devs said they will implement in later.

 

[golgotha]

Can't even force it through CP? The hell kind of sloppy programming..

 

[piydek]

Can't even force it through CP? The hell kind of sloppy programming..

yes, the whole game feels quite technically sloppy right now. its system requirements (actually graphics card requirements) are simply way too high, lots of problems with AI, controling your character/party, various interface issues (not design ones, but technical ones). it's really evident that the game's release was forced before it was actually ready. they'll fix a lot of things through patches, no doubt, but that's not how it should be done. i guess it's atari's fault.

AA support will be added in 1.3 patch which should be out very soon.

 

[aweigh]

Here's a pic of how it looks on my end:

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Is it me, or do the models look somewhat... odd?

 

[aweigh]

Well, they probably look odd because they're two or three times more detailed than their environment. That particular pic looks pretty good, but since I don't have "Normal Mapped Terrain" enabled when I'm out and about most of the countryside looks really low-rez, so the chars kind of "pop" in contrast.

Normal Mapped Terrain makes a pretty big difference in the quality of the countryside but it takes a huge chunk out of my FPS. However, regardless of the settings you run it at the char models themselves look absolutely fantastic! You can zoom in until you see their pimples and they look flawless.

 

[suibhne]

Screw AA. I just want the normal-mapping to be less of a hit. When I can run Prey with everything at 1600x1200, I should be able to handle NWN2 with normal-mapped terrain at 1024x768 or so...but my fps are generally in the teens.

Aweigh, I can't bear to turn off normal mapping; it makes the game look far better. I turned off shadows and water junk so I could keep normal mapping.

In other news - how did you get your hotkey bar to display two levels? Mine only shows one.

 

[aweigh]

Mods of course! lollerz.

Here's a link to the 2-row hotkey mod: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2UI.Detail&id=4

Here's a link to the 5-row hotkey mod: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2UI.Detail&id=9. This one has smaller hotbar icons in order to compensate for the increased rows.

Here's a link to a Character Info + Inventory 2-in-1 mod: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2UI.Detail&id=16

Here's a link for a mod that reduces the size of your party's face portraits: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2UI.Detail&id=15, and here's one that reduces the size of their health bars: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2UI.Detail&id=14

Here's the one I consider the MOST important, the one that relocates your Chat Window to the bottom part of the screen, like in my pic: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2UI.Detail&id=6

Smaller minimap: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2UI.Detail&id=23

By the way, don't screw AA! Some of us want it. Much more important to me than the camera changes they're implementing. Or even bug fixes. R00fles!

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Oh God, it's spreading.

 

[aweigh]

There are a few nude mods already out. I know I simply couldn't play my game without them.

 

[suibhne]

Cool, aweigh - thanks. The minimap generally drives me nuts anyway, and it's frustrating that the game won't respect my prefs and leave it off. I'll look around for a mod that changes its default state to off rather than on.