Review First NWN2 review - 81% (without the toolset)

[elander_]

One thing i would love to see is an rpg that gives player the choice to pickup pre-made characters that come with their own quests and specific content, places, items and so on. Its virtualy impossible to force every single character into the same linear main quest + side quests system and have a solid role-playing experience. Regardless NWN2 toolkit alone makes up for everything else.

 

[Azarkon]

I think it's pretty reasonable for the OC to be 81%, given that it's made with a toolset in mind, which obviously carries with it certain limitations. With the toolset, the game (according to PC Format) is 91%, which makes it on par with any of Bio's creations. Though, as always, your mileage will surely differ based on what you're looking for in these games.

 

[Greatatlantic]

Indeed, we here at the Codex shouldn't be looking to closely at a reviewers score. Then, we are left with nothing but the hypocrisy of not playing a game because it scored low, and berating developers for rating a game we wouldn't play high (here's looking at you Oblivion). 81% is a "good" score. What is far more important from what Codex wants from RPGs is a specific type of gameplay. And in the current industry standard of praising ever simplifying gameplay, a few points knocked off the score is a promising sign. Hmmm.. I should go read that review.

 

[Zomg]

By allowing rest anywhere, you take the adventure out of the game. It becomes a chain of independent battles, where everyone is comfortable burning most of their hp and casting all their spells. I guess the concept of holding something back is too subtle for todays kids.

What annoys me is that, if you're going to have instant rest and meaningless time, you should probably make every fight an individually interesting set piece meant to be completed at "full health". Lots of P&P works out that way, where people have "one fight a session" type games with involved rulesets like GURPS. I don't understand the dependence on lawnmowing combat if you're not going to at least take some cues from (pretty marginal) survival gameplay. Yet, they go through the motions of dungeon crawler games that are very survival biased. More cargo cult game design I guess.

Edit - Oops, replied to the first post in the series. Point already made, my bad.

 

[Drakron]

Problem with that is players might simply adventure forward intead of fighting = win = rest = repeat ... I know that I usually keep going until I have no choice but to restore my characters.

D&D does push towards a attrition model since you only get spells restored once per day and even if you can, usually, rest at any place there are consequences for it (such as end up in a random encounter), NWN2 seems to continue NWN trend but also adding the "party NPCs dont die, they are simply knocked out until the end of the battle" mechanic.

 

[Avin]

Tell Gary Gyax that. That's exactly what his version of D&D was. And, oh, D&D has bosses. they're usually called the main villains or antagonists. I wish you'd stop lying. It embarasses you.

Gygax was never a storyteller. Bosses? Well, you can name airplanes "things that fly", little troll.

 

[Elwro]

Medieval total war 2, the very game I thought would need the most clout

On an Athlon 64 3600+, 1 GB of RAM and a GeForce 6600 GT 256 MB I get a maximum of 10 FPS during the battles, just FYI. (Talking about the demo of course.)

 

[Seven]

Medieval total war 2, the very game I thought would need the most clout

On an Athlon 64 3600+, 1 GB of RAM and a GeForce 6600 GT 256 MB I get a maximum of 10 FPS during the battles, just FYI. (Talking about the demo of course.)

Do you have the settings maxed? It runs quite well and my system and my processor is only a P4 2.4 GHz and my graphics card is a year and a half old with only 128 MB, although I do have 1.5 GDs of ram...

 

[Ladonna]

Elwro: I take it you have the NEW demo? Not the old unoptimised one?

The new one was released about a week ago. Try looking for it if you don't have it, but if you cannot find it, i will go searching for it for you.

 

[sheek]

Anybody know if the 'rest anywhere' ability is built into the engine? Will mods suffer from the same glitch? Because that would fucking suck.

 

[jeansberg]

I think I read that's tied to the difficulty setting. So, if you play with 'hardcore D&D' you won't be able to rest anywhere. I could be wrong, though.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

By allowing rest anywhere, you take the adventure out of the game. It becomes a chain of independent battles, where everyone is comfortable burning most of their hp and casting all their spells. I guess the concept of holding something back is too subtle for todays kids.

What annoys me is that, if you're going to have instant rest and meaningless time, you should probably make every fight an individually interesting set piece meant to be completed at "full health". Lots of P&P works out that way, where people have "one fight a session" type games with involved rulesets like GURPS. I don't understand the dependence on lawnmowing combat if you're not going to at least take some cues from (pretty marginal) survival gameplay. Yet, they go through the motions of dungeon crawler games that are very survival biased. More cargo cult game design I guess.

Edit - Oops, replied to the first post in the series. Point already made, my bad.

One game that did this very well - don't kill me - was the JRPG Riviera. You started every battle at full health, unless a character was deaded, so each fight was challenging and interesting.