Review NWN2 review at GameSpot - 8.6

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Neverwinter Nights 2; Obsidian Entertainment

<a href=http://www.gamespot.com>GameSpot</a> has posted a <a href=http://au.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/neverwinternights2/review.html?mode=gsreview>review</a> of <a href=http://www.atari.com/nwn2/>Neverwinter Nights 2</a>, giving it 8.6 and praising the excellent story and many paths you can take.
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<blockquote>For the most part you'll use those skills and abilities to combat all kinds of monsters, people, spirits, and animals that always seem to get in your way. The combat takes place in real time, but you have the option to pause the game and assign up to five successive actions to each of your characters. Then it's just a matter of hitting the space bar to unpause the game and watching your characters go to work. <u>The most frequent battles don't usually require that level of management, though, because you'll almost always come out on top by just rushing into a mob of enemies and letting the artificial intelligence do the work.</u> If you do happen to lose all your health you'll be temporarily knocked out (despite the cobwebbed corpse icon that replaces your character portrait). As long as one of your characters survives the battle your party will revive, and then you can use the rest function to fully replenish your health in just a few seconds.</blockquote>That kinda sucks.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.rpgwatch.com">RPG Watch</A>

 

[Jed]

For the most part you'll use those skills and abilities to combat all kinds of monsters, people, spirits, and animals that always seem to get in your way. The combat takes place in real time, but you have the option to pause the game and assign up to five successive actions to each of your characters. Then it's just a matter of hitting the space bar to unpause the game and watching your characters go to work. <u>The most frequent battles don't usually require that level of management, though, because you'll almost always come out on top by just rushing into a mob of enemies and letting the artificial intelligence do the work.</u> If you do happen to lose all your health you'll be temporarily knocked out (despite the cobwebbed corpse icon that replaces your character portrait). As long as one of your characters survives the battle your party will revive, and then you can use the rest function to fully replenish your health in just a few seconds.

That kinda sucks.

Fixed.

 

[Ladonna]

Come on guys, everyone here new that this game would be like that....I agree that it sucks, but I am still surprised that anyone here would think any differently. Its Kotor combat isn't it?

 

[don_tomaso]

Well in kotor you couldn´t rest, at least.. Made it a little harder.

 

[Volourn]

Eh? You didn't need to rest. You had regen.

 

[Nael]

<a>GameSpot</a> has posted a <a>review</a> of <a>Neverwinter Nights 2</a>, giving it 8.6 and praising the excellent story and many paths you can take.

<blockquote>For the most part you'll use those skills and abilities to combat all kinds of monsters, people, spirits, and animals that always seem to get in your way. The combat takes place in real time, but you have the option to pause the game and assign up to five successive actions to each of your characters. Then it's just a matter of hitting the space bar to unpause the game and watching your characters go to work. <u>The most frequent battles don't usually require that level of management, though, because you'll almost always come out on top by just rushing into a mob of enemies and letting the artificial intelligence do the work.</u> If you do happen to lose all your health you'll be temporarily knocked out (despite the cobwebbed corpse icon that replaces your character portrait). As long as one of your characters survives the battle your party will revive, and then you can use the rest function to fully replenish your health in just a few seconds.</blockquote>That kinda sucks.


Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.rpgwatch.com">RPG Watch</A>

Actually, if you're playing on Hardcore or Very Difficult, just rushing into battle is suicide. It is more difficult to manage your party though because as far as I can tell there is no way to hotkey individual commands so you have to right-click *AND* hold for a menu to pop up where you have to select the "Give Order" tab then click the desired command.

Clunky to say the least.

The game is still alot of fun though, and I'm gradually getting used to it. On the brightside, the AI packaging for your teammates is alot more robust and you can fine-tune what they do in combat to keep them from turning into little aggro'ing monsters.

 

[Dregur]

Well in kotor you couldn´t rest, at least.. Made it a little harder.

I have to point out though that there are places where you CANNOT rest. It's few and far between, but there are places where the flags say you cannot rest in hte dungeon.

-The Grinman :D

 

[suibhne]

Methinks the GameSpot reviewer didn't know how to fight.

Game reviewers don't fail only when they avoid different character options, plot threads, etc. They also fail when approaching combat with the same style all the time, then reporting as if their way is the only way to play the goddamn game. I'd bet a pile of money I won't agree with any of this reviewer's views on NWN2 combat, but I also won't have the temerity to insist that my preferences are the only correct ones.

 

[Volourn]

"I have to point out though that there are places where you CANNOT rest."

Just like NWN1. OMGZ!

 

[Wulfgar]

That review sucks. It seems that the guy doing it had 5 hours in the game, at the most.

 

[protobob]

I've played it for about 6 hours.

Other than for the quickcast spell bar, which is nice, I'd have to say I vastly prefer the old NWN UI. The NWN2 UI just seems like an afterthought. The ability to assign almost any action to a quickslot in NWN is missing, for instance, which is annoying. Lots of silly things like not being able to set up duel-wield sword/shield buttons on the quickslots is also annoying.

The camera controls are all ass. Supposedly the patch is supposed to help this but I havn't been able to patch yet (D2D).

The combat is pretty much the same as NWN, which I find fairly boring. In the ideal universe we would have a game that combined TOEE turn-based fun with a toolset. Oh well.

The graphics are fine, I guess. Who cares? A good bit of the graphics seem uninspired, but it's better looking than NWN.

The level design feels more more like KOTOR for some reason. More closed in? More like your on a path in an amusement park? I guess the first one was liket his too, but in this game there are bits of ground that are passable, and then bits of ground that are not passible, for no particular reason. The landscape looks better but it's more confusing to navigate sometimes.

I havn't got very far into the story yet so I can't really comment. Pretty generic so far, though I have to say it's better than the drivel that was the NWN OC.

Dialogue seems fairly good, with some skill/stat/misc checks from time to time. Better than Oblivion, but nothing like PS:T so far.

Character development is pretty good. Lots of goofy subraces and PRC's. I'm playing an Asimar Cleric. They have a list of gods, and a list of domains, but they arn't tied together like in proper D&D...I guess to better power-game with?

Overuse of the 'potential NPC set upon by a mob--do you rescue them?' bit that's always felt cliche to me.

 

[elander_]

Come on guys, everyone here new that this game would be like that....I agree that it sucks, but I am still surprised that anyone here would think any differently. Its Kotor combat isn't it?

Its probably a small improvement over it, but still compared to ToEE its probably complete shit. No suprises here. I wonder how many games with screwed up combat have to be made until people realize that TB is the way to go for D&D games or at least have a toggle option.

 

[Ladonna]

TBC require too much thought, apparently...Well, so many morons say how 'boring' it is, so go figure.

The pausable system isn't the worst I have come across, but it certainly is inferior. The BG games allowed some thought to go into combat, but not much. Playing TOEE was almost a return to the Goldbox games, and no matter what anyone says, those games were great in the combat sim department. Isn't surprising coming from a company (SSI) that usually made wargames...

Today, more people are concerned with Romances, Face creating utilities, etc. I guess that what you get when you need a bigger and bigger audience to sell to.

 

[Baphomet]

Ladonna's post makes me think of a question - does anyone who can get dates care about cRPG romances? I sure as hell don't.

 

[sheek]

Funny how NWN it's getting about 10% less than the big O. TES4 was 90-95% consistently, all the scores I've seen for NWN2 have been 80-85% range.

edit:
Remember that 86% used to mean a Great (tm) game. A game with Civilization, SimCity, Duke Nukem, Starcraft level of importance. Now it just means 'good'.

 

[Micmu]

Because it's an RPG.

 

[sheek]

Nerds = -10%?

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Ladonna's post makes me think of a question - does anyone who can get dates care about cRPG romances? I sure as hell don't.

I can't, so I have no idea. But I don't exactly whack off to the fade-to-black sex scenes.

 

[don_tomaso]

Ladonna's post makes me think of a question - does anyone who can get dates care about cRPG romances? I sure as hell don't.

Well, rpgs are about becoming something you cant IRL (at least thats how it works for me), like an über deadly warrior in another world.. So I guess, those who want romances are those cant get laid.. Simple as that

 

[kris]

Ladonna's post makes me think of a question - does anyone who can get dates care about cRPG romances? I sure as hell don't.

Well, rpgs are about becoming something you cant IRL (at least thats how it works for me), like an über deadly warrior in another world.. So I guess, those who want romances are those cant get laid.. Simple as that

Or want some roleplaying except the massmurdering pshycotic kind.

 

[Drakron]

Romances are a option to character development.

You all push for PS:T but what about Annah, Deionarra and Ravel that loved the Nameless One?

Its only bad when its done for the heck of it, KotOR2 is a example of it.

 

[Surgey]

From the review:

...you aren't likely to find a more accurate and faithful adaptation of the Dungeons & Dragons rule set in any other video game.

ToEE, anyone?

 

[Volourn]

Does TOEE have MP or a DM? No?

Game over.

 

[Voss]

Actually, if you're playing on Hardcore or Very Difficult, just rushing into battle is suicide. It is more difficult to manage your party though because as far as I can tell there is no way to hotkey individual commands so you have to right-click *AND* hold for a menu to pop up where you have to select the "Give Order" tab then click the desired command.

Clunky to say the least.

You can adjust the delay on the right click menu. Down to a tenth of a second.

 

[Azarkon]

I wouldn't say that the combat is hard. However, it is certainly not easy. There has been two occasions now that I've had to kite monsters across the map in order to kill a group after all of my allies died. Some of the fights can be overwhelming without AEs (like your party of 3 level 4's versus 10+ bandits and archers).

The problem, though, is that true to NWN there's not much you can *do* about the difficulty. There just aren't enough tactical options, especially at the lower levels, short of exploiting the enemy AI (which is mediocre). I mean, you got what with a fighter - parry mode, power attack, a choice of enemy target, and whether to drink a potion? Not much you can do to seriously make a difference, which might explain why GS says that the fights can be done by the AI just as well.