KörangarTheMighty
Scholar
Well, I just finished the game today which coincidentally is exactly six months since I put the game on hold, took me about a week or so to get through Act III. Impressions remain more or less the same as I felt when I finished Act II.
I continued to enjoy the Crossroad Keep restorations that took place over the course of the chapter with the exception of some of the timed events just never triggering no matter what I did. I have a feeling the time progression mechanic just caused me to miss them due to not returning at the right times or something. Didn't really care for that to be honest. Missing out on content might be realistic, but it isn't fun because nothing else replaces it. Maybe if there were more events designated for late game that you wouldn't otherwise see, but alas that wasn't the case. Still feel like I saw most of them, so whatever, it's fine.
Managed to finish the romance off with Elanee without running into any trademarked Aurora/Odyssey engine dialog obliterations, so that was nice. Also finished the character quests of all the other companions I could. Bishop betrayed me which was predictable, I didn't care about him at all, told him to fuck off and he listened. Pretty sure it was a scripted betrayal anyway. Qara also betrayed me, but again who cares. One of the most unlikable companions I've ever been saddled with in an RPG. The new addition of Zhjaeve was useful mechanically as the only Cleric, but sadly she just wasn't interesting as a character. Even playing the influence game as best I could with her, all that I learned of her backstory didn't profit me anything. I don't even understand why I needed to gain her trust for her to tell me about it. "Mindflayers bad!" is not some deep personal revelation warranting secrecy. Ammon Jerro was the stand out, though I still missed Shandra. Helping him come to terms with killing his great granddaughter was satisfying. Come to think of it, Zhjaeve's dialog did serve one purpose in reminding my character of the Nietzschean theme of "He who fights with monsters..." to echo back at Jerro when he was trying to avoid coming to terms with his kinslaying. That was clever enough. All in all though, it felt like a lot of the OG companions had basically nothing to do in Act III except maybe Khelgar. It was to the point I couldn't remember the last time anything happened with the likes of Neeshka, Casavir and Sand. I'd say that's actually a pretty big flaw to have for an entire act, but again it's a symptom of party size/ companion bloat. I maintain that many among the party simply have no reason to exist.
Some minor things started to annoy me greatly by the end. Firstly, the beginning of Act III where it throws you directly into yet another big combat segment solo, without even having the opportunity to sell shit you picked up prior, forcing you to drop loot. Secondly, whoever the retard was that designed the cumbersome interactions with objects that need to be bashed during combat should have been shown the door. Not being able to simply right click to attack an object with the entire party, but rather being forced to do two click commands for each individual companion was beyond tedious. Thirdly, the pathfinding in this game is atrocious in small areas with many party members. You can imagine how bad it is at the end boss when you're playing keyboard piano with the entire party and commands get stuck in queue left and right due to pathing issues. Another thing was the merchant bloat. It got to the point where I just couldn't be bothered reading through another giant list of items that were only marginally superior to what I already had from loot. Even at the end with them all unlocked, I just said fuck it and decided what I got was what I got. It got to the point where the game was overstaying its welcome. Areas existed just for padding out the game like the last dungeon/maze before the final boss. Resting causing random encounters there, when it didn't anywhere else in the game. So unnecessary. Game also didn't autosave nearly often enough.
Even after spending so much time in the game absorbing the story, I still kinda have no idea what the fuck was going on. The King of Shadows was like some sort of rogue A.I. that was trying to preserve some civilization that was already extinct. I don't recall if I was ever given a reason why that piece of the Blade of Gith was in my character or not, nor really why it had anything to do with the KoS. The villains and their motivations were just sort of bland and didn't make much sense. The main villain felt more like a force of nature than a character and not in a flattering way. It was boring because of it. Even NWN OC didn't have this problem. Maybe there were just too many names to keep track of on the villain side, with nothing interesting about any of them (except Ammon Jerro), that I couldn't keep it all straight. I kinda stopped caring which is unusual for me. Lastly, this chapter seemed a lot more linear, even the dialog options gave me the feeling of "All roads lead to Rome." which I didn't feel in Act I or II.
Something else I noticed, this game has well enough written dialog responses for the PC to give but there were far fewer moral dilemmas than practically any Forgotten Realms game I've played. In fact, I can't recall agonizing over a single choice, the best direction was obvious in all cases. Even NWN 1 had a few hard decisions, but not here oddly. It did manage to subvert my expectations once in having the noble savage Lizardmen betray the humees of Highcliff even though the latter were acting in good faith. Expected them to go the typical route and have the humans betray the lizards again, so that was nice to see. I quite liked the Crossroad Keep bridge and siege sequences as well. If only they kept the momentum and had us fight the KoS there, rather than dragging the game out with another pointless dungeon.
I don't really know how I feel about it compared to Neverwinter Nights 1. It's definitely not as bad as is made out, it's just sort of okay. Some companions were better, some were worse. The game looked a hell of a lot prettier, had better dialogue options. Lots of recycled music, but I liked what was original. I guess if I had to say anything about it, I'd say that the story was somehow worse than the first game, but all the side quests, set dressing and other shit made it a game I'd rather spend time in. As it is, NWN2 OC is a 6.5/10 game, which is what I rated the NWN 1 OC as well, just for different reasons.
Edit: Also wtf was up with that grim ending? Lmao, did we even manage to escape?
I continued to enjoy the Crossroad Keep restorations that took place over the course of the chapter with the exception of some of the timed events just never triggering no matter what I did. I have a feeling the time progression mechanic just caused me to miss them due to not returning at the right times or something. Didn't really care for that to be honest. Missing out on content might be realistic, but it isn't fun because nothing else replaces it. Maybe if there were more events designated for late game that you wouldn't otherwise see, but alas that wasn't the case. Still feel like I saw most of them, so whatever, it's fine.
Managed to finish the romance off with Elanee without running into any trademarked Aurora/Odyssey engine dialog obliterations, so that was nice. Also finished the character quests of all the other companions I could. Bishop betrayed me which was predictable, I didn't care about him at all, told him to fuck off and he listened. Pretty sure it was a scripted betrayal anyway. Qara also betrayed me, but again who cares. One of the most unlikable companions I've ever been saddled with in an RPG. The new addition of Zhjaeve was useful mechanically as the only Cleric, but sadly she just wasn't interesting as a character. Even playing the influence game as best I could with her, all that I learned of her backstory didn't profit me anything. I don't even understand why I needed to gain her trust for her to tell me about it. "Mindflayers bad!" is not some deep personal revelation warranting secrecy. Ammon Jerro was the stand out, though I still missed Shandra. Helping him come to terms with killing his great granddaughter was satisfying. Come to think of it, Zhjaeve's dialog did serve one purpose in reminding my character of the Nietzschean theme of "He who fights with monsters..." to echo back at Jerro when he was trying to avoid coming to terms with his kinslaying. That was clever enough. All in all though, it felt like a lot of the OG companions had basically nothing to do in Act III except maybe Khelgar. It was to the point I couldn't remember the last time anything happened with the likes of Neeshka, Casavir and Sand. I'd say that's actually a pretty big flaw to have for an entire act, but again it's a symptom of party size/ companion bloat. I maintain that many among the party simply have no reason to exist.
Some minor things started to annoy me greatly by the end. Firstly, the beginning of Act III where it throws you directly into yet another big combat segment solo, without even having the opportunity to sell shit you picked up prior, forcing you to drop loot. Secondly, whoever the retard was that designed the cumbersome interactions with objects that need to be bashed during combat should have been shown the door. Not being able to simply right click to attack an object with the entire party, but rather being forced to do two click commands for each individual companion was beyond tedious. Thirdly, the pathfinding in this game is atrocious in small areas with many party members. You can imagine how bad it is at the end boss when you're playing keyboard piano with the entire party and commands get stuck in queue left and right due to pathing issues. Another thing was the merchant bloat. It got to the point where I just couldn't be bothered reading through another giant list of items that were only marginally superior to what I already had from loot. Even at the end with them all unlocked, I just said fuck it and decided what I got was what I got. It got to the point where the game was overstaying its welcome. Areas existed just for padding out the game like the last dungeon/maze before the final boss. Resting causing random encounters there, when it didn't anywhere else in the game. So unnecessary. Game also didn't autosave nearly often enough.
Even after spending so much time in the game absorbing the story, I still kinda have no idea what the fuck was going on. The King of Shadows was like some sort of rogue A.I. that was trying to preserve some civilization that was already extinct. I don't recall if I was ever given a reason why that piece of the Blade of Gith was in my character or not, nor really why it had anything to do with the KoS. The villains and their motivations were just sort of bland and didn't make much sense. The main villain felt more like a force of nature than a character and not in a flattering way. It was boring because of it. Even NWN OC didn't have this problem. Maybe there were just too many names to keep track of on the villain side, with nothing interesting about any of them (except Ammon Jerro), that I couldn't keep it all straight. I kinda stopped caring which is unusual for me. Lastly, this chapter seemed a lot more linear, even the dialog options gave me the feeling of "All roads lead to Rome." which I didn't feel in Act I or II.
Something else I noticed, this game has well enough written dialog responses for the PC to give but there were far fewer moral dilemmas than practically any Forgotten Realms game I've played. In fact, I can't recall agonizing over a single choice, the best direction was obvious in all cases. Even NWN 1 had a few hard decisions, but not here oddly. It did manage to subvert my expectations once in having the noble savage Lizardmen betray the humees of Highcliff even though the latter were acting in good faith. Expected them to go the typical route and have the humans betray the lizards again, so that was nice to see. I quite liked the Crossroad Keep bridge and siege sequences as well. If only they kept the momentum and had us fight the KoS there, rather than dragging the game out with another pointless dungeon.
I don't really know how I feel about it compared to Neverwinter Nights 1. It's definitely not as bad as is made out, it's just sort of okay. Some companions were better, some were worse. The game looked a hell of a lot prettier, had better dialogue options. Lots of recycled music, but I liked what was original. I guess if I had to say anything about it, I'd say that the story was somehow worse than the first game, but all the side quests, set dressing and other shit made it a game I'd rather spend time in. As it is, NWN2 OC is a 6.5/10 game, which is what I rated the NWN 1 OC as well, just for different reasons.
Edit: Also wtf was up with that grim ending? Lmao, did we even manage to escape?
Rocks fall and everyone dies!
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And what a difference it's making! I'm already really enjoying the game, and so hopefully it just gets better from here.
