Review Informative Mask of the Betrayer review

[RK47]

Too over analyzed. The problem with influence in NWN 2 was that is almost has no effect for some party members. Piss off the Pally, and he'll still follow you and never ever, betrays you. He would never say 'You are too far gone from the light and I must slay you'

Influence basically lets you get a little bit of their past revealed to you and that's it. Almost nothing else. Save for a half hearted attempt at 'surprising' betrayal near end and side quests mid game. Qara / Sand flip flop near end just showed how incredibly shallow this betrayal is. If anything it should be the other way around, Qara should be a lazy smart Wizard while Sand is a charismatic sorcerer.

I was actually thinking from the tips displayed on loading screen, Influence was supposedly able to direct the joinable NPC to pick a new class direction like Khelgar, Fighter to Monk.

My guess they only finished him halfway and realize 'wow this is a lot of work, fuck it' 20 levels of fighter is hardly interesting, sure he cleaves a shitload but trading in 10 levels of Frenzied Berserker would rock hard, seeing how much he loves fighting it's probably feasible to turn him to Chaotic alignment easily.

Lesson? Cut down on the number party members, having so many people dilute the quality, bigger rosters yet limited usage risks the rest being under-developed and 'forgettable'. Enforced party members only aggravates the problem.

 

[Shoelip]

Ok, so it's nice to see that I'm not the only one who thinks Qara needs a good beating/lecture but is the game worth finishing?

 

[RK47]

Well, once is enough for me. Basically the 2nd playthrough I just power-game like mad to have fun.

It was average finish. At least I have the expansion to look forward to now. Hopefully with all the promised interactions and ready to import character from the OC

 

[sabishii]

Lesson? Cut down on the number party members, having so many people dilute the quality, bigger rosters yet limited usage risks the rest being under-developed and 'forgettable'. Enforced party members only aggravates the problem.

Which is what they're doing, right?

Ok, so it's nice to see that I'm not the only one who thinks Qara needs a good beating/lecture but is the game worth finishing?

Might as well finish so you can play with that character in the expansion.

 

[RK47]

Yep, I'm hoping this expansion will fix the problems.

 

[tardtastic]

i've been trying to enjoy NWN2, giving it a second chance, for the past week. and i can't get past this feeling that it's just a lot of hack-and-slash like diablo ii but instead of offering minimal entertainment through tight gameplay it just has a lot of boring dialogue i have to click through (to no great consequence), poorly timed animations and an unnecessarily unintuitive interface?
i'll just leave it alone until this expansion is released.

 

[JoeDirt]

tardtastic, the problem with the nwn2 OC is that it has very mediocre writing and dismal characterization and handling of game world NPC's. most are just quest dispensers with little personality. there is no exploration of the game world to speak of as you just follow a linear rail that takes you from plot exposition to plot point to plot exposition to dungeon to plot point, etc. in other words, it's just like your average JRPG.

none of this is necessarily BAD, of course, if done right, but in nwn2's case we have a very mixed bag. obsidian apparently wanted a really long playing time so they padded the linear campaign with dungeon after dungeon and then added hordes of too-easy critters and monsters to make the samey caves, crypts et all take you even longer to get through. if, like me, you derive a natural enjoyment out of D&D settings, rules, monsters and lore then you won't mind this so much, but i gather from your comments that you were actually expecting something more from the OC, so what you can expect is: a long string of dungeons and boring plot development broken up by brief moments of geniune inspiration and enjoyable set-pieces, (such as the trial, and a few other things most notably in acts 2 and act 3.)

in keeping with all the other linear and jrpg-derived design choices the devs made most of the game's "enjoyment" for the player is supposed to come from the party member interaction and characterization, hence why 12 people join your party throughout the game, none of them leave or can be made to leave, and are immortal in game terms. they're there whether you want them there or not because they're a game feature, and you're supposed to enjoy them. they were made "game-able" by the influence system but unfortunately that ended up being a superficial mini-game that actually rewards metagaming and not making meaningful choices as you would think so.

basically, if you're a die-hard fan of D&D and enjoy dungeon romps filled with hack and slash action, tons of phat lewt, a linear on-rails gameworld that takes you from point A to point B so it can narrate the plot to you while listening to your party members banter between themselves every 5 minutes then you will enjoy the nwn2 OC. I know I did.

P.S. at the very least, if you're gonna play through it download the A.I. mode since it makes the millions of enemies you'll face actually fight you back instead of just standing still and taking it up the ass.

 

[sabishii]

Another good suggestion from someone here was to turn on God mode during the tedious long dungeons.

 

[tardtastic]

Hi -

Well, I can enjoy hack-and-slash, and the D&D system does interest me, but the combat just isn't any fun for me here. I could catalogue the disappointments, but that would be unavailing for any of us, so, suffice it to say, that the combat in the game felt a lot more like "waiting" than "fighting." So, I've no problem with lots of combat, but there's got to be something fun to it, something engaging - it's got to feel "active." This was the same problem I had with NWN1's combat.
For example, I just can't see how a stealthy assassin-type character is viable in this game, in comparison to, say, a dual-wielding weapon master. There's just not much interactivity beyond click-and-wait, so everything really comes down to boring standard damage. Even taking Tiefling as my race and casting darkness, I was unable to get stealth attacks in enough to make them count for much of a bonus.
I guess I could enjoy this game enough to finish it if the animations were tightened up a bit. I don't mean the quality of them - but the timing. It's as if there's rarely any synchronization of my attacks to their effects or to my enemy's response - and it just kind of hurts my brain to watch something that out-of-whack for so long.
Anyway, I'll still give the expansion a go when it's released.

 

[JoeDirt]

nwn combat is click and wait, just like an mmo. if you don't like the click and wait style then you're not going to like nwn. there's no other way around it. nwn1 hides the click and wait with really spirited combat animations that make it feel like you're doing shit during cool-down, same as in the kotor games, but they did away with that animation system for nwn2 so now it's REALLY click and wait.

 

[Starwars]

Josh Sawyer posted this on the Obsidian forums in the MotB review thread.

The expansion does start out pretty mellow in the combat department, but it ramps up quickly after that. We put a good amount of effort into revising the combat scenarios so they felt tactically challenging. We tried to find ways to differentiate enemy types from area to area and within each area. Tactical difficulty is usually more interesting than numeric difficulty, if that makes sense.

I think that weathered veterans will at least find the combat engaging. Total nubs (e.g. Adam Brennecke) will probably be wiped out at a few spots. But hey, you're playing an epic-level D&D game, so suck it up and get promoted out of the Nubtorian Guard. I certainly believe that the majority of players moving from NWN2 to MotB will find the latter more interesting and challenging overall.