NWN2 OC was not bad as people make it out

[Lacrymas]

Those are both turn-based where cutting down on trashiness is par for the course. Of course, you can have no trash combat at all, but you have to compensate with other gameplay systems and PoE lacks those, so it compensates with constant fights and thinks it can obfuscate that fact.

 

[Roguey]

Everything else suffered from too few enemy types in general, but I don't think it beats PoE in terms of sheer quantity of pointless fights.

Near-completionist kill count for PoE: 1300 Near-completionist kill count for DA:O: 2600-2800

 

[Lacrymas]

That means I never really felt the trashiness in DA:O as much as I did in PoE, so make of that what you will.

 

[Nano]

It's probably because DA:O's combat system is p. entertaining compared to PoE's snoozefest.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

You do get xp for combat in PoE.......................... It's called "filling the bestiary", this is the hundredth time I say this.

the bestiary fills up pretty quickly; you do not get xp for trash mobs after complete bestiary and no xp for humanoids lolol. So it is not true xp for killing.

We got excited by "no xp for combat" because we thought it would reduce trash mobs and will give ways around some fights, like skills checks or choices. Turns out we are naive and we got the most trash-mob filled game in existence.

FeelTheRads clarifies why there is no xp for combat. Because Josh is a control freak live every other SJW, not because he wanted you to have fun.

I also vaguely remember the orcs not giving that much xp, so it's doubly shitty. The NWN2 OC also suffers from too many plot threads that don't connect very well and the problem is the King of Shadows. It's a stupid antagonist that hogs too much of the third act, if it wasn't there the other things would make more sense and be connected better. As it stands now, the Luskan plotline simply exists and it culminates in the trial, but for what? What narrative purpose does it serve? Some other, more interesting, plot threads were also dropped, like Qara's insane power level that spooked Sand. It feels like the game could've had a much more character-focused narrative, like a political struggle with Luskan, but the KoS ruins it and it gobbled up too much development time.

I ain't claiming NWN2 OC is perfect, far from it. But other than xp for combat (which is a must for trash mob filled RTwP); it lacks the literary diarrhea ever-present in P:E. Every no-name NCP is a historian who goes on and on and on and on.

 

[Lacrymas]

There are very few mobs that are numerous enough for the bestiary to fill up with them, but you still keep fighting them. At the top of my head, I think shadows and xaurips are like that. The different types of the same mob have different bestiary entries, so the enemies in White March do give you xp even though they are still xaurips and shadows. Yeah, you don't get xp for humanoids, but you get money and items to sell, which are just as useless as the xp. Speaking of useless xp, you get enough xp to hit level cap halfway into the game, so it wouldn't matter if they did give you xp at that point. The point is that there is xp for combat, just not an endless fountain of it, and it wouldn't matter even if it was. Interestingly enough, this is not true in NWN2 OC, you hit level cap in the last 10% of the game if you are a race without an xp penalty and you have to really do everything to get to max level as a race with it, Deep Gnomes can't even get to level cap.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

xaurip

This will never not sound stupid.

 

[Max Damage]

xaurip

This will never not sound stupid.

What about fampyr?

The only good things I can say about NWN2 OC are that it has full party control, and that I progressed in it more than I ever did in NWN OC (I quit after ranger joined the party). It isn't the worst thing ever, but I didn't find it enjoyable enough to ignore the soul sucking slog that is Act 1, the awful AI, and how bugged/unstable the game is. I don't see myself ever coming back to it.

 

[ilitarist]

Must be a subjective memory but still.

I remember NWN2 thrash battles. It was full of dungeons with corridors filled with repetetive monsters. I don't remember memorable battles like... at all. Memorable scripted events like the siege but not battles.

I remember a lot of interesting setups in DAO. It had used 3D world well, often ambushing you with long range dudes on a ramp or sometimes letting you approach people from the side. However I remember a lot, a huge lot of extremely boring and repetetive fights. I replayed it around the same time I played PoE 3.0. Most of all I hated the Fade because it had puzzle fights made for specific transformations. I was exhausted in dwarven dungeons because while there were some interesting features the combat was always the same, always hordes of darkspawns. I remember the forest full of fights with wolves and werewolves. I remember that city with undead problem and boring fights there. And I've played on Nightmare! Dragon Age Inquisition had a similar problem but there combat was less involved and more systemic. It was a question of attrition and almost always you had some minor goals for combat (closing rifts for inquisition power, gathering bear asses etc) - nothing really interesting but still better than nothing. And it was even better in DAI expansion, Trespasser. Of course there are some memorable encounters in DAI. Like den of smugglers in that big city.

So the thing is I don't remember trash in PoE 3.0. I don't ever remember being bored the way I was in half of DAO dugeons - most of them I didn't even want to start. And that's even with little XP and loot for combat in PoE! Instead I remember a lot of special encounters. Almost on every global map. Fighting those guys was a reward on its own.

Now if you wanna talk trash combat then talk Tyranny. What a letdown for such a good RPG in other regards.

 

[Lhynn]

Nwn2 OC was so much better than PoE in every imaginable way that i cant comprehend why people are bringing up that piece of shit around here.

That said Nwn2 OC had a very strong case of the "fuck you, it could have been good" sprinkled everywere across the game. It was too safe and because of it its frustrating to play through it. That and a bland third act.
Ive finished it twice, both times i ended up drained and wanted to quit playing nwn2 and not even go near user generated content. It was too long, the OC of a nwn should be short and sweet and leave the player wanting more.

 

[Fairfax]

Everything else suffered from too few enemy types in general, but I don't think it beats PoE in terms of sheer quantity of pointless fights.

Near-completionist kill count for PoE: 1300 Near-completionist kill count for DA:O: 2600-2800

Are you sure? This is from Bubbles on POTD:

 

[fantadomat]

NWN2 OC is pretty decent except the stupid ork shit.

 

[Delterius]

im starting to think we kill way too many things in rpgs

maybe if NwN2 didn't fuck around with 10 different non villains the MC wouldn't be a walking whirlwind of genocide

oh my god, the writers are geniuses

its all leading to MotB

its all leading to the true evil ending of the Saga

a character that simply chooses to kill, maim, torture and destroy everything in his path towards enemies whose connection with the plot is dubious at best has got to be the chosen of myrkul

Oh. My. God.

it all makes sense

bhaalspawn my ass, NwN2 is the Baldur's Gate that never was

 

[fantadomat]

im starting to think we kill way too many things in rpgs

Yet not enough!

 

[FeelTheRads]

How were they stuck with a standard-fare fantasy scenario? They chose what to do, did they not?

Or if by standard-fare you mean standard Forgotten Realms, sure, it's standard-fare, but it can definitely be used much better than Obshitian did. If you think this is the best that can be done with FR you don't know what you're talking about.

I also wouldn't call it "sort of alright". More like "it almost gives you cancer but not quite".

 

[Lacrymas]

No, I think they were handed the project half-finished, they didn't start it from scratch themselves. They were also given a crushingly short deadline. They could've handled it better, though, the building blocks are there, they just needed to think about them a bit more and rearrange them better, removing the excess fat and polishing the things that remain. Removing everything concerning the KoS (the background battle with Ammon Jerro could've still happened and that should've been the catalyst for the political struggle with Luskan) and the orc caves would've been a nice start. Then maybe the whole Shardbearer thing. Obsidian work harder, rather than smarter and fumble many things because of that. The talented people that made Obsidian what they are barely managed to squeeze enough creativity out of themselves to give them the "storyteller" rep they now have. When those people can't influence the overall thing very much, as is the case of PoE and Tranny, it turns out bland and essentially a vapid air bubble.

 

[vivec]

Seriously? Orks are the worst? No one remembers all the rogues and the undead? Jeez.

 

[Seari]

NWN2 OC<<<<<<<PoE<<<<<<<...∞...<<<<<<<<MotB

 

[FeelTheRads]

Come on, this cannot be what you take out of it.

Well, you worded it like someone handed them what to do. What am I supposed to take from it?

Obsidian themselves did better with FR earlier

It was their first, as a company.

 

[aweigh]

king of shadows was a better antagonist than the PoE bad guy (can't remember his name). i don't think it's actually possible to make a worse antagonist than PoE guy who is literally just a bunch of script-triggers waiting for the player in a given map so the game can unload exposition dumps.

nwn2 oc had a veritable cornucopia of antagonists with one who was actually a real character (ammon jerro) who even receives a freaking character arc, something no NPC in PoE receives.

 

[Roguey]

Are you sure? This is from Bubbles on POTD:

a) PotD inflates enemy numbers
b) That likely includes expansions. My DA:O number didn't include expansions or DLC content (aside from Shale) either.

That particular PoE playthrough involved hitting the level cap through the black-clearing of every map I visited and the completion of nearly every sidequest excepting bounties or anything involving Caed Nua beyond resolving Kana's sidequest. My second almost-entirely-critical path playthrough of PoE resulted in a count of nearly 600, however I could/should have killed more considering I had to dial the difficulty down to story time for Thaos since my characters were probably two levels below where they were expected to be after they retuned that fight with a patch.

No, I think they were handed the project half-finished, they didn't start it from scratch themselves.

NWN2 was done from scratch. The plot was entirely Ferret Baudoin's.

 

[aweigh]

I'm probably the person who most likes PoE in this thread which is why I'm capable of being critical of the game.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I can't even remember the orc shit, I guess I must have long-since erased it from my memory. The aspects I remember the most that made me never want to replay it were stuff like:

Getting a quest, going to the location on the world map, only to find its literally one small meadow where you fight one trash mob of forgettable enemies and the quest doesn't even satisfactorily resolve:

In fact it gave me lots of memories, just zero were positive ones, aside from 3rd ed D&D's naturally enjoyable character building system including the inherited loot system from NWN 1. I would go out of my way and say I really liked that Deekin shows up and how good it was that they thought of him and his fanboys, but unfortunately my version was extremely bugged-up and Deekin didn't even appear in the shop for the second half of the game, also causing me to miss out on some loot options, though, weirdly enough, all the bugs weren't even in the top 10 of my complaints about the game, which, for me, is quite unusual.

 

[DavidBVal]

It was a poor execution of a rather good set of individual ideas. The sword thingie, the trial, the keep... you can see they really went for an ambitious roleplaying campaign with cool reactivity. The end result, however, was conditioned by a jarring engine and terrible pacing/encounter design, but overall I remember it felt 'meh' to me, nowhere as terrible as the deep soul scars left by DA:O or Oblivion.

 

[fantadomat]

NWN2 OC is decent,it have some great moments like the trial and some terrible moments like the orks. In the end it balance itself to be ok. I enjoyed that the game had some misleading story elements and multiple enemies. I never felt that the shadow king is actually the big boss,more like the last enemy you tackled. I even think of replaying it after i finish replaying fallout 2 and fallout NV.