Broken Masterpiece

In many ways NWN2 is the best RPG to come out in the past few years, it has depth, a good long story, interesting characters, multiple ways to complete objectives, pleasent voice acting and many other things going for it. Unfortunately the experience is easily ruined by the technical issues, which are plenty.

When NWN2 first came out, it was so poorly optimized that it was unplayable to me desbite meeting the recommended specs. Thankfully the hardware now has closed the gap and it should run decently even on mid-range computers. It's not a bad looking game by any means, and at places the textures are even delightfully detailed, but it should run smoother. And there are still some other issues left with the game as well.


The home village

Ironically the issues begin with the autopatcher feature, it is slow and to some people unrealiable, offline patches are made by community but there is some hassle involved in using them. The game also has a nasty way of getting stuck at certain points. Many of these have been eliminated by patches but still I found myself having to use console commands to get the game move forward at one point, and at another to replace character files from an earlier saved game thanks to my dwarf companion mysteriously turning into a weasel(or something).


Khelgar Iron...err, weasel

Then there are just plain design flaws, and illogical quests and other annoyances. For e.g. at the beginning of the game I found myself stuck because the game just got too hard, later on I realized that I had accidentally skipped a whole city full of quests and thus hadn't leveled enough. I had at earlier point decided not to wonder into a certain fortification, because I had killed some of the guards from there just before. A logical choice, but the game expects you to go there, and none of the NPCs will find it strange that you are there with a demon you freed by killing their soldiers. On top of that the camera doesn't seem to be very well designed, combat in narrow spaces easily becomes chaos for all the wrong reasons.

Shoddy cam - chaos guaranteed

Luckily the good things far outweight the bad ones, and that says a lot of the game beneath. After playing many modern action-RPGs and action-adventures, which are nowadays just referred to as "RPGs", the depth of NWN2 really made an impression to me. The D&D system leads to unique characters and allows so many different ways to play the game that it puts games like Oblivion into shame. The combat is addicting as it requires some tactics and the use of all your party members and their special skills. You might even get to manage your own castle at certain point with merchants, farmers and militia. The dialogue is no shakespeare, but it's nevertheless full of funny moments and interesting choices. The evil and good choices are a bit black and white at times, but if you liked for e.g. Kotor you shouldn't have a problem with that.


You can kill emos too

NWN2 might be a flawed game, but it is a great RPG by today's standards. It offers plenty of content for the money and is something every RPG fan should have in their collection.