Four years after the original and highly rated Neverwinter Nights,
Obsidian steps up to the plate to fill in Bioware's shoes for a sequel
worthy of the great RPG title "Neverwinter". First thing you need to do
is create a character, You have loads of different races and classes to
choose from to make your character completely unique and in-tune to
your play style. The classes will vary from strong melee only classes
that deal out (or recieve) loads of damage to mighty wizards that and
kill a horde of enemies with one spell and anything in between. The
game starts off relatively slow as you go through a tutorial cleverly
disguised as a simple fair. The game has you doing tasks such as
trading furs to a merchant for a bow that you need to give to your
stepfather. Though it is slow, it still does an exellent job
introducing you to the game mechanics. The game does use standard
Dungeons and Dragons rules so it may be a tiny bit complicated for
someone not familiar with RPGs. But even if you arn't familiar with the
D&D universe, you should be able to pick the game up relatively
quickly, about 30 minutes or less if you are just a casual gamer. And
even though this game is a sequel to the first, you do not need to have
played the first one to understand whats going on in the story.
All that aside, lets get to the fun part. After the beginning
"Tutorial" the story kicks off, Bladelings (goblin-like creatures)
attack your home and you must fend them off along side your militia
buddies. After the attack, your father reveals why the Bladelings
attacked and sends you on a mission towards the human capital of
Neverwinter. What seems like a simple task quickly changes into an epic
quest for the survival of the world. You will meet a bunch of colorful
and unique characters along the way such as a temper-mental dwarf that
loves to get into fights, and an annoying Teifling (devil-like race
also available for character creation) who's purpose is unknown un-till
late in the game and more. These people arn't just there for show, they
prove very useful in combat and you WILL need them. Unlike the first
Neverwinter Nights were they had you exploring the lands either by
yourself or with one other AI controlled character, this game allows up
to three other people in your party. Because of this the game had to be
balanced out so you no longer are able to do it alone. This can prove
to be difficult as your AI companions arn't very smart, More often than
not, they will get suck behind a building or fence and sometimes they
will not follow you at all. But when they do act as the game intended
them to, they can prove useful in certain tasks such as unlocking doors
or chests for loot or as a meat shield to take all the blows from the
enemies if you are a mage or any other lightly armored class.
Along with the loads of AI problems there are a few bugs in the
game that can get in the way of your quest to save the world. One bug i
experienced during my play-through was a bug in which one of my
companions just disappeared from the game completely and was totally
unusable for the rest of the game. Although they have come along way in
patching, there are still bugs around that can just ruin your
experience with the game. Bugs aside however, the storyline and game
play mechanics make up for most of it. The storyline makes some
unexpected turns and makes you really care about whats going on within
the world. And game play mechanics just add to the emotion, one mission
will have you in control of a ruined keep and the game has you build it
up from scratch. I cant talk about that aspect too much but it does add
a sense of responsibility to the game. Although at times the game can
be too overwhelming at times in terms of what needs to be done in order
to advance in the game. Some missions have you searching the world
several times over un-till you finally understand what needs to be
done, although, there are very few of these types of quests so it is
not a major problem.
Along with a great single player campaign the Devs also added
online and downloadable features to the game as well, after you finish
the main story you are able to replay it with a friend and get a
totally different ending than the first time. If you get bored with
that there are several downloadable fan content you can get of the
internet such as Modules which are short little mini-quests that
usually last about 2-5 hours. You can even download entire campaigns
that last 20+ hours. Everything you download is entirely fan made so
you can expect some really good and not so good downloads.
Also, because its all fan made, you can create a campaign of your own
using the editor. The editor can be complicated but if you know what
you are doing, you can create some unique and crazy stuff.
With the official single player storyline alone this game can
easily last over fifty hours of pure gameplay. With all of the online
content added you can expect that time to double. When you play this
game, I recommend you have a clear schedule because once you start, it
is very hard to stop. All that being said, I can easily recommend this
game to anyone willing to try out an RPG, from the most hardcore
players to the simple casual gamer, it is sure to please. Just make
sure you have a decent computer no more than two years old or you will
suffer from performance issues due to the lack of optimization. SO the
question still remains. Is this a worthy sequel to the first
Neverwinter Nights? The answer is yes, as long as you can look past
some bugs, AI and graphical problems, you are sure to have fun with
this game.
