There are three campaigns in three expansions included in this package. The original campaign, while having the certain wobbly flavor of a first run with a new system, is rather enjoyable. I'm not a fan of most of the characters, but there are some who make it worthwhile. The dialog is fair, the graphics are nice, the plot is nothing original, but it works. First and foremost the original campaign shines for its breadth and depth of areas to explore, side quests to complete, and volume of choices and interactions. Not simply a single linear point A-B game, there are numerous games within the game to keep just about any one entertained such as crafting, gaining and losing favor of companions, the keep rebuilding process, and more. If I had to knock the campaign it would be for being a bit too easy, (being able to rest endlessly comes to mind) being overly light-hearted for my taste, and some annoying characters, but overall it hits solid B turf.
The second campaign, Mask of the Betrayer, nails it as a refined second run of a complete game. The game options expanded significantly and polished, the builders could finally get down to business on a strong, serious, story driven game. The second campaign roughly picks up where the first left off, but takes your main character far from the first setting and into a far more somber environment where the plot can properly take over the heavy lifting. Diving into epic levels, this is a high powered campaign with serious firepower coming down the line, but epic level rules were totally rewritten and customized for Neverwinter Nights 2. The overall result is more solid high level game play than in the straight pen and paper to PC conversion of epic rules attempted in Neverwinter Nights 1. The second campaign is shorter than the first, but has amazing atmosphere, interesting characters, an enthralling plot, and the best music I've ever heard in a game. There were epic battles, nagging mysteries, hair standing on end, and sleepless nights, all hallmarks of a great RPG. Once again, to seek out faults I can only come up with one worth mention which is the crafting power. Crafting had the potential to make the game too easy in the first campaign, but in the second it kills the challenge late in the game. One of your companions even comes preloaded for crafting so it's only natural to try your hand, but in my final tally I'd say just don't even do it. Skip the crafting and save the difficulty. Overall though, easy A for the whole run.
The third campaign is Storm of Zehir, which has gotten a lot of flak for diverging from the first two campaigns. Instead of linear plot progression and prebuilt companions Storm of Zehir harkens back ye olden days of making a party of mutes with stats and traipsing around killing things and occasionally being killed in turn. (Roughly 1988-2000) There IS a plot, and it's good in my opinion, but exploration, combat, and mindless acquisition of wealth and power via stabbing things is the real meat and drink of the game. Storm of Zehir also added little new content and didn't do as much improvement and polish to the game system as previous expansions, opting instead to focus on a radically different campaign with new features like a pretty impressive overland map system and a trade system that was rough at first but sound after a couple patches. If you remember the Wizardry series you'll love this campaign, if you think Final Fantasy XIXIIVVII is epic, it's charm will likely be lost on you. I personally love it and believe much of its negative reception had to do with expectations. It's DIFFERENT, and PC geeks do not take kindly to change when we expect the same thing we already know we like to be served up. Some is of course personal preference; I LOVE making my own party in games, and am rarely impressed by the sort of stale, cliche characters most RPGs games force upon you. Your mileage may vary. Taking a shot at the campaign is easy for me though, it's too short. The detail in graphics, the new additions, the whole package is excellent, but it's like one of those fancy weird looking dishes at an obscenely overpriced restaurant might taste like win, but it's just too damn small to be a meal. Even taking that into consideration I give er' a B+.
Moving on, the other side of the coin is Neverwinter Nights 2 as a game making program. Neverwinter Nights 1 is still widely played today for its groundbreaking multiplayer capabilities. You can make your own campaign, even your own WORLD, run it on a dedicated server, and play alongside other players or even take control as a DM and run the game any way you see fit. The creators of Neverwinter Nights 1 realized what they had opened up even with a more primitive game system, and Neverwinter Nights 2 took that system and improved upon it by leaps and bounds in most ways. Not only by balancing out game mechanics (though some work can still be done there) but in streamlining the ability of game makers to change what they desire to change. Unlike Neverwinter Nights 1, custom content takes care of itself. Whatever the server needs will be automatically downloaded to the player's PC and managed in such a way as to prevent conflicts between different servers. This alone vastly improves the game's online play, allowing players to easily try new servers of endless variety. And with the scripting and customization ability of Neverwinter Nights 2 that means this one game can create virtually any concept that works in a fantasy MMO style game engine. I've seen it all in Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2... Persistent worlds are the most common, entire mini worlds like little baby MMOs, each one different. Lord of the Rings themes, Forgotten Realms themes galore, any setting you can think of can be made with enough time, effort, and skill. Many have taken the game and emulated RTS elements, PvP bloodbaths, or even board game concepts. Zombie survival modules, both single and multiplayer, Neverwinter Nights versions of Defense of the Ancients, arena battle servers with team vs. team play, if you can script it and build it, it can be done. I personally learned C from scratch on my own to be able to build in Neverwinter Nights 1 and it's become an obsession of a hobby, always drawing me to a new project or idea. Moving from Neverwinter Nights 1 to 2 was hard because the learning curb is steeper, but 3 months in I wish I had done so sooner for all the improvements over the original.
There IS plenty to bash about Neverwinter Nights 2 as a building program. The toolset is a pain, although with time I've learned to work with its quirks and tantrums to build with few crashes or errors along the way. (Few, not none) The learning curve of 2 is notably higher than 1; it intimidated me for quite some time. And as a time sink of Neverwinter Nights 2 is twice as demanding as 1, mostly due to the much greater time needed to produce maps.
However, most of the downsides are inevitable costs incurred by the upsides. It takes vastly longer to make maps, but the maps are visually nearly on par with the latest games. The learning curve is higher because there's so much more ability to customize and perfect. And it's not all without an upside, with so much more work needed the days of casual, sloppy builders cranking out piles of junk to drown out the good stuff is over. There are relatively few servers running online for Neverwinter Nights 2, but those that are running are of vastly superior quality to the teeming hordes of garbage thrown up all willy-nilly but any one with a high speed connection and a pulse in Neverwinter Nights 1.
And for those skeptics who turned Neverwinter Nights 2 aside in its early years, I say take another look. While plagued by problems in its early days, the game has matured and been refined to the point where it's clearly superior overall to Neverwinter Nights 1 and will likely be the best multiplayer game making program around for the next decade. Content now auto downloads without drama or instability, crashes have become uncommon in play, and the community seems to be finally hitting its stride. I could easily see the game taking off far after the last patch was released now that the major hurdles have been cleared and builders are growing confident in what they can do. I recently witnessed a high quality persistent world go from brand new to 15 players at any given time in the course of a month, for example. If you're a builder, build it and they will come. If you're a player, there are already a couple dozen servers running 10+ players at any given time with some hitting 40+ territory.
All around this game is great stuff. For casual players it offers three solid single player campaigns and the possibility of online play if you're into it. For builders and hard core Dungeons and Dragons fans this is THE game currently, and won't likely be seriously challenged for years to come. It has a few flaws, but the overall ratio of "yay" to "blarg" is approximately 4 to 1.
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In this package you get the game with all of the latest patches and updates (e: after downloading them through the auto-downloader) and the two expansions, "Mask of the Betrayer" and "Storm of Zehir." You also get a tool-set but I haven't bothered with it yet. Unfortunately I'm late to the series, but I've played Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 recently (for the first time!...after enjoying Dragon Age: Origins) and this seems right up my alley. Before updating I ran into the Sunken Flagon bug which is a game-breaker. After updating the issue was fixed and I only encountered the occasional graphical hic-up. Not too bad considering the complaints with the original release of this title.You don't need to register online or be online at all to enjoy the singe-player experience, however, you will want to update through the game to get the latest patches/updates. You can do it yourself but doing it through the game is MUCH less of a headache. Updating does require an internet connection. It comes with three "key #s" on the inside of the instruction manual. One for each game/expansion. It comes in a dvd case with three discs and is reasonably packaged. The security as far as I can tell is a disc-check.
Friends have recommended that I try Neverwinter 1 if I planned to play online (which I don't). You get one character there, but here... you get several. The strategy for the battles is along the same lines as Dragon Age: Origins which is why I tried this one out. I will be trying out Neverwinter 1 someday.
If you like fantasy, a little bit of strategy, and micro-managing then this is probably for you. The game is a few years old and although it doesn't look greatit doesn't look bad at all. If you have wanderlust after playing Dragon Age: Origins, and are looking for something like it, then this should fit the bill. This game doesn't control as nice. The camera is awkward at first but you'll get used to it. And this being an older game it doesn't look as nice as DA:O. BUT, it's still really fun. And you get more freedom with developing your character.
The other reviewer wrote a really nice detailed review...but I wanted to add my two cents in case anyone is on the fence about it. No regrets in purchasing this. For only twenty bucks you get a lot of bang for your buck. It's definitely recommended.
Edited 29/1/2013
GOG is selling this game all patched up for $19.99 with no drm (no online connection nor disc check necessary etc). It went on sale January 24th. A cheaper option worth consideration nowadays...thought I'd give a heads up.
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Well... I just got my hands on a copy of this during the holidays.. after waiting and waiting... You see.. Neverwinter Nights was hands down my favorite PC game...but I could not get the sequel.. my old 2800+ would not take it... with that being said...is this game.. the game that dethrones Neverwinter Nights... is it a worthy follow up?? Well...Let's look at the pluses and minuses.+ Unlike the original Neverwinter... this opens up subraces.. so if you pick say Dwarf.. you have a choice of Gold Dwarf, Shield Dwarf, and Grey Dwarf.
Sometimes there is no differences between the sub races... still it is about customizability so in actuality this is only a minor complaint.
+ The HD Graphics are awesome
They max out at 1024X 706 Res...
+ Once this game gets up and going it is quite addicting.. and as magical as Neverwinter Nights 1
Unlike Neverwinter Nights 1... this does not have said magic right from the get go... and takes a while to pick up...
+ There are more basic classes (Including new Additions.. Warlock, Swashbuckler, Favored Soul, and Spirit Shaman) and a lot more Prestige classes over the first game...
If there is such a thing as to much of a good thing this might have it concerning classes.. (still might be minor complaint considering once again all about character customization)
It took 3 hours to download all the patches for one disc... (Not to mention the other 2) and it still has some bugs.. and crashes in spots...
+ it is a good game and you can work past the crashes... but with all the downloading of patches really... :O
Overall... is Neverwinter Nights 2 as good as Neverwinter Nights... Yes... Is it better... No... Is it a worthy sequel.. Yes... even with the bugs that are still there.. it is an excellent game.
and another great PC classic...
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Reading all the reviews I held off getting nwn2 until the price came way down and it had as many patches as possible. This feedback is based upon my daughter finishing nwn2 and I'm about half way through.We love nwn1 and play it all the time. Nwn2 is a bit more linear in the story, but that has not been too bad. In nwn1 it felt like I was exploring a world AND solving problems, where in nwn2 it follows more of a script of what has to be done next to solve problems. I liked the nwn1 exploration because I could pick the order to do things and hence find weapons, amour and artifacts in the order I wanted to get them to maximize my character's abilities. This gave nwn1 a lot of replayability where I don't see it, yet, in nwn2.
Nwn2 would fail in area transitions and/or generate BSODs (blue screen of death, such as x124 hardware failure). We did everything from reinstalling nwn2 to rebuilding a PC's software from scratch (wipe and reinstall windows+nwn2 only) to swapping graphics/GPU cards (ATI Radeon HD 4600 series, EVGA GeForce GT 240, motherboard GPU). For us, nwn2 causes the GPUs to fail not only during the game but even right after playing the game while just in windows (this on the ATI GPU). The consistent fix, so far, was to back off the nwn2 resolution one step (so from the game maximum 1920x1080 to 1776x1000). Other graphics intensive games, such as Starcraft II, did not have these problems on our PCs.
Navigating, moving the characters around, is the worst part of the game (not a big problem in nwn1). I got use to it and even learned to use the keyboard keys (QWEASD) a bit to make it less jumpy and more predictable. Having a better GPU also made navigating with the mouse a bit more predictable and less jumpy. However, I feel my ability to play the game for any length of time is limited by the "effort" to keep the navigation under control. I get tired of that effort before I tire of the game.
If you really liked nwn1, as we did, then I believe you would like nwn2 well enough -for this price -to put up with the jumpy navigation, assuming you don't have graphic card problems you can't solve.
Update 2/1/2012: The x124 error turned out not to be nwn2 related, but a bad motherboard that had to be replaced, but otherwise we still did have to work around other BSODs by reducing the resolution. As to navigation, using the NVIDIA GeForce 240 graphic cards on Pentium Dual-Core CPUs (E6500 @ 2.9 Ghz) we got nice and smooth navigation that was no longer a chore to work with (no longer jumping around, jerky, unpredictable). So you may want to play with the graphics settings util your navigation is playable (the graphics options give hints which settings will improve performance while reducing screen detail, so not as nice looking). If it is hard to get to a playable configuration, your graphics card may simply not be up to the task (our GeForce 210 and Radeon 4670 were not up to it). My daughter has now played nwn2 (plus Betrayer & Zehir) through 3 times ... I'm still working through the original nwn2 portion.
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This game is simply a must play for any D&D fan. While the original campaign may not have been as well recieved as its predecessors, it none-the-less is the best D&D based RPG released. I recently replayed this game again a few years after it's debut and was pleased that the graphics still looked great and the action was just as fun.The two add-on's each give a uniquely different storylines and gameplay making the platinum addition well worth it.
Pros:
Hugh multiplayer community with custom build worlds.
Great Graphics
TONS of ways to customize and build your character
Engrossing storyline
Hours and hours of gameplay!
Cons:
Jerky controls
Some bugs and crashes
Overall if you loved Baldur's Gate and the first NeverWinter Nights series than this game should definitely be on your list. It may not be an epic classic like Baldur's Gate is, but it certainly measures up.
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