Neverwinter Nights worth it?

[Jaligard]

The game should finally be coming out for the Mac soon. Is it any good?

I played it very briefly (half an hour) and enjoyed it a few months ago, but I didn't do that much or get very far.

I was wondering if anyone could tell me whether it's worth the fifty-sixty bucks it will cost me.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Sixchan]

I certainly think it is. Its a very gripping game (even the single player, despite all the bashing it gets).

 

[mmu1]

Disclaimer: I don't know how good the various fan-produced modules and campaigns available for NWN nights are, so I have no way of judging the strength of the multiplayer game. I have heard people say good things about some of them.

However, purely on the strength of the single-player campaign, I'd say the game definitely isn't worth it.

First and foremost, Bioware did not fulfill their repeated promises and deliver a single-player campaign that was as rich and involved as that in any of their other games. The role-playing possibilities are extremely limited.

Second, the combat is both repetitive, simplistic, and quite often too easy. This is due to the fact they designed the game to be playable by a single character of any class with one henchman, which is a style of play a combat heavy D&D game isn't really suited for.

Third, the level design and graphics, while good, are not particularly inspired or creative. Every place you go is basically a rectangular dungeon with passages running at straight angles, because of the limitations of the tile-set. Some of these tile sets are bland and horribly over-used (the castle interior, manor interior, and "typical dungeon" ones, for example), others, like the forest one with leaves stirred by wind and shafts of light shooting through the canopy from above can be quite beautiful... but still suffer from too much repetition and the fact that the great scenery is used to make the forest into a maze of dungeon-like passages you'll fight through like any other area in the game.

It leads to things like, for example, a Dryad's home in the woods that you enter through a door in a huge tree stump uses the same exact stone-based tileset as every manor in the city of Neverwinter, but with green ambient lighting and a few potted plants scattered about.

On the plus side, the graphics in certain places can be quite impressive before they get old, and the combat animations are some of the most impressive I've seen so far in any PC game - the characters duck and parry blows with perfect timing, (the weapons actually interact with each other, or it seems as if they do) and you can tell by both the animation and sound whether the blow was blocked with a weapon, a shield, or struck home... Unfortunately, for me that wasn't enough to carry a pretty bland game.

 

[mmu1]

I certainly think it is. Its a very gripping game (even the single player, despite all the bashing it gets).

I'm sorry, but the game doesn't get anywhere near enough "bashing". It was fawned over and coddled by reviewers in a completely disgusting manner... The fact that it almost universally was rated much higher than something like the also flawed, but infinitely more ambitious and creative Morrowind is completely absurd.

 

[Sixchan]

I'm sorry, but the game doesn't get anywhere near enough "bashing". It was fawned over and coddled by reviewers in a completely disgusting manner... The fact that it almost universally was rated much higher than something like the also flawed, but infinitely more ambitious and creative Morrowind is completely absurd.

Well, to each his own. I said that I think it is. If you don't, that's fine.

 

[NPC]

I really enjoyed NWN. Enough so that I finished the single player campaign three times with three different characters.

Roleplaying opportunities are small, but they are there. For example, if you play an evil character, you can threaten, bribe and blackmail NPC's to get what you want.

Charisma matters. A high charisma will get you more favorable reactions from the NPC's (and often times a greater reward when finishing side quests).

I found the combat to be challenging and exciting. At first I didn't like the fact that you only controlled one PC, but after getting used to it, I didn't mind it all.

I thought the graphics were great. No complaints from me there.

All in all, I'd recommend this game. It's got great replay value, and once you've finished the single player campaign, you can then move on to 3rd party modules, or even create your own adventure. Well worth the cash, IMO.

 

[Jaligard]

Thanks for all the replies!

I have two other more specific questions:

1) How is the online play/community? Is it easy to find people to game with?

2) How easy is it to create your modules? Do you have to be a programmer to make anything decent?

 

[Chaz]

Go buy the game now!

Its excellent.

The online community is vast and EXTREMELY active.

Making modules is anywhere from very easy to a little work.. depending on how deep you want to get into it. There have been incredible advances to the tools for module making. and the user community is highly active in creating new advances and helping others with their projects.
It is a lot of fun and worth the price of the game if even if there was no single player game inculded. But there is a full game included, and i was impressed with it. I enjoyed playing the game very much, and finished it.


So to sum up...

Go buy the game Now!!

 

[Jaligard]

Sadly, the game is not yet available for the Mac. It's close, I gather, from the stuff they've posted online.

I'm not even sure whether my computer will be able to run it, but I'm hopeful.

The one nice thing about the delay for games to hit the Mac market (to go along with the many not-nice things) is that I can ask around to see if the game is any good or not before I buy it.

 

[Lazybones]

As someone who's been heavily involved in online NWN play since it came out, let me weigh in with a few opinions.

First, I totally agree with the critiques of the official campaign (OC). I only got into Chapter 2 before I got bored and shelved it, never to return. This was a week after I bought the game.

That said, there are already several thousand user-created modules available for download at Neverwinter Vault. As always with such things, most are... shall we say, "limited"? But among those are several dozen single-player mods that are quite excellent, with story, dialogue, NPCs, henchmen, custom items and monsters, etc. NWVault has user ratings and only rates a module on its "best of" list if they manage to get 10 votes. There are a number of fine conversions of TSR/WotC modules as well (I played a conversion of TSC that was quite entertaining for a few hours of play).

But NWN truly shines in multiplayer online play. Regardless of what the box or Bioware claimed, this game was always intended for this purpose (this assertion is based on extensive reviews of what the designers and others said in press releases and on the Bioware message boards both before and after the game's release). If you have a group of friends with the game and at least one broadband connection (for the host), you can have a computer D&D experience that is stronger than any online RPG to date (IMHO). If you don't have the friends handy, there is a great community at www.neverwinterconnections.com (NWC) where you can find games or like-minded players to game with. Players and DMs are rated and given feedback so you can get an idea of what kind of fellow gamers you want to play with.

I prefer to run campaigns since you get the character-development and sense of camraderie that you get from PnP games. Since the game came out I've run several campaigns at NWC, the longest of which has gone over 5 months and about 20 sessions now.

The toolset is fairly easy to work with although scripting is required for the more complex actions. When I started I knew nothing of C++ or any other computer language. The online community and the messageboards have thousands of scripts that you can easily adapt to serve virtually any purpose (check out the scripting forum at the Bioware Official Boards). I have produced 6 extensive modules, including 2 that are up on the Vault, that have custom monsters and extensive scripted effects.

Now that the game is 6 months old, I still run my campaign game once a week but have shifted focus to newer games like BF1942. NWN is the first of a new generation of online RPGs, and is the best simulation of PnP D&D (i.e. the group of players sitting around a table gaming, NOT the single-player adventure that we get from games like the excellent Baldur's Gate series) that we have thus far. If you want to play online D&D with other people, I strongly recommend it.