I recently picked up this relatively new title from Obsidian, and I have to say, the game has exceeded my expectations. For those of you who don’t know, Neverwinter Nights 2 is a game based on the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 ruleset. It isn’t an exact translation, but it is pretty close, and does a pretty good job of staying as true to the rules as possible. Obsidian is new to the block though, they kinda took over the Bioware line of games. So basically, they have a lot to live up to, Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights 1, for example. Anyway, I was pleasantly suprised by this game, as it took the things I loved about Baldur’s Gate and the things I loved about Neverwinter Nights and came to a happy medium.

One sort of stigma that the game has right now, is that it is really buggy and performs poorly even on top end systems. This was very much true when the game first came out. The release was clearly rushed. Either way, it led me to not picking the game up earlier, which I think actually helped my enjoyment of the game out. The game is currently patched to 1.5, with more patches slated to come out pretty soon. Most of the bugs are fixed now, as well as a lot of the performance issues, and the AI is actually fairly smart now (for enemies and allies alike). The patches in the works for the next few months are primarily going to be fixing the classes up a bit, which is very good news. Either way, don’t let older reviews scare you away from this game now if you were thinking about getting it. The game is running in good form for me, and my computer barely surpasses the minimum requirements of the game.

As far as storyline and character development goes, this is where I think the game really shines compared to it’s predecessor. For one, unlike Neverwinter Nights 1, you actually have a 4 man party, and a pretty large selection of companions that you meet along the way. This allows you to play any class in the game, and always have access to the supporting classes that you need. For example, if you decide to play a wizard type character, you will always have your fighter, rogue and cleric types to back you up. If you want to play a rogue, you can get a wizard type to go along with you. Each of your companions also has his or her own personality, and they react to your decisions throughout the game. This sort of reminded me of Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2. Your supporting cast are generally interesting characters as well, nobody is particularly bland. I haven’t really gotten very far in the game yet as far as storyline goes, but so far, so good. You are really in the dark about a lot of things, which I kind of like. I don’t really like having the whole plot laid out in front of me from the get go.

Graphically, the game is a clear step up from Neverwinter Nights 1, but the game is not groundbreaking either. This, in my opinion is the games weakest spot. I had to turn down many of the graphic options, mainly in regards to shadows and filters, to get it to run smoothly on my machine. The model’s aren’t particularly high detail either. This is where the game really boggles me as to why it runs poorly in this regard. I can compare it to World of Warcraft, for exmaple, where I can have settings relatively high, and still churn out a decent 25-30 FPS in most cases, with more models on the screen and much farther draw distance, and even more detailed geometry. I really wish they optimized their code a bit better and got the game running smoother. Aside from that though, if you have a better machine than myself, I’m sure the game runs quite nice and looks much better as well, but either way nothing is really groundbreaking. The spell detail, at least, looks really good.

The sound in this game is actually quite good. They recycled most of the original soundtrack in Neverwinter Nights 1, but they remastered the tracks and made them sound quite a bit better. Characters have a lot more vocabulary as well, in cutscenes and in voice commands/battle sounds. I say, don’t fix it if it ain’t broke. I’m glad they kept most of the original themes from Neverwinter Nights in this game.

The gameplay is pretty much exactly what you would expect out of a D&D game. Combat is real time, otherwise following D&D rules. Rolling dice for attacks and such, which are all shown in the chat window. Like it’s predecessors, the game features a pause command, so you can issue commands on all of your characters and let them carry it out. Every character you have can be controlled by AI, or you can just disable the AI completely on a character. You can also tune the AI as well, deciding whether they use items, feats, spells and such in battle. Either way, it all comes together to form pretty fluid gameplay. Combat is a bit on the easy side though, if you play on hardcore D&D rules or normal/easy mode. I haven’t really played much in Extreme rules because I prefer playing the game by the book. I haven’t gotten into any online play yet either though, but NwN2 features good options for online play. People can host persistent world servers, which function like mini MMORpgs. If you want to team up with a friend and play through the campaign together, you can do that to, sort of like Baldur’s Gate. Anyway, the system works out nice and gameplay is solid.

All in all, I think this game is worth it for any fan of D&D or Computer RPGs. With it’s toolset that ships with game, there will always be new adventures for people to play, and the ability to take this game online easily gives it high re-playability in my opinion. If you like fighting in a world of dragons, dwarves and such, then this game is a great pick up that will last you many years to come.