Neverwinter Nights 2 Gold

List Price: $39.99 Discount Price: $27.90

Features:

• Bundle includes: Neverwinter Nights 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2 Mask of the Betrayer
• Singleplayer or online multiplayer
• Over 50 hours of gameplay
• Create your own adventures and share them with your friends
• Play your adventure as the Dungeon Master

Customer Reviews:

THE PATRIARCHS OF cRPGs ARE SLIPPING YET FURTHER DOWNHILL ... [Posted on 2008-05-10]
I remember watching the trailer for the first NWN and actually holding my breath. I had IMMENSELY enjoyed BALDUR's GATE I & II and all their expansions, a well as the ICEWIND DALE series. I had been enchanted by the best cRPG ever, PLANESCAPE TORMENT. Now the same game developers were delivering a 3D, cinematic version that would make total immersion inescapable! Right? Wrong, oh boy, so WRONG!

Measly henchmen replacing our deliciously diversified company, nauseating camera movement, infantile designed objects, slow battle movements, low polygon characters and bland storyline. Now, NWN had its virtues, no doubt. It was such an original approach that games like WOW and OBLIVION borrowed heavily from its innovative concept of a Third-Person cinematic RPG. Nevertheless, it suffered from raising the expectations bar too high - and then not delivering but a fraction of its obvious potential. It eventually got accepted by the MODing community that created numerous ingenious MODs that saved the day.

It has been over two years now and NWN2 does not seem to take off. It is as if no one wants to concern himself with it. And for good reason.
The much higher system requirements do not translate onto the screen. There are improvements of course but not by much. It feels more like an expansion than a sequel.
The camera movement is even worse. Much WORSE! Supposedly it positions itself in the best angle, Well, I found myself spending more time repositioning the camera than the interacting with the characters!

Does it have bugs? Enough to make a horror B-Movie! Patch after patch gets released and the damn thing still stutters and freezes and crashes. Another fine example of an untested product rushed to the market unfinished. While traveling everything seems fine. When the battle heats up, though, and spells fly left and right all hell breaks loose. Tweaking the video and graphics settings helps but does not eliminate all problems.

All in all, a game to avoid if a cRPG fun. If new to RPG games do not start with this one: you will get disappointed and may be miss out on true gems.

Another fine example of accountants and stock-jockeys meddling with an art-form they cannot grasp...

What happened to creativity? [Posted on 2008-05-12]
This game was so exciting when I first put it on, and played through the first level or so. Then slowly, I realized, the developers of this game didn't finish the game. I've encountered at *LEAST* 15 or so bugs in the game that stopped me from progressive further, I had to find debug commands online in order to continue playing. This sucked horribly. And if that wasn't enough.

Then I started realizing and noticing other things. Like every creature/chest in the game *ALWAYS* drops the same items *EVERY* time you play through it, with any class. It's ridiculous. What kind of RPG doesn't have random loot?

Then I decided maybe I could get some redeeming qualities from playing Multiplayer with a friend. We encountered even more bugs than I previously saw, and decided to try me running the server as a DM and just helping him through the story, create creatures and new treasure chests to make things more interesting. That didn't even work for too long, cause it kept trying to load my DM character through the cutscenes, without giving him the option to speak to people.

There's also been about 14 patches for it so far. And even with all those patches, only some of the bugs were fixed.

Overall, I'd say this game had a potential for a 5 star rating, but due to the fact that it isn't finished, I'm giving it a 1 star, and recommending you don't buy it, unless you're ready for a headache.

EDIT: I've noticed a couple of comments about my review not mentioning the Mask of the Betrayer Expansion. After attempting to stumble through the campaign, and having it fail miserably, I did play through the beginning of the Mask of the Betrayer. You know what I noticed? Well, you were a higher level, and had nicer powers, and the game was a little less buggy. I'm not sure how that's supposed to be a redeeming quality for the Gold Edition, considering it is Both games. The expansion shouldn't be the only working part of a game. And it would be more of a redeeming quality, if the expansion improved gameplay in the initial campaigns of the game, but it doesn't.

It should also tell you something, that just because I didn't give the game or its expansion a great review, they must resort to calling me a dimwitted teenager. It's nice to know that name calling is a good defense against an incomplete game.

Good..not great [Posted on 2008-05-27]
First of all lemme say what this game COULD have been and SHOULD have been. It SHOULD have been better than Baldurs Gate 2, and with significant party AI fixing and a proper top down camera mode it actually would be IMHO.
But sadly the only way to play the thing is with the AI turned off completely. And if you must turn off the ai then it needs a round-by-round strategic mode.Something that stops every round or stops when a target is dead or something like that. Just make a top down view that DOESNT change perspective when you select a new character and only reveals what your characters can actually see.And allows you to pan the entire battlefield.This MUST be impossible or something because these two things are so intrinsically what this game needed to improve its overall feel it seriously leaves me wondering this:

what idiot rushed this game to market too soon OR didnt put enough resources into its development?

Anyway thats why it gets 3 stars for "fun"

It gets 4 stars overall and heres why...

the replay value considering the player created stuff and the obvious care that went into the campaign (the cutscenes are really good its like watching a movie) as well as the hardcore faithfullness to trying to create a true-to-source computerized copy of D&D.

Its worth buying for that last reason ALONE. But jeez talk about dropping the ball this thing could have been WAY..WAY... bigger than it is or ever will be simply because of the aforementioned oversights.

Worth buying anyway especially at this price but turn the AI off and manually control your party unless you are entertained by random acts of violence and mayhem thrown about haphazardly and unexpectedly at every turn of the corner in a dungeon :) Dont give your guys any grenade-like weapons or AOE spells either if your playing hardcore...

I enjoyed it anyway, lol.

Except for the ending of the original campaign...worst ending I have ever seen in a D&D type game. Truly awful writing. Overall the campaign is pretty good but wow did they screw the pooch at the end.

Perhaps Obsidian/Atari should finish the game before releasing a "Gold" edition... [Posted on 2008-06-11]
Like many fans of the original Bioware epic Neverwinter Nights, I was giddy as a schoolgirl when we approached the release of Neverwinter Nights 2. Perhaps the fact that it was constantly delayed should have been a warning, but I wasn't deterred at all and was travelling all over the city on launch day trying to find a copy of the Limited Edition with rings that don't fit and an art book.

But let me digress for a moment...
Bioware was the creative studio behind the epic hit Knights of the Old Republic, and Obsidian's only prior game as a studio was Knights of the Old Republic 2 which was lauded for its excellent story, and bemoaned over its incomplete nature and buggy unfinished feel. Neverwinter Nights 2 was Obsidian's second title, and also their second continuation of a Bioware masterpiece, and ultimately the foreshadowing of what was to be released should have been heeded by those of us who were chomping at the bits to get our hands on it as soon as possible.

Obsidian released Neverwinter Nights 2 without the DM client, despite the fact that they had been touting the fact in interviews a year prior that the online component of the game was well in hand. On the contrary, the online component of NWN2 was in shambles, and even after multiple patches over the course of 2 years now has the online component stabilized... to a point.

When you play online with the latest patch, you still get load screen freezes, the game crashes every time on exiting (Vista and XP), and it appears to have enormous memory leak issues which have not been resolved. I am not running a weak machine mind you, I'm running a dual core 2 duo 8400 (Wolfdale), 4 GB of RAM, and a 64 bit operating system, with a 512MB Geforce 8800GT... a powerhouse which crashes consistently with NWN2.

I had the same problems on my prior system, an AMD core, with 2GB of RAM and a 7900GT and XP. Multiplayer freezes your computer or crashes the game randomly.

Let us be honest... the Multiplayer component may not be what sells the game out of the gate, but it is what makes the original NWN a hit even in the present time (6 years post-release). Multiplayer was incredibly unfinished by Obsidian, and reading the release notes it is almost criminal how they acknowledge bugs, don't know what causes them, and don't issue any timeframe or even a plan on an expected fix.

This game hasn't worked since release for those who enjoy Multiplayer. Single player is buggy, but the campaign is good (reminiscent of KOTOR2).

Despite all this, the cash cow milking is at work, and Gold Editions, Platinum Editions, Diamond Editions, etc. are promised features and fixes for those who shell out cash to buy the newest bundle or expansion.

Obsidian/Atari should not be planning any expansions until the game actually works. Instead, they are financing development and running the license into the ground because of the shortsighted nature of development.

This game was supposed to be a D&D fan's dream, but many of us are moving back to NWN where Bioware still adds free content, fixes, and additions to the game despite not making much money off of it.

Perhaps Obsidian/Atari should slow down on milking the consumer and think about what breeds customer loyalty. I've bought every single Bioware title to date, and I will continue buying because I get what I expect - quality, and a finished game.

I can't say the same for Obsidian. Boo.

Alas, the other reviewers are right [Posted on 2008-06-29]
Having so thoroughly enjoyed the original game, I ignored the warnings of other reviewers reporting negative experiences with this sequel and went ahead and bought it anyway. But the complaints made by other reviewers are absolutely correct. Despite my meeting or exceeding all of the stated hardware requirements for the game, the thing crashes constantly. And, frankly, it's not woth the hassle. Plainly Atari, in typically corporate fashion, figured that they could turn a quick buck by buying up the rights to the game, turning out any old piece of shoddy junk, and people would still pay for it because they loved the original. It's immediately obvious that none of the love, sweat, tears, and creativity invested in the original game went into the sequel. The environment is disappoiningly static. Only a very small percentage of nonplayer characters allow you to enter into dialogue with them. Virtually none of the buildings allow you to enter and explore them. The NPCs lack any personality, style, or panache. The environment is consequently flat, lifeless, and noninteractive, lacking the myriad possibilities to explore and socialize of the original, which gave the original that successful illusion of navigating a real world. Quite a disappointment.

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