Under Review: Nalia
recklessheart
Member Posts: 692
For some unknown reason, my thread committed to discussing Dynaheir recently had a revival, and this was always a character review thread I had wanted to make, as it saves everybody else from seeing me go off on one in the middle of an entirely unrelated thread!
Of the original NPCs, I was quite surprised to find that with the exception of the polarising romance options introduced in the second game (Aerie & Anomen), Nalia as a character seemed to take the brunt of community criticism.
This thread is dedicated to discussing her character, and putting a statistic to the public opinion of Nalia.
Personally, I really liked Nalia, who I thought existed as an NPC in her own right, despite accusations levied against her that she was merely an intermission Imoen before Imoen could be collected. Imoen was originally supposed to die during the events of BG2, however, which suggests that the actual writers had intended for Nalia to be the dual-class Mage centre stage among the optional NPCs. Her personality is a nuanced product of her upbringing that does not always lead with its best foot forward, sometimes compromising the charisma of her character, yet her personality is not inevitably bound up in the story of the protagonist, while Imoen fills the role of an understudy pushing the agenda of the story with little integrity as a personality (at least in BG2). That said, I don't dislike Imoen, I merely refute claims that Nalia is a belittled version in both her build and her personality.
But what do you think?
PS: The options proposed on the poll refer exclusively to the 'canon' content of the game, and does not take account of any Mods or additional writing created for Nalia in the EEs. If these are a factor in your decision, feel free to elaborate this in the comments.
Of the original NPCs, I was quite surprised to find that with the exception of the polarising romance options introduced in the second game (Aerie & Anomen), Nalia as a character seemed to take the brunt of community criticism.
This thread is dedicated to discussing her character, and putting a statistic to the public opinion of Nalia.
Personally, I really liked Nalia, who I thought existed as an NPC in her own right, despite accusations levied against her that she was merely an intermission Imoen before Imoen could be collected. Imoen was originally supposed to die during the events of BG2, however, which suggests that the actual writers had intended for Nalia to be the dual-class Mage centre stage among the optional NPCs. Her personality is a nuanced product of her upbringing that does not always lead with its best foot forward, sometimes compromising the charisma of her character, yet her personality is not inevitably bound up in the story of the protagonist, while Imoen fills the role of an understudy pushing the agenda of the story with little integrity as a personality (at least in BG2). That said, I don't dislike Imoen, I merely refute claims that Nalia is a belittled version in both her build and her personality.
But what do you think?
PS: The options proposed on the poll refer exclusively to the 'canon' content of the game, and does not take account of any Mods or additional writing created for Nalia in the EEs. If these are a factor in your decision, feel free to elaborate this in the comments.
- Under Review: Nalia183 votes
- I like Nalia: her personality is interesting, and I enjoy hearing what she has to say47.54%
- I dislike Nalia: her personality is a major turnoff, and her best quality is her sidequest29.51%
- I like her for mechanical reasons: she functions well in my group after Imoen has left, and she is good-aligned11.48%
- I have never used her in my party, so I can't comment just yet11.48%
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Comments
Pure thief wise there is Yoshimo and now Hexxat, and pure mage wise there is Edwin and now Neera. Nalia's...thief skills aren't too good as she duals at lv 4. Fine for the bare minimum, but you'd think she would at least come with 18 intelligence. It's not the biggest deal, but if you can treat Anomen as a pure cleric with a better thac) etc, you can treat Nalia logically as a pure mage. Who takes care of your locks and traps. If I'm not a pure mage, I'd rather take Edwin but I see how Nalia can be a "good" alternative (minus the not having a higher intelligence) or Neera as neutral.
Personality wise, I like her. Her heart's in the right place, and it tugged on the heart strings when she greets you like "I've helped all you! and when I need help there's no one." She's a nice girl, a bit overbearing with the "I want to help the poor!" but...eh, so what? She was coddled and I feel bad for leaving her behind, lol.
The comparisons to Imoen is there, perhaps cheery personality and skills wise. Usually I don't actually use either, as when I use a thief/ mage I tend to yearn for Jan. Perhaps I should break that trend.
On the other hand, her uncanny resemblance to Imoen is fairly obnoxious, I must admit. But how are you going to pass up a straight or dual-class mage? They are far too scarce in BG2.
i like the area her quests focus around, her main failing is she keeps complaining we aren't helping people but i have discussed why i think this in other Nalia review posts and i like the fact she genuinely wants to help which makes her interesting, she doesn't want fame (although she does want thanks and appreciation) she just wants to help the commoners
As is I find her to be a weaker Inoen mechanically (her personality is completely different, however). This is probably because Imoen was meant to die originally (oh joyous days! Lament for what could have been!) That said, I think the last-minute readdition of Imoen meant that Nalia was left in a void. She wasn't merely now one of two thief/Mage duals, she was the mechanically inferior one, and the devs didn't really have enough time to give her another niche all her own.
I've mentioned this before but I have to speculate that Imoen was intended to be killed off permanently before a certain point in the dev cycle, and Nalia was supposed to be a sub-in character for her.
Personality-wise I think she is a bit annoying, her motivations seem genuine enough but she is a victim of her upbringing, I guess. That is the point of the character though so it's not like she's written badly or anything, my Charnames just don't really get along with her too well. I confess that I have only used her very rarely (and a long time ago) so I don't know if you get any chances to develop her more.
Also I may be wrong but she doesn't really talk to the pc in TOB so that's a little unfortunate
Well, her quests is one of her favorite, I do enjoy her personalty's writing a lot, her enthusiasm males me laugh sometimes but it's OK. She is one of the NPCs that should have a romance, she can be useful in a party, but only as a mage since hse has very low thieving abilities, the best potion to use with her is Potion of Mind Focusing, since it raises INT and DEX, giving her more thieving skills points and more chances to learn spells, I never used her much because Jan Jansen is my favorite (and Jan is the cheesiest NPC in BG2:EE after Hexxat) and he advances in thief levels (I tend to play Mage/Thief so I do not care, but some other folk do care about that) and he has a nice array of stuff, but Nalia has one of the best early game quests.
There is a bit of a surfeit of thief/mages, as has been said.
She just flat out loses against Jan. Jan's a solid thief from the get go thanks to his gear, and the combination of thief HLA's and magic later on is brutal.
If you've got a thief CHARNAME, then you could take Nalia as a pure mage. Nalia's not that great though.
She does get the flack for "inferior Imoen clone" and "not enough thief levels to make her worthwhile". First, I can't stand Imoen, so Nalia gets a plus point for not actually being Imoen. But I can also see why they are compared so much. Same alignment, same class combo, even similar looks.
The chances missed with her character - which has a decent backstory and a (slightly over the top, but acceptable) personality:
1) Make her a bard. There is no female bard, or a good aligned bard for that matter. From the backstory, it would fit; many nobles encourage their children to take an interest in the arts. She could be a poet or musician. She'd have the pickpocket skill to steal for her Robin Hood activities; she could have Invisibility and Knock by default, and she would not have a backstab ability - which I think is a total mismatch. She wants to help, not to hurt.
2) Make her a sorcerer, maybe even a Dragon Diciple, to fill this NPC gap (not considering Baeloth as Easter Egg here). Again, makes sense - powerful magical creatures like dragons would most likely go undercover as rich, influential humans, so one of her ancestors could have been a dragon. She could focus on utility spells, same as the bard version, and protection spells. That's what she would do when discovering arcane abilities - use them to protect herself in the streets/slums.
Both would have resulted in a good aligned female arcane caster with some thief utility, but not scream "Imoen stand in".
Summary: I don't dislike her personality, backstory or (Stronghold) quest, I think the mechanical side is done very poorly. The reverse case of the "I like her for mechanical reasons" poll option.
Despite my choice, I don't hate Nalia or anything. I've used her. But mechanically? Jan and Imoen are both better. Storywise? Imoen is more important, being the other Bhaalspwn, and Jan is more entertaining. If she was something besides a thief/mage duel who dueled to early for her thief skills to support her through the whole saga, I might find her more appealing, but as it is, she's usually one of the last characters I would use.
Her random personality change in ToB coupled with her not talking at all to CHARNAME doesn't win her any points with me, either.
I don't use her thief skills at all, so she's the best pure mage for a good-aligned party (before Neera, of course). The first time I used her, I played a fighter/mage who took over her stronghold, so I always felt a sort of obligation to keep her around. And if you do keep her in the party for a while, you get the extra sidequest with her father's funeral and her god-awful fiance, which was always a nice tie-in with the stronghold quest. I took her all the way to Throne of Bhaal, and I never really used anyone else since Nalia was higher level than the rest. In many ways, I can hardly imagine that playthrough without her in it.
As far as her personality goes, I don't dislike her, I don't count her as my favorite NPC either.
The problem I have with her is that in a good party I'm going to choose Aeire over her almost every time. Aerie has both cleric and mage spells so is better in my mind mechanically, she can be romanced and I find her quests less annoying than Nalias (mostly because I hate quests where the NPC leaves the party).
Huh. I always thought she did, figured it tied in with the whole Fighter stronghold quest thing as I think I recall there being some line about marriage there. Probably my head mucking things up then, never played a Fighter myself so missed out on all that.
Nalia is functionally pretty good. I've seen her being extremely competent in an LP. She also has a lot of quest content, which is a plus.
I also liked her personality. I mean when you first meet her, she's compassionate, nice, sweet, modest etc... The banter with Yoshimo was pretty cute.
And then BAM! Throne of Bhaal comes along and she's totally changed, and not for the better.
So given she's not exactly a powerhouse and also not particularly like-able due to ToB Nalia... she's really dropped down my preferences.
It's been mentioned quite a few times and I would like to agree and elaborate on references made to Nalia in ToB.
Nalia has changed throughout the course of the narrative once you reach ToB: for the better? Maybe, maybe not. She is certainly not as thoroughly good-aligned, and is showing more of a consciousness about her arcane powers and her ability to effect the world around her. It is a noticeable juxtaposition with her previous focus on being a good person. I daresay it makes her even more interesting as a party member, as the writers clearly didn't shy away from keeping her controversial and less-than-perfect. I would add my voice to the chorus of lamentations that she lacks dialogue for ToB, and ultimately this darker edge to her personality suffers from lack of attention. As a result, unless you are consciously looking at her sparse dialogues and their connotations, it is understandable to see why you would be left unsatisfied with her return in the expansion.
To @KidCarnival I would remark that I have had similar thoughts! I never purchased her for a bard, but you make a good argument for it. I strongly believe that - had the developers the time - she would have made a great Sorcerer. With a low-level focus on fire and acid spells to aid the party in De'Arnise Keep, there would be little downside to her programmed spell list before she is acquainted with the party. Additionally, the inherited arcane power of a Sorcerer would fit perfectly with Nalia's unwitting sense of self-importance that is expressed through her class. Imagine it: born wealthy, and with a rare and powerful talent? It would have complimented her character well. Despite the fact, Imoen was added in so late as were the Sorcerer/Monk/Barbarian classes that from a logistical point of view this option must have been a total impossibility.
Haer'Dalis really plays much more like a fighter/mage and has little more than his voice set to make him a bard - in my eyes, BG2 doesn't have a bard. And despite my appreciation of Eldoth as Neutral Evil poster boy, neither he nor Garrick do the class a favor in BG1.
Nalia could step in here and make the class (among NPCs) noteworthy - the noble daughter, encouraged by her parents to spend her time with the "nobler things" in life - poetry and music - and she rebels by taking more after the travelling bards who pickpocket and use their magic to play tricks (like sneaking away). She'd be talented and this could play into her slight sense of entitlement (never had her in TOB, can't comment on her personality shift there) - she is a noblewoman with a noble upbringing and she can never completely shake off that influence.
There is no sorcerer or DD at all and the backstory also offers her the option to step in as good aligned pure class caster - with a more interesting twist than "insufficient thief levels". Evil has Edwin, Neutral has Neera, Good has... well, charname, possibly.
I do think a lot of the criticism for Nalia comes from people falsely equating the class system in a place like Athkatla with more modern economic/social systems. I think a lot of what makes her annoying to some players is how she constantly views the serfdom as "victims", but in a system like Amn's they don't really have the same freedoms that most people in developed countries do in modern times. That said she definitely overdoes it, but I think it is understandable.
I don't really like Nalia all that much, but I don't dislike her. Her voice is a bit irritating and two lines are a bit grating. The first is "How are we helping the less fortunate trudging around down here" particularly when it is said in her own keep!. The other is "I hate the city... it is built on the backs of the unfortunate".
Like another poster said, I like her as a character the same way I like Anomen, yet I probably wouldn't be very fond of her if she was a real person. I do think she is overall well-meaning however, and generally I can handle self-righteous people as long as they are actually a force of good.
I referred to her modesty because of this little banter with Yoshimo, near the very beginning of the video.
To be honestly, I've only had her for the De'Arnise Keep quest, and then a small portion of ToB, so I don't quite have a full playthrough experience of her, (though I have watched most of Tord's BG 2 LP, where Nalia was central to his party.)
Actually the line that annoys me the most about Nalia is her first, (I paraphrase) "come on! I help lots of your kind!". Which clearly demonstrates that she is very aware of her privilege over commoners, and subconsciously at least, still regards herself as superior.
The "How are we helping the less fortunate trudging around down here" line is just a case of bad writing, since it clearly doesn't make sense a lot of the time when she says it, but then the game's banter timing has never been ideal. Aerie/Jaheira (maybe both) thought it was a good time to begin romance conversations in the middle of a raging battle in the Copper Coronet.
In SoA Nalia is clearly well-intentioned and genuinely trying to help those less fortunate than herself. But she was never a 'perfect heroine' in the way Aerie is portrayed.
If you are harsh about her, she's a bit like the rich girl who's got it all, and then decides to go volunteering at a soup kitchen or something, because she enjoys the feeling of helping others, and the gratitude and praise she receives as a result.
Even so the ToB Nalia feels quite radically different. Almost unrealistically so. I just imagine that after Jin left Amn to save Suldanesselar, the Roenalls must have taken the De'Arnise lands by force, and so Nalia probably resents his failure to protect her and her people as promised, and thus developed her own abilities further to be more self sufficient.
I like the fact that she's basically the "anti-Skie" - she breaks the mold of the "pampered rich girl" stereotype by being genuinely brave, strong-willed, and independent minded. I've always admired the fact that she basically sacrificed a life of luxury to put her life on the line in the slums of Athkatla. Say whatever else you will about her personality, but no one can deny that this girl's got balls! ;-)
From an efficiency standpoint, she's basically as good as any spellcaster in the game. I know a lot of people will focus on the fact that her thief skills are basically useless, but they overlook the fact that being a thief multi allows her to use weapons and armor (i.e: elven chain mail) normally inaccessible to pure mages. I know a lot of people also use Nalia just to fill Imoen's role until she's rescued, but I usually keep her even after Imoen is rescued - after all, unlike BG1, you can never have too many mages in BG2.