NWN 1 vs NWN 2 - Which do you prefer? (Neverwinter Nights)
Vintrastorm
Member Posts: 216
As the title says: NWN 1 or NWN 2 - Which Neverwinter Nights game do you prefer?
I have played neither and am thinking about trying out one of them.
Which game is your favourite? And, if you want to give your thoughts about it, why?
- NWN 1 vs NWN 2 - Which do you prefer? (Neverwinter Nights)55 votes
- NWN 1.36.36%
- NWN 2.40.00%
- Both are equal.14.55%
- I prefer neither of them.1.82%
- I just like to vote.1.82%
- Two plus two is four. Two plus two is four. Two plus two is four.5.45%
5
Comments
The graphics in NWN2 were better
I found nwn1 utterly boring and 2 like most obsidian games felt unfinished and riddled with stupid game play decisions, But it had some good npcs so it gets an auto win
Did not complete it and thought is was no where as good as the Infinity Engine games
I liked NWN 1 - which was also kinda wonky at launch, but when I went back to it after a few patches and played at some online worlds I had a blast.
The inital campaigns weren't great.
Love the Shifter class, lots of fun with rakshasa shape and risen lord. Too bad shapeshifting in the IE games aren't nearly as cool.
The AI was also very poor and the combat wasn't interesting. It's not the fact that the game is too hard or too easy, just that it's kinda boring. Part of this was because the story itself was boring. I didn't care about the world or the inhabitants of it.
Though probably the worst thing about NWN 2 were the NPCs. There were maybe three characters I could stand listening to, the rest just wanted to make me cut off my ears. I found Neera to be the lowest of the low. In fact I would take on an entire party of noober through the whole BG saga than have to listen to her constant whine. The fact that you're stuck wit her for so much of the first act did nothing endear her to me
It might sound like I really hate the game, but I don't. The character creation system was fantastic, some of the mods are amazing and the expansions are interesting and well made. The thing that really annoys me is that this could have been a great game, but it was rushed and sloppy. So many bad choices were made. If it was just a horrible game I wouldn't have given it a second thought, but it had so much promise, yet (in my eyes anyway) failed horribly to live up to it.
NWN2 in terms of everything else would have gotten my vote though, as the story, cliche as it were, was pretty good even in the main campaign, and they never made you feel like you were truly at a loss with your party set-up. Though I have to add in that playing a sneak-attack focused character in NWN2 was extremely disappointing later on when nearly everything was immune to crits to avoid you "cheesing" the enemies. That was beyond dumb.
I try giving it chances once and awhile but there are better games hat grab my attention.
That said, the story for the original was very weak, but the expansions as well as player made adventures made it exceptionally better.
Indeed, NwN2 on launch was buggy as hell.
..And so was NwN1. Even after installing Hordes, I remember crashing ALL the time while playing the campaign. It got fixed with the next patches.
NwN1 greatest sin that they NEVER bothered to fix, was actual party gameplay.
NwN1 was more like a DnD Diablo.
You picked a single character, maybe one or two henchmen that were AI controlled and you were going from place to place and getting uber loot since there were no tactics involved and it was just a dungeon-crawl with RP options now and then.
Even Hordes, despite being the best campaign, was pretty much like Diablo 1.
You start in town (Tristram/Waterdeep), you go into the dungeon (Cathedral/Undermountain), then the caves (Underdark), then hell (Nine Hells) and then fight the devil/demon (Big M/Diablo).
While you can "town portal" either with the Stone of Recall or the other shenanigans of Hordes.
Sure Hordes and NwN1 is far deeper than Diablo but the formula is the same.
And I loved NwN1 but it was extremely limited in everything.
NwN2 offered a standard DnD campaign, a Planescape Torment-like expansion (MotB) and party creations and exploration ala Icewind Dale (Storm of Zehir).
You had full party control from the start, far more options for character customization (subraces, new races, more classes, prestige classes) and it generally followed DnD more closely.
You could even pick your deity with full descriptions of their portfolio.
The toolset is also more complex and hard to get used to, but far more powerful. Everything in NwN1 was tile-based. You couldn't add the detail you wanted, in interiors or exteriors.
While I miss some awesome stuff from NwN1 (Shifter, epic prestige classes), the final and current package of NwN2 is far superior to NwN1.
And I played NwN1 first for years.
Is it possible to get the 3/4 camera angle in NWN 1? The way I remember seeing it, once, it was practically a 3rd person camera. (Or maybe it was a very zoomed in camera with a party-sized over the shoulder-view...) I'm really fond of the camera style from BG.
As for the poll, I chose NWN2. First of all, it was more of a typical D&D game with a full party rather than just one or two sidekicks. Plus I never cared for the NWN1 interface, I found it rather clunky to work with. Then of course, NWN2 had far better graphics. As for NWN2 being buggy, it may have started out that way, but there was a ton of patches that made the game quite stable in the end. Obsidian did a good job of following up on the game.
All I remember from NWN1 is that I barely finished the tutorial before giving up on the game. *shudders*
NWN2 is awesome though, due to the characters, story and progression.