Anyone else just loathe NWN2...?
I LOVED first Neverwinter night especially with SoU and HoTU. Fond memories of slaughtering bandits and monsters with my blackguard and conquering the underdark and hell with little Deekin, oh man. The game felt very vibrant and colourful, it was full of atmosphere and personality.
But NWN2, 'tis a horrible mess compared to the first! From the horrible camera to the borderline creepy character models (I have to admit, the weapon/armor and character model design has to be the biggest turn off for me, my goon always ends up looking like that Hitman dude) and ugly interface and whatnot, I just end up shutting down the damn abomination with a cringe every time I start it up. I started MoTB because I keep hearing good things about it but no, it is just torture. Even the most minor of battles feel like total chaos, I just can't get any grasp on things.
But NWN2, 'tis a horrible mess compared to the first! From the horrible camera to the borderline creepy character models (I have to admit, the weapon/armor and character model design has to be the biggest turn off for me, my goon always ends up looking like that Hitman dude) and ugly interface and whatnot, I just end up shutting down the damn abomination with a cringe every time I start it up. I started MoTB because I keep hearing good things about it but no, it is just torture. Even the most minor of battles feel like total chaos, I just can't get any grasp on things.
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I mean, they did make an effort, but its scenario atmosphere, npcs and gameplay sounded to childish. specially for those who had played Infinity engine games.
The new graphics made them all look like Barbie dolls, the npcs were silly, all the enemies were mindless, scenarios such as the mere of dead men or neverwinter sounded artificial... well, game producers should have known that lousy features don't make a good game.
BTW, the NWN2 expansions are better than the main campaign.
I played NWN2 on release, and didn't really have problems with its bugs, but I hear so many mention it that I must have been quite lucky.
I found the stories/chars entertaining enough, but at that time I was finding most of my enjoyment through the battle system. Character speccing, crafting and battle tactics were what I loved about NWN2.
Making a dual rogue/ranger who could pick locks and backstab like a demon while wielding a fire kukri in one hand and an ice kurki in the other was a ton of fun, even if the second half of the campaign was almost entirely backstab immune undead.
Though I've heard the first expansion to nwn2 is good, I could never really get into it. I probably should make the effort, but to be honest I could only ever see myself doing it if I went and played nwn2 all through as the same character (minus storm of zehir of course because I'd be over levelled). But, I don't think I could stomach another nwn2 original campaign playthrough, just because it left so much to be desired. Especially the city of Neverwinter itself. It always bugged me how its shape had completely changed from the original nwn, which to me seemed a tad ridiculous.
I'm sure that there were a lot of good modules made for nwn2 and that MoB was a good campaign. However, I still don't imagine I will be replaying nwn2 in any capacity any time soon.
Thanks to it, there is now literally thousands of hours worth of well-made FREE gameplay content, ranging from hack'n slash to hardcore PnP conversions to purely philosophical adventure gaming.
Any one who says that NWN sucks based on playing the original campagin is basing that assumption on less than 1% of the NWN experience.
NWN2 on the other hand was (also IMHO) a failure. It is ugly, poorly optimized, with a horrible camera. The toolkit was much harder to use, and it has much less fan-made content as a result. I really wanted to like it, but I couldn't. The only thing it did better than the original is NPC management.
But I don't play the former for one very particular reason - the patching... it's horrible. I once spent EIGHT hours patching the game and it still didn't work XD
Alas, those are the pains for playing a game with good gameplay and great story overall.
Neverwinter Nights 1 is... well, meh at best. Story's boring, gameplay's fine at best. Expansions got it better though. (no, never tried modules, I am criticizing the game the developers gave to us, not the game MODDERS did >.< )
I installed NWN a lot of times but it never took me more than an hour to get to the latest version. The current version I use (diamond edition, sold for 10$ at GOG) is automatically up to date (altough a small patch is needed to make it win7 compatible)
As for criticizing the game the developers gave us - the modding is possible due to the toolset the devs gave us. It makes a huge difference. BG is considered a heavily modded game, but the modders had to spend a huge amount of time just to be able to make mods. The mods - as good as they are - are just modifications to the original game, and nothing like NWN modules.
With NWN anyone can make a module that is an etierly different game (no characters, areas, items, quests, dialogs from the original campagin(s)), with no previous experience in programming whatsoever.
As I said, if you are criticizing it based on the original campagins, you have seen 1% of the content it has.
@Kitteh_On_A_Cloud : Oster worked on NWN1 which is made by BioWare
We had that discussions many times how the OC alone can scare peoples off and I dont remember how Atari handled the marceting for it but if they clearly stated the real useness of nwn is about the toolset then anyone expecting a great campaign (and not a huge demo of it´s ability) w/o using the toolset wasted his own money
I should give it a shot. Mask of the Betrayer is the greatest expansion to a CRPG in the modern era, I think.
That haunted castle of children sacrifice in the forest in NWN... and in the aftermath upon exiting the castle back to the somber forest this music plays
holy shit those chills that very moment gave me
I really liked MoTB. Took me a while to get into it, but I liked it a bunch. Never got mysteries of westgate, however, as boss fights and overpowered enemy mages sour me a little. I mean, the NwN2 ending was ridiculous enough...
NWN 2 was better as it was a party based game, I hopee it would be as good as BG was. The party system/control ended up being not implemented as well as it could be, plus I really despise the NWN/2 "rest" system which is about as cheesy and lame as you can get in RPG's.
I enjoyed NWN 2 more than NWN 1.
I never finished MotB, because I found the whole spirit-eater thing to be very annoying, plus the battles against super-undead mobs and mage mobs started to get tedious. I still might run it again sometime, though. The playable fallen bear-god npc looked interesting, and I didn't include him in my party at the time, because I was trying to run with that druid guy. Seemed like no-brainers that I needed angel-girl and mage woman, and in hindsight, bear-god would probably have filled out the party better than druid-guy. If I recall correctly, I was playing an arcane warrior.
There was a mod to slow down the timer for the spirit eater mechanic that made MotB so much better. After you got rid of that as a constant harassment, the game become pretty amazing.
Just before you get to the inn you load about 10 areas, they need to go somewhere. Try it again with about 1.5GB of disk space available and it should work.
I also suggest you do a disk cleanup and defragment your hard drive before you install any 5GB+ games like NWN2 because the space you free up for them gets separated into unorganized blocks.
Original campaign = AMAZING.
SoU = bull.
HoU = slightly less amazing than the original campaign.
Toolset = FANTASTIC.
Fan content = GODINGLY.
Graphics = horrible, but understandably.
My opinions of NWN2:
The worst bit about NWN2 is they patched the game so you can't see warlock's boobs anymore.
Original campaign = shit until you get past the Neverwinter part, until then it's BORING.
Haven't play the expansions or fanmade stuff.
Toolset = irritating.
Graphics = horrible.
Gameplay = aweful.
What was up with the camera in NWN2? The game looks like KOTOR and that camera worked just fine, how did they mess that up?
I pretty much quit after the city guard milked me for the eighth favor of the game...just to get into a quarter of the city. Ugh that game was so boring.