Skip to content

Which is your favourite: NWN/NWN2!?

WardWard Member Posts: 1,305
edited August 2012 in Archive (General Discussion)
It's a hard choice for many I'm sure but I just wanted to know what people thought. Here's my two cents, Neverwinter Nights 2 is a beautiful game to look at, a trait which the first didn't have. The portraits in the first, however, weren't just ugly rendered 3D heads. The voice acting is pretty even as far as I'm concerned but again I'll give it to the original.

The gameplay, well I don't know about you guys but I found a bit of path finding issues in both of them (dudes getting stuck on each other). I don't know which is more accurate to their individual rulesets, but I'm not concerned about rules.

The first campaign of Neverwinter Nights 2 was poor at first. Up until the end of your 'chores' for the City Watch (or the thugs if you choose to be a jerk), it's all pretty boring for me. Not a lot to do to be honest. Act II and III are LOTS better!

I also thought they designed the armour and costumes rather strangely, but maybe that's just me. NWN2 seems to be a bit imaginative when it comes to the threads.

The music is repetitive in both (yet real awesome).

WHICH ONE GUYS?
  1. Which is your favourite: NWN/NWN2!?170 votes
    1. Neverwinter Nights
      53.53%
    2. Neverwinter Nights 2
      42.35%
    3. Neverwinter (some weird MMO thing that I heard about)
        4.12%
«13

Comments

  • oldsch00loldsch00l Member, Translator (NDA) Posts: 192
    I preferred the first one even if it's a close match.

    I liked the OC better in NWN2 and Mask of the Betrayer was even better. Added classes and races made my day. But the portraits and especially the overall look of the characters, man, they were ugly ! I'm not all for candy but please...

    The other thing that made me choose NWN1 is the easy modding. Of course a lot were not so good stuff but I never had a game with so much added content. Hence I played it for many years without doing the Oc again and again like in other games. The top modules is what I remember fondly about NWN1.
  • Avenger_teambgAvenger_teambg Member, Developer Posts: 5,862
    I didn't like the OC in NWN2, but Mask of the Betrayer was good, probably the best of the NWNx series.
  • luluscadoluluscado Member Posts: 69
    I like NWN more but thats properly more because NWN2 didn't run very well on my pc and it was very clunky. I felt that NWN2 could have been epic if it had more development time.
  • purebredcornpurebredcorn Member Posts: 77
    edited August 2012
    I judged the games on the single player campaigns and included all of the expansions. NWN was fun to play but the best part for me was the second expansion HotU. It had, by far, the most memorable characters (Valen Shadowbreath... hubba-hubba! :p) and the best storyline. But I voted for NWN2 because for me, overall, it had the best original campaign filled with terrific followers (I still have a crush on Sand) and an engaging story (I'm ignoring the ending and horrific bugs).
  • SixSix Member Posts: 33
    I could never stomach nwn2 for some reason. Tried to play it a couple of times including the expansions but I always ended up uninstalling it again within 1-2 days.
    Original nwn campaign wasn't anything great but still had fun with it and while I think I only played the first expansion once and not really liking it much the second one I really loved.
  • MathuzzzMathuzzz Member Posts: 203
    I voted for NWN2.

    Same as you, I found it good looking in terms of environments, but dungeons were still ugly and squarish.
    It had nice party cooperation system, but in terms of atmosphere, it became pretty bad once you entered Neverwinter. The city was so dull and boring, so was Highcliff. Actually, the only town which was alive was the prologue one.
    That game had so much potential, could have been real successor to infinity games, but I think because of short development time(which it was) it was just mediocrity with the worst optimization I have ever seen in game. Nowadays it is still able to heat up one´s hardware. These factors burried isometric D&D games for some time.
    But it was still better than NWN1. But again, comparing these two isn´t appropriate, because NWN 2 was more IWD and BG, while NWN1 was more for modding and multiplayer. So NWN 1 has other virtues.
  • SamielSamiel Member Posts: 156
    Neverwinter Nights 2, better story (although that is of course a matter of opinion) but perhaps much more importantly a controllable party. I could never get past the crappy follower system in the first one.
  • KlonoaKlonoa Member Posts: 93
    I think I would have enjoyed NWN2 better if my pc had been more capable, it just strained under the load lol I will probably go back and try it eventually but basically at the time I managed to get it Oblivion came out and that got my love instead.

    I imagine NWN was cool if you had friends to play with but I couldn't get into other peoples mods or the original campaign. I really enjoyed HotU though.

    On the whole it took Oblivion/NWN2 graphical capabilities (to me, anyway) before it had the strength to deliver on a fantasy immersion experience. NWN and (and again to me) Morrowind didn't have that level of detail and it felt generic and flat, that made exploring a chore.

    I'm still graphically behind. One day I'll invest in a beefy computer and get to play Skyrim :(
  • ZeckulZeckul Member Posts: 1,036
    edited August 2012
    NWN1 was made back in the early days of hardware-accelerated graphics on PC and looked atrocious. I cannot stand its purple and drab look, the harsh lighting. It looked way way worse than BG2 before it. Also the campaign was terrible. I can understand the excitement of those who wanted to play multiplayer, but I didn't.

    NWN2 had a decent visual presentation but the campaign was also boring. I think the highlight of the series is by far NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer. Exotic locale of the Realms, intriguing, main-character focused plot, meaningful choices, a true evil path that's just as satisfying if not more than the good one, very well fleshed out NPCs you could build meaningful relations with. It's up there with PS:T in terms of storytelling.
  • MalbortusMalbortus Member Posts: 106
    As with others, my best memories lie with NWN, specifically its persistent worlds. Some of the DM-guided activity there was amazing and as close as things get to p&p.

    NWN2 is a much better game though: more options, better graphics, better party control. Unfortunately it must not have been as easy to mod because it never gained the same popularity with the PW builders.
  • KnettgummiKnettgummi Member Posts: 152
    Surprised to see so many votes for NWN2.

    I've spent a good amount of time with NWN, but NWN2 never managed to engage me beyond the first hour or two. Maybe I should give it another chance.
  • Doom972Doom972 Member Posts: 150
    Assuming that expansions are counted as well, NWN's SoU and HotU campaign was excellent, and the amount of quality user made content is astonishing.
    NWN2, was a mess when it first came out, but got much better with patching (I couldn't play it without the old voice command menu). It's Campaign was better than vanilla NWN's campaign by far, and it had some great moments. MotB was a great expansion, but a short one.

    In the end, NWN has much more quality content, and is actually finished - unlike NWN2, which like many other Obsidian games, was rushed out of the door - Item descriptions were missing, the deity choice didn't do anything even for clerics, and certain subplots ended abruptly.
  • SabotinSabotin Member Posts: 38
    Are we talking about the game out of the box or as a whole? If it's the former, I preferred the NWN2 campaign over the NWN1 one.

    However, NWN had some of the best custom content I've ever seen in any game and provided me with years and years of fun, really pushing the game to the limit and even over it. And I just barely scratched multiplayer at the time which is supposed to be the main attraction...

    NWN2 never quite took off like that, I'm thinking it's most likely because of so much established content and worlds people didn't really wanna remake everything from scratch. It still had a bunch of nice stuff, but I gotta go with NWN1.
  • NWN_babaYagaNWN_babaYaga Member Posts: 732
    the OP is definately the right man for this thread... NWN all the way!
  • SolyarisSolyaris Member Posts: 24
    Both NWN games are pretty unremarkable right out of the box, but the online community (particularly RP or dungeon crawl servers) made them one of the coolest online experiences ever, right up there with UO/Minecraft/Day Z (terrible beta connection issues aside). In that regard, NWN wins out because it simply had a better online run.
  • ajwzajwz Member Posts: 4,122
    Well NWN has aged very badly, but hordes of the underdark was a real stand out module
    NWN2 had a better campaign than most gave credit for but is hampered by a lack of flexibility - you have to have all the partymembers for example. Its a pretty close choice for me since none of them are perfect.

    I think I give the edge to NWN2 purely by virtue of its character creater, which I have probably spent more time on than the game itself
  • RenshtalisRenshtalis Member Posts: 136
    NWN 1 for sure, I just found it hard to get into the second one.
  • ShalfAShalfA Member Posts: 3
    NWN easily win for me, so many good memories of that game. The second one was more.. strange. I never got into it even if I looked forward to it.
  • FrozenDervishFrozenDervish Member Posts: 295
    NWN was superior multiplayer wise and NWN2 had the better singleplayer
  • Daedalus87mDaedalus87m Member Posts: 92
    NWN2.

    -Better rules
    -Better gameplay with group (hated henchmen in original NWN)
    -More Race/Class freedom
    -More unique with the hunger thingy in the 1st expansion
    -Last expansion was awesome, brought the genre much closer to P&P, altough it lacked a bit in direction
  • NelligrandNelligrand Member Posts: 2
    The two things that bothered me the most about NWN2 were 1) that just about every area was a walk through a narrow canyon to the next area. You weren't really let off the beaten path to explore like you could in NWN. And 2) you were stuck with your companions whether you liked them or not, no option to run them off or get them killed and not raised.
    The Storms of Zehir expansion fixed those though but it was too little too late and the campaign for it was too short.
  • YemethYemeth Member Posts: 36
    Mask of the Betrayer for the win
  • MoomintrollMoomintroll Member Posts: 1,498
    I've only played the vanilla versions of either game, NWN was ok; NWN2 had such a great variety of options, but after character creation the game itself was ultimately unsatisfying. I hear great things of modules though, just ordered HotU and SoU as apparently the PC discs can be installed on mac!
  • MajocaMajoca Member Posts: 263
    Neverwinter Nights in my own opinion was a lot better, I like its style and the classes better than neverwinter nights 2. I think Neverwinter nights is awesome to LAN.
  • DougPiranhaDougPiranha Member Posts: 50
    Although I came to appreciate NWN mod community after boycotting the game for years (A Dance with Rogues is the best content mod I ever played, and there are others almost as good), NWN2 is still a better game. Better OC, better expansions, more options for characters, almost every aspect of the game was improved.
  • RokeRoke Member Posts: 7
    It's sad that NWN 2 OC wasn't that great and filled with, i wouldn't say plot holes but a paladin that sticks with me even if I'm the scion of the most evil god ever and do tons of evil deeds right up in his face and all he can respond with is to shake his head over it just feels weird in my opinion.

    At least MotB made up for it.
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    I was never a big fan of either game but i think i enjoyed the 2nd one most.
  • MooseChangerPatMooseChangerPat Member Posts: 148
    This is a question I have pondered on for years now. I like both games, yet at the same time I REALLY hate certain aspects of them. Like then end of NWN2 and how Mask of the Betrayer wasn't so much a sequel... as a new story that borrowed the protagonist from the first game. But given the fact that they had to work with the horrible ending of the first game... I can't say I blame them much for MOTB :|

    Yet with Neverwinter Nights 1... a lot of it could be pretty dark and ugly. I especially was ticked the way they ended things with Aribeth, and how much they screwed with the Romance -_- ugh. Hordes of the Underdark made the Aribeth thing even worse, but made up for it by being the best game in the Neverwinter Nights series *_* ... It was... shoosh >_> Nathyrra, Valen, and Dekin were FANTASTIC party members to go through that game with. And Valen was probably the first and only decent romanceable male character in any of these games. Need I remind you of how little Casavir actually said?

    I love that you can get up to level 40 in the first Neverwinter Nights game, while the second always left me feeling a little too power capped. I love the epic level games that shake the very planes with their struggles, and as such Neverwinter Nights 2, even with MOTB was a little bit of a letdown.

    If I had to say the original Neverwinter Nights campaign against the original Neverwinter Nights 2 campaign I'd have to say the second. I especially loved things like the court scene where you really got to make your diplomacy and bluff skills shine. Oh, and I also loved having my own castle that I could get to be bigger better and cooler depending on how much money and wise decision making I put into it. All the hidden ore veins for your troops to have super arms and armor, and then seeing these troops in action in a siege? God that was so GLORIOUS!

    However I still count the expansions in this vote, which thus includes SOU, HOTU, MOTB, and SOZ (Never played Mysteries of Westgate) So if I were to base it on that... I'd probably have to go with Neverwinter Nights 1, just for HOTU... it was THAT good. The underdark was always one of my favorite parts of BG2, and they do a great job with their underdark in Neverwinter Nights. That and as much as I praised the castle in Neverwinter Nights 2, it's so tedious actually trying to get to that point, and HOTU has something pretty similar to that Anyways. It's still a REALLY close call, but I'd have to go with the first still. Good god... I could go on for pages about this o_O
  • SmaugSmaug Member Posts: 216
    Neverwinter Nights made me want to kill myself, it was so drab looking. I was really looking forward to it after seeing the preview every time I installed BG2, but I was let down. I thought it was visually a step backwards.

    NWN2 was more attractive and had a decent story. The xpacks were not my cup of tea; I didn't like how Storm of Zehir had that world map you roamed over w/ generic random encounter areas, and I thought the story in MotB got a little strained (to be fair, by that point I was just coming off SoZ and was a little tired of the game period).
Sign In or Register to comment.

2024 Overhaul Games, a division of Beamdog. © 2024 Hasbro, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Baldur's Gate, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, Baldur's Gate, Wizards of the Coast and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries, and are used with permission. Hasbro and its logo are trademarks of Hasbro, Inc. and are used with permission. © 1998 BioWare Corp. All Rights Reserved. BioWare, the BioWare Infinity Engine and the BioWare logo are trademarks of Bioware Corp. Black Isle Studios and the Black Isle Studios logo are trademarks of Interplay Entertainment Corp. Atari and the Atari logo are trademarks owned by Atari Interactive, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.