Neverwinter Nights 2: NWN 2 Review At GCC: 8/10

The Vault caught this review over at Game Club Central. They have scored NWN 2 with 8/10, seemingly becoming the standard for NWN 2:

Nice new look. But...

One of the biggest problems I had with NWN were the graphics. I'm not usually one to discriminate against graphics but for some reason, I just couldn't stand them in NWN. I guess it had to be that way because of the nature of the toolset that allowed people to create their own modules. But I couldn't stand the cut away view. The animations were so so and even with the additional sets it wasn't much of an improvement. It all seemed blocky.

Enter NWN2 which looks 10 times better that NWN. It seems that teaming up with Obsidian, the developers of Knights of the Old Republic 2, had a merging of the programs. It's like they took NWN and merged it with the KOTOR2 engine and PRESTO! Add some new lighting effects and new textures and you're all set. The game even sports the cinematic cut scenes much like KOTOR 2 which helps give the storyline and characters more 'OOMPH'. There not Oblivion graphics but they're a step up from KOTOR2 and NWN and that basically means some nice eye candy.

While the graphics aren't Oblivion, they sure as hell demand a lot of computing power as if they were. My machine is no powerhouse but it's nothing to sneeze at either and things crawl for me even at low settings. God forbid some baddie in game cast's an area effect spell like 'web' which grinds everything to a halt for a few seconds. Maybe this doesn't happen on high end machines but from what I'm hearing it's not the case. This was a complaint I heard back in the beta stage of the game. Maybe it's because of the toolset design ability? Whatever it is, it can limit who can play NWN2 and that no one wants.

So is it worth Getting?

Yes. It is worth getting. For the storyline, the D&D system, and the multiplayer alone NWN2 is a game that will keep on giving. Hopefully a patch will come out to refine the camera and address the performance issues the game suffers from.