Neverwinter Nights 2: NWN 2 Reviews

A couple more reviews trickled in yesterday sometime between the turkey and the pumpkin pie or maybe at halftime in one of yesterday's US Thanksgiving Day football games:

Game Shark: "B"

In many ways, Neverwinter Nights 2 is the game fans expected to see out of the original. It's almost as if developer Obsidian Entertainment listened to customer feedback and combined the Baldur's Gate model with that of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and tossed in a dash of Neverwinter Nights to create the sequel. It's like playing Baldur's Gate II using the D&D 3.5 rules but with a 3D camera that allows you to spin the view and zoom in when you want a good look at a bad guy's face. In the end, performance and AI issues drag the experience down a bit, but this is a far superior game.

It was a smart move to take the design of the sequel and back up a bit. This is an old-fashioned party based adventure, which is really what most RPG fans, and particularly what D&D fans, want to play. The original Neverwinter Nights was a focused on your lone hero. You would get an occasional brain dead henchman to follow you around but you were more or less on your own. The new game allows you to take several NPCs along for the ride from a fisticuff-loving Dwarf fighter, a Tiefling rogue, a Gnome bard (seriously) and even a farm-gal turned warrior. There's a good mix of NPCs that you meet on your adventure and best of all is that you have complete control over them in how they fight and which skills and feats they acquire as they gain levels.

NWN 2 News: 8.3/10.00

I can not praise the story enough, and if you are going to get NWN 2 for just the SP aspect it is worth every dime. I will go out on a limb and say it gives the BG series a run for its money story wise.

The voice acting is overall very good, some of it better then others however. Most of the major NPCs voice actors did a above average job quality wise. Several of the minor NPC's however, their voice acting was something to be desired. In the end the big parts got the quality where it counts. As a side note I will say I noticed the same female voice actress who does Zhjaeve also did another NPC for Vampire: Bloodlines. I have a ear for voices I suppose.

Read the rest at the provided links.