Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006)

• Year played: 2014
• Playtime: untracked, probably ~20-30 hours or so
• Completion level: untracked

I think this game is probably a love/hate type of thing. Maybe not hate, but definitely frustration. If you're a longtime TTRPG player who is intimately familiar with the D&D 3.5e ruleset and have a lot of nostalgia for these type of games, you'd probably still enjoy it despite the parts that didn't age that well. But for the rest of us, it'll be a frustrating, confusing, and boring experience.

When I played this I had zero knowledge of the 3.5e or any similar TTRPGs, so I found myself constantly confused about the basic mechanics, and incredibly frustrated with how often my attacks simply failed or missed. It was also my first experience with real-time-with-pause style RPG gameplay, and it firmly set in stone my opinion that it's absolutely the worst of all worlds when it comes to designing a combat system (maybe controversial, but I still have the same opinion today even after playing modern games in this style - I don't think I'll ever enjoy it).

Whether the story was good or not, I can't really say. There are walls of text at every turn, and when playing in co-op, the last thing you want to do is both sit silently and read the screen for 20 minutes between fights. So mostly I ended up zoning out and just skimming text hoping the characters would stop talking so I could actually play. Turns out when I did eventually get into tabletop a couple years later, my playstyle is quite the same, I'm mostly a dungeon-delver and explorer and expect my campaigns to have at least some action in every session. Long roleplay sessions are absolutely not my jam, but if they're yours, you might have a better time here.

All opinions and personal preferences aside, it's hard to dispute that this game was extremely influential and paved the way for a lot of incredible CRPGs to come, but unless you're a hardcore old-school D&D player with a fondness for lengthy roleplay who doesn't mind looking past clunky UI and terrible camera angles, you will find that this one doesn't hold up well at all by modern standards and would be better off picking something else.

I appreciate the depth of 3.5e character building and the utterly mind-boggling extremes to which you can take it, but the game fails as a vehicle for its system, primarily through the multitude of minor annoyances that quickly build up. The user interface and AI are both bad, respectively hiding important information in inconvenient places and making counter-productive decisions during combat. Your opponents will get plenty of attacks of opportunity, and it's usually because your party members will move in such a way as to give it to them for free.

But to me the primary issue is the camera, which is incredibly awkward to use. If ever there was a game that would have benefited from a button dedicated to highlighting every object that could be interacted with, this is it. Dragon's Age: Origins did it, and while I have problems with that game's mechanics and I don't like how far it went in simplifying its systems, it's at least more enjoyable to play than this.

I understand why this game never caught on, and why so few people talk about it today. It's too deep for casual players and even some people who like the complexity get bogged down by the minute-to-minute gameplay. I did want to like this game, but everything from the story to the interface are half-baked, and the ultimate tragedy is that D&D's most complex system never got a game that did a good job of contextualizing its capabilities in an interesting way. Sure, Mask of the Betrayer is so far well-written, but in terms of combat and overall playability it's not any better.

EDIT: Pressing Z will highlight the interactable elements in the environment.

I played through most of the game 5+ years ago and thought that it was decent, if not particularly well written. I decided to give it another go, since I've heard great things about the expansion and never made it that far.

Unfortunately, my tolerance for terrible cameras and poor UI has decreased significantly since the last play through. I simply can't fight a game that much to play it these days, especially when I know that the story is nothing special. I found the default key mapping to be quite unintuitive, and, even after messing with the controls for half an hour, the whole thing still just felt downright clunky. Pathfinding and companion AI are horrible, but turning them off leaves combat extraordinarily tedious. Of course, this is still an issue with many modern games in the genre. Frankly, the 2D Infinity Engine style games hold up far better.

I've also come to realize over the years that I simply don't care for D&D rules. I find them overly restrictive, and rather dislike the character creation process with all of the trap choices involved. I think 3.5 may even be worse than 2nd edition in some ways. Of course, this is both entirely subjective and not a deal breaker in and of itself for me.

The one thing that I still enjoyed going back was the music. I forgot how much I loved the bombastic main credit theme with Storm of Zehir installed, and the otherwise solid song track throughout.

That was an epic game with epic companion characters, an epic story, and an above average combat system. The camera sucked and the game seemed a little slow taking into account the graphics of the game. Now, Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age: Awakening both seem even more underwhelming that before. They more or less ripped off Neverwinter Nights 2. Time to start Mask of the Betrayer.

Actual Score: 4.5/5