Neverwinter Nights 2
Game » consists of 7 releases. Released Oct 31, 2006
The sequel to Bioware's Dungeons and Dragons PC role playing game of 2002, Neverwinter Nights 2 puts the player in the role of a peasant that must realize his importance in the world through an epic adventure.
Rolling through NWN2 (03): And you thought it was over so soon?
So, we left off with me being at some fort, where I was tasked with doing some sidequests. Doing these sidequests, which included "Kill some bandits" and "Kill some undead" has gotten my party up to a level where they can consistently kill things as long as they aren't ravaged by disease or fighting undead. Basically, I already have to give a tentative non-recommendation to making your main character a swashbucker, as undead happen to have damage reduction from the items that class is proficient in (light weapons. I'm rocking a +1 Rapier and a +1 Kukri in an attempt to crit dudes all the time. Which works poorly since Undead are immune to crits) and I am to understand that there are a lot of undead in the Original Campaign. Khelgar on the other hand, has proven his stereotypical Dwarf self (seriously. He and Oghren from Dragon Age should have a "Who is more of a stereotypical Dwarf" contest) to be well worth using in combat, mostly due to the fact that he has 18 strength and constitution as well as great cleave.
So anyways, after doing all that fort nonsense, I set out for Highcliff and on the way I encountered Elanee, a druid who is good and caring. Obviously, I've started losing influence from her pretty fast with my violent and selfish ways (Unsurprisingly, Neeshka and Khelgar seem to be into one or the other of those things) and the only class I think is more dumb than Druids are Monks. If I encounter an actual honest to goodness Cleric, I will be dumping her and her nature loving self ASAP. It's not like healing is especially vital when you can rest practically anywhere. There was corruption in the grove, Elanee may be the only druid left (hooray!) and we finally got to Highcliff, where yet another obstacle got in our way. This time, the Lizardmen are sinking all the ships. Thus, after agreeing to do some sidequests in the same areas as where the main quest is, I went to a farm where a lady named Shandra is, only to watch said Lizardmen burn down her farm. Because she is voiced, I have a suspicion that I haven't seen the last of her. That's around where I stopped for today, realizing that I will probably just be doing some more dude killing for a while.
So, so far I still don't know who the villain is other than a vague reference to "The King of Shadows" and the plot has yet to advance in any reasonable manner for the past 3 hours. Yep. Nonetheless, I can't say I hate this game. The dialog isn't totally amazing, but there's a nice party dynamic to my choices (basically, they all hate each other) that will no doubt go away once I get more party members and therefore more variables that they don't want to pay the writers for. The combat is alright, but not especially complex so far. Spellcasting AI unsurprisingly sucks, as Elanee dumps all her offensive spells on the first thing that moves. I guess I'll have to turn it off and play the game Infinity Engine style, even if the camera is still kind of ass. And with that, I think I'm done. See you eventually?
So, we left off with me being at some fort, where I was tasked with doing some sidequests. Doing these sidequests, which included "Kill some bandits" and "Kill some undead" has gotten my party up to a level where they can consistently kill things as long as they aren't ravaged by disease or fighting undead. Basically, I already have to give a tentative non-recommendation to making your main character a swashbucker, as undead happen to have damage reduction from the items that class is proficient in (light weapons. I'm rocking a +1 Rapier and a +1 Kukri in an attempt to crit dudes all the time. Which works poorly since Undead are immune to crits) and I am to understand that there are a lot of undead in the Original Campaign. Khelgar on the other hand, has proven his stereotypical Dwarf self (seriously. He and Oghren from Dragon Age should have a "Who is more of a stereotypical Dwarf" contest) to be well worth using in combat, mostly due to the fact that he has 18 strength and constitution as well as great cleave.
So anyways, after doing all that fort nonsense, I set out for Highcliff and on the way I encountered Elanee, a druid who is good and caring. Obviously, I've started losing influence from her pretty fast with my violent and selfish ways (Unsurprisingly, Neeshka and Khelgar seem to be into one or the other of those things) and the only class I think is more dumb than Druids are Monks. If I encounter an actual honest to goodness Cleric, I will be dumping her and her nature loving self ASAP. It's not like healing is especially vital when you can rest practically anywhere. There was corruption in the grove, Elanee may be the only druid left (hooray!) and we finally got to Highcliff, where yet another obstacle got in our way. This time, the Lizardmen are sinking all the ships. Thus, after agreeing to do some sidequests in the same areas as where the main quest is, I went to a farm where a lady named Shandra is, only to watch said Lizardmen burn down her farm. Because she is voiced, I have a suspicion that I haven't seen the last of her. That's around where I stopped for today, realizing that I will probably just be doing some more dude killing for a while.
So, so far I still don't know who the villain is other than a vague reference to "The King of Shadows" and the plot has yet to advance in any reasonable manner for the past 3 hours. Yep. Nonetheless, I can't say I hate this game. The dialog isn't totally amazing, but there's a nice party dynamic to my choices (basically, they all hate each other) that will no doubt go away once I get more party members and therefore more variables that they don't want to pay the writers for. The combat is alright, but not especially complex so far. Spellcasting AI unsurprisingly sucks, as Elanee dumps all her offensive spells on the first thing that moves. I guess I'll have to turn it off and play the game Infinity Engine style, even if the camera is still kind of ass. And with that, I think I'm done. See you eventually?
The Blacklake quest line still awaits, almost 10 hours of senseless, unavoidable quest padding. Do you plan to play the expansions as well, or just the original campaign?
Of course, it immediately depends on if I finish this campaign first, and I probably have another 20-30 hours left, not to mention Dragon Age 2 comes out in 2 weeks which would be the thing to distract me if I were to be distracted and not finish the game. We'll see. Considering I almost aborted this blog series once, it wouldn't be hard for a temporary hiatus to turn into a permanent one. I can sure as hell tell you that I'm more interested in Dragon Age 2 than this game, considering everything its shown me so far.
@jorbear: Yep. I know. Counting the restart, I think I've played around... 5-6 hours of the game? I'm not very far at all. Which is why I'm at (03) and not like... (20). It's not something I can sit down and marathon through the same way I could for IWD or TOEE. I'm hoping to at least get through act 1 before Dragon Age 2 comes out and ruins my chances of getting anywhere in this game during the month of March.
Wait, what's your problem with monks? Is it just the concept of the class that you don't like, or the mechanics? Because I can tell you that I turned Khelgar into a monk at the first opportunity and immediately liked him about 10x better than before, enough to warrant carrying him around in my party for the rest of the game.
I played the Dragon Age 2 demo for both 360 and PC (I didn't feel like waiting three days for slow ass PSN) and the 360 version was pretty much an exercise in mashing A over and over and occasionally healing or using a special attack. Not too compelling. The PC version basically involved clicking on an enemy, watching Hawke kill it, clicking on the next enemy and repeating, again occasionally pausing to use a skill or potion. Also, the Directx10-11 stuff wasn't very well optimized at all. Most of it you couldn't even turn on, and the one big thing you could turn on (a feature that improves self-shadowing) halved my framerate. Not too impressed.
http://store.steampowered.com/news/4947/
@Raven10: Yeah sure. But If you assume a demo meant for joe shmoe on Xbox Live is indicative of how strategic the final game will be, than I can't help you.
@Tordah: Hmmmm.... I might have to try that out. Thanks!
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