Neverwinter Nights 2

Four years after the original and highly rated Neverwinter Nights, Obsidian steps up to the plate to fill in Bioware's shoes for a sequel worthy of the great RPG title "Neverwinter". First thing you need to do is create a character, You have loads of different races and classes to choose from to make your character completely unique and in-tune to your play style. The classes will vary from strong melee only classes that deal out (or recieve) loads of damage to mighty wizards that and kill a horde of enemies with one spell and anything in between. The game starts off relatively slow as you go through a tutorial cleverly disguised as a simple fair. The game has you doing tasks such as trading furs to a merchant for a bow that you need to give to your stepfather. Though it is slow, it still does an exellent job introducing you to the game mechanics. The game does use standard Dungeons and Dragons rules so it may be a tiny bit complicated for someone not familiar with RPGs. But even if you arn't familiar with the D&D universe, you should be able to pick the game up relatively quickly, about 30 minutes or less if you are just a casual gamer. And even though this game is a sequel to the first, you do not need to have played the first one to understand whats going on in the story.

All that aside, lets get to the fun part. After the beginning "Tutorial" the story kicks off, Bladelings (goblin-like creatures) attack your home and you must fend them off along side your militia buddies. After the attack, your father reveals why the Bladelings attacked and sends you on a mission towards the human capital of Neverwinter. What seems like a simple task quickly changes into an epic quest for the survival of the world. You will meet a bunch of colorful and unique characters along the way such as a temper-mental dwarf that loves to get into fights, and an annoying Teifling (devil-like race also available for character creation) who's purpose is unknown un-till late in the game and more. These people arn't just there for show, they prove very useful in combat and you WILL need them. Unlike the first Neverwinter Nights were they had you exploring the lands either by yourself or with one other AI controlled character, this game allows up to three other people in your party. Because of this the game had to be balanced out so you no longer are able to do it alone. This can prove to be difficult as your AI companions arn't very smart, More often than not, they will get suck behind a building or fence and sometimes they will not follow you at all. But when they do act as the game intended them to, they can prove useful in certain tasks such as unlocking doors or chests for loot or as a meat shield to take all the blows from the enemies if you are a mage or any other lightly armored class.

Along with the loads of AI problems there are a few bugs in the game that can get in the way of your quest to save the world. One bug i experienced during my play-through was a bug in which one of my companions just disappeared from the game completely and was totally unusable for the rest of the game. Although they have come along way in patching, there are still bugs around that can just ruin your experience with the game. Bugs aside however, the storyline and game play mechanics make up for most of it. The storyline makes some unexpected turns and makes you really care about whats going on within the world. And game play mechanics just add to the emotion, one mission will have you in control of a ruined keep and the game has you build it up from scratch. I cant talk about that aspect too much but it does add a sense of responsibility to the game. Although at times the game can be too overwhelming at times in terms of what needs to be done in order to advance in the game. Some missions have you searching the world several times over un-till you finally understand what needs to be done, although, there are very few of these types of quests so it is not a major problem.

Along with a great single player campaign the Devs also added online and downloadable features to the game as well, after you finish the main story you are able to replay it with a friend and get a totally different ending than the first time. If you get bored with that there are several downloadable fan content you can get of the internet such as Modules which are short little mini-quests that usually last about 2-5 hours. You can even download entire campaigns that last 20+ hours. Everything you download is entirely fan made so you can expect some really good and not so good downloads.
Also, because its all fan made, you can create a campaign of your own using the editor. The editor can be complicated but if you know what you are doing, you can create some unique and crazy stuff.

With the official single player storyline alone this game can easily last over fifty hours of pure gameplay. With all of the online content added you can expect that time to double. When you play this game, I recommend you have a clear schedule because once you start, it is very hard to stop. All that being said, I can easily recommend this game to anyone willing to try out an RPG, from the most hardcore players to the simple casual gamer, it is sure to please. Just make sure you have a decent computer no more than two years old or you will suffer from performance issues due to the lack of optimization. SO the question still remains. Is this a worthy sequel to the first Neverwinter Nights? The answer is yes, as long as you can look past some bugs, AI and graphical problems, you are sure to have fun with this game.