I belatedly regret my decision to purchase this game

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Well, I have only myself to blame... and BioWare for telling me constantly in game previews and in loading screen info that NWN would let you import your BG2 characters (which was a blatant lie, apparently)...

But after getting to chapter 2 and a lvl 6 sorcerer lvl 1 crimson dragon disciple, I've finally come to accept the unfortunate opinion I've had throughout the first chapter, that this game is a pile of crap on the sterling opinion I've had of Bioware after repeatedly playing BG2 and IWD over the last howevermany years.

I can't say I wasn't a bit warned... I did play the demo, once before, and I remember not being thrilled about it, but I also remember not playing the demo much, and I couldn't be totally sure the demo thoroughly displayed the game, so maybe I was just mistaken, and if I could import my BG2 chars...

But I digress. My irritation and poor opinion of NWN after only the first chapter comes from the following-

Only 1 Character, 1 Henchman, 1 summon (at least as far as I could tell from the spells I had), and a familiar;

No unique armor, weapons, or items like you had coming out of your ears in BG and IWD (I assume there might have been... but if in 1 chapter, consuming more than 10 hours of my like, I don't see one... it's as though they don't exist);

Nearly every merchant carries the same simple hardware, with only a few differences (certainly nothing like the differences that were in BG and IWD);

while it was do-able, the control (movement) of the character was absolutely irritating. So many things annoying about it;

A distinct lack of variety in some areas, especially (to my eye) the creature summoning, spell chants, attack animations, sounds...;

the CRAPPY, CRAPPY, CRAPPY voices available for your character. Every single one was utterly horrible, unless you assumed that before taking up adventuring your character was an out of work B movie actor, out of work because even the b-movies thought they overdid their stupid voice (though really for this I blame bioware, not the voice-actors, who suprisingly were rather famous voice actors such as David Blum and other anime favorites, and they voices their NPCs beautifully. Only the PCs got the special attention and resulting crap voices, it seems...);

You couldn't import characters from BG2 or IWD. That really pinched my nerve. I had been lured to the game by this promise, and I only found out that I couldn't when I found a guy in some forum asking off-hand about importing, and someone just happened to mention that Bioware thought it would be too much trouble to do. WORTHLESS;


And that's about it. There's probably other stuff, but it's little compared to these things. I really like the differences between the BG2 or even IWD2 D&D version, but that alone cannot save this game in my opinion.

After having played this game, I realize I also didn't like D&D:O Stormreach, and I find some similarity between the games. Just a funny sidenot.

 

NWN official campaigns with the exception of HoTU campaign are pretty much worthless and even the HoTU campaign gets nowhere near BG or IWD standards in my opinion. To me NWN has allways been a toolset accompanied with a sample module. The real fun is in the multiplayer, building adventures and playing them in multiplayer or joining a persistant world community. There are also plenty of fan-made modules that easily beat the official ones by bioware ( you should check out the reviews forum if you're interested).

Oh and one thing you forgot to complaing about, the music which is absolutely horrendous.

 

Well, I forgot about the horrible music, cause I had turned it off before I ever made my first character lol... Instead I listened to the Black Album for much of the first chapter...


But also I really REALLY miss the top down 6 character play of BG and IWD. Having 6 characters to control gave you 6 different ways to play the game every step along the path. At every instance I was a druid, cleric, monk, wizard, thief, and ranger, with all the variety of each of those classes at my fingertips the entire time. With NWN, I have to choose ONE class out of a damn good many, and get nothing of any other unless I want to level at half the rate as I could be! Multiclassing is all fun an games until it takes you 4 times as long to get your wizard/fighter/thief to the really cool spells... I want the variety!!!!

(Of course, I found that having 2 arcane spellcasters in a party simply made it irritating... at least with having a druid AND a cleric, the differences between the spell-lists was such that it was only fun, not repititious.)


but even then I could've gotten over having to settle for having just my main character wizard, If I had been allowed to have more than 1 freaking henchman... or one summoned creature...

And multiplayer would be neat I suppose, but my internet is such that that is closed off to me. I have just enough internet to stream movies; the best ping I've had with this satellite internet was 700, and that was in WoW... and even 700 is too slow for anything but a paladin in that game... and I had to quit that even when I finally knew in Outland and the Arena that .7 seconds lag is just too much when you need to heal a party with any decent timing...

 

Like Morgoroth said, the campaigns (even HotU in my opinion) are there mostly as demos of what can be done with the toolset. There are tons of great modules on nwvault.ign.com that are better by far.

Also, to enjoy NWN, you must understand that single player NWN is litterally that: single player. As in, single character. Forget the party. As you say, henchmen with stupid AI don't cut it. Most modules will give you one or two henchmen, and you should not consider them as party members like the NPCs in Baldur's Gate or other full-fledged characters like in Icewind Dale. They more or less provide some skills and spells that your main character doesn't have.

To sum it up, NWN is about only one character, the PC you create. That's something you have to cope with if you want to eventually like the game. No, it's not Baldur's Gate; it's different. Both games cannot really be compared. For the record, NWN2 is much closer to BG and IWD, allowing a party of at least 4 and you can control each character.

For the character voice, I do kind of agree with you. What's missing here in my opinion are race-specific voices. The choice is very slim if you go beyond human. Once again though, the "customisable" nature of the game allows you to add new ones yourself (or download them from the Vault).

As for the importing, it's not really BioWare's fault. Converting 2nd Ed characters to 3rd Ed can be very, very painful, especially since the multiclassing system is completely flipped around. Players would find their favourite characters to be nearly useless in NWN upon importing (including BG2's mighty fighter/mage). Yes, they said it would work early in development. But they realised that it simply wouldn't work down the road.

Basically, you can't possibly like NWN if you keep comparing it to the Infinity Engine games like BG and IWD. Accept the premise that it's a whole new game, based on a whole new engine and a whole new set of D&D rules and you might start loving it. Also be sure to check out some decent modules on the Vault.

When I played it back in 2002, I used to think exactly like you. I wanted it to be a sequel to BG2 and it wasn't. After a few months, I decided to look only at the game itself, beyond what I wanted it to be. I started to love it, enjoying the amound of individual modules that talented people created and accepting the fact that if played in single player I had only one character to control and care about. It ended up being one of the games I've played the most.

Just my 2 cp.

 

Nah, those are easily sp... still only 2 but...

Anyway yeah... I guess I am just upset that it isn't BG2 lol...

Oh well... I'll just have to grit my teeth and see what else NWN has to offer by way of other mods and such.

And I'll have to just keep my itchy typing fingers crossed for a BG3

 

that was the original plan, but first of TOB came and the rules changed from AD&D to 3.0
so calling it a lie is a bit over dramatic.

the smith in the first area in chapter 1 will let you get access to his forge in late chapter 1, where you can craft or rather let him craft some unique weapons

with Hotu it changes to 2 henchmen. the rest i think is there for balance, allthough if your henchmen have summon spells, you can have 1 summon pr person, giving you a posiible party of you, two henchmen,3 summons and an animal companion.

agreed, i think i nearly every single time take the "stealth specialist" voice or one of the warrior voice sets.

in both games you reach epic levels with your character and secondly its two different rule systems, with quite a lot of differences...

that said i loathed NWN when it came out and has newer made it through the OC, its simply so boring.
SOU and HOTU are so much better, here the henchman/henchmen actually start to sound like companions, and the story is so much better.

but what really got me playing NWN are the mods.

 

Well, although it is a bit churlish of me, could they not have had some sort of program (here's where thing get tricky for me, as I'm not a programmer in any conceivable way... I haven't even made a map in a game since RA2) that lets you select a character file in your BG2 folder, analyze it and start a character creation that essentially works as though your character (in game) had just gained x number of levels, and at each level you do it tells reminds you what your character was, what it did, all it's stats and how to make it similar in the current version? I mean really, the BG2 version of D&D seems extremely simple- there's no feats, no skills, only weapon proficiencies -so why couldn't they simply have given an easy tool to let the player make the transition by having an intelligent comparison while building the character level by level to be as close as possible to the original?

But yeah, it's boorish of me to continue arguing about that, so let's just say I realize that bioware probably would have had a tough time making such a program. So I concede this point. No need for anyone else to take up the flame lol.

 

Even if NWN remained 2nd edition rules, do you really think it'd be fun to play through an entirely new campaign with your god-like character you finished BG with? I mean, your character was literally a god at the end of that thing!

As far as starting your BG character over again, think of all the possibilities that 3rd edition opens up for you: a halfling paladin (sound familiar?), a neutral good half-elf druid (sound familiar?), a barbarian/ranger (are you getting my point?).

If you really want to re-create your BG character, it shouldn't be that hard.

Also don't forget to check out all the great mods for NWN. So many BG players mod the heck out of that game and then play un-modded NWN and trash it.

 

"do you really think it'd be fun to play through an entirely new campaign with your god-like character you finished BG with?"

... um... HELL YES! YES IT TOTALLY WOULD!

Hey, I'm all for challenge and whatnot... but you know something? I'll take GIANT CREATURES AND MASSIVE SPELLS ROLLING OVER TINY BADDIES any day of the week over just challenge. Sorry. It's my kind of thing. Now, if you could combine the two, like HoF sort of did in IWD2... that'd be cool.


As for the rest... Well, with only one character to play, I personally have to go with a spellcaster of some sort, and divine magic has only so much fun for me for the first 4 spell levels... around 5 it starts getting interesting to me, but before then it just feels like a support class to me. Actually, maybe NWN's D&D has a more interesting spell-list for druid/cleric than IWD or BG... haven't checked... anyway back to the point, I have to go with spellcaster because that gives the most amusement and variety for me. My point being that those other character possibilities you mentioned don't particularly hold much interest for me. Now, if I could make a 6 character party, absolutely, it'd be awesome using all the new combinations. Although it does disappoint me that there were no subraces... I'm not quite sure what typing in the subrace name was supposed to do other than give your char's race a new name but... that disappointed me. I wanted an Aasimar... lol. God-children for the win. But, if they were going to include that kind of stuff, they probably would've had some better voices too... so yeah they just skimped on some things, imo...


And while you're right, creating one of my BG char's over again in NWN wouldn't be "hard", it sort of would- I don't see my 25th level character as anything but that 25th level character that can do this and that. If I form an attachment to my characters, it's with the characters in the Now, as they Are, or were when last I played them. If I sat down and tried to duplicate it but starting at lvl 1... it would feel like making a whole new character. somewhat because I haven't downlaoded any portrait sets and none of the links from here work for any of the BG2/IWD2 to NWN portrait sets, but mostly because it just wouldn't feel the same. Now, if that program had existed, where I have my old character and the clone in front of me, visually having the clone go through the leveling up process as though it had suddenly gained 25 levels, my brain would be totally taken in and I would think of this clone as the old character in a new reality. But without looking at both at the same time, without having that feeling of leveling it up, I could not associate it as my old character at all... it'd be something totally different. Which isn't BAD, necessarily... it just would've been nice... /tear

[ June 10, 2007, 05:21: Message edited by: Shivan ]

 

I bought the game at the end of the last year and have similar issues as you with it, I just found it really really boring and rough-edged and soulless. Yet I could still see a lot of potential, so I bet some of the modules are decent, but I don't have the patience with the irritating combat to go through with it.

 

I was thinking of posting something very much like this...

I recently picked up NWN Diamond and played through about half of the original campaign. While there where somethings I liked (after installing some mods for the henchman, and such), the lack of a compelling story was really putting me off.

I decided to take a break and try a user mod (Elegia Eternum) which I thought was excellent. Short, but good story, with a little humor and some original ideas.

Afterthat, I thought I'd give SoU a try, since I saw more positive comments about it that the OC.

I have to say, I almost shocked by how different SoU is compared to the OC. There's more depth, the henchman seems to have more character. I feel like I have more options to role play. And there are more little touches...like in Hilltop, the crowd's reaction when you get the kobolds to leave the kitchen in the inn.

It's not perfect...I still have to "find the 4 XXX" which is cliche, but it's way better than the OC.

I didn't look, but I almost feel like they brought in a whole new team to write the story for SoU.

I'm suprised Bioware dropped the ball so much on the OC.

 

if you want many roleplay options and a good story and dont mind a big download, then try Darkness over Daggerford.

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=5122

it has insanely beautifull landscapes and costume content and is well written, it lacks a bit in the dungeon department, but the rest is great.

 

The first chapter of SoU is an absolute delight to play with different characters. Just the special interactions for Rangers and Druids with animals are worth a try.

Regarding roleplaying, the Hill Giant quest can be solved in at least five different ways, three of them not involving any killing. "Khobolds in the Kitchen" can also be solved in different ways, depending on your character, your persuassion skills, the spells you know...

What I found was that the Interlude and Chapter two, althogh still offering a good story, offer way less options for different classes and styles of playing (perhaps the exception is the Ao Camp).


I have played "Shadows over Daggerford" and the module is very good. I also tried "Honour Among Thieves", and it blew my mind away. As someone may have already said, the good thing about NWN is the potential that it has. Even the OC can be interesting if you play it with a team over the internet. Human characters can always add extra depth to any game.

 

Modules made for specific classes (such as Honour) are usually very good. That's one of the strength of NWN; through the toolset, you can get customised adventures for specific classes. These modules tend to use a class' abilities to their full extend, which is very refreshing from the generalist approach of most games and modules. Other modules like that are Kale's Rangers, Tale of a Mage and the Twilight/Midnight/Dawn series for paladins.

Speaking of module recommendations, I must also point out the "AL" series: Siege of Shadowdale, Crimson Tides of Tethyr (full of BG2 references, part of the action taking place in Suldanessellar), Tyrants of the Moonsea and the fourth and final one (The Blades of Netheril) in production. These are all very great.

Start the OC, hit the "~" key (left of "1") then write (case sensitive):
DebugMode 1
dm_givelevel 20, click your character
DebugMode 0

I must point out that I also feel like playing a totally overpowered character is boring, but hey it's your choice

[ June 12, 2007, 19:32: Message edited by: DarthMuffin ]

 

lol but that's cheating!!

 

Well, yes... but the campaign is meant to be played from the start with a level 1 character. And you tell us that you would rather have "giant creatures and massive spells rolling over tiny baddies" and that you would take that over challenge any day. Since you cannot combine the two like in IWD, the only way to have this is to cheat

Like I said, it's your choice

 

Who's your apprentice? DarthCupcake? Bakery Wars!

Watch out for the Millenium Foccacia.

Anyway, no, if I'm going to play a game, I'd like it to at least have a decent, compelling story.

As I said in my Gamespot review of it, "Nothing screams go-gettum-action like a disease." I'll probably try the other mods eventually. but for now... I'll just try finishing off HoF.

 

Shivan - you are echoing the cries of classic D&D players. "Where is the D&D in this game?". The issue seems to revolve around how the Marketing people have twisted the game spec to 'target' their opinion of what the users want. Unfortunately these same Marketing people seem to be entirely ignorant of what D&D really is.

Your need for a full D&D party with a strong story line, some compulsion and character deevlopment are not what is built into NWN. Nor is the BG-style side quest demands and almost overwhelming number of quests, issues, distractions and other stuff begging for your attention. You certainly cannot look forward to a megafight that requires a wide range of D&D skills and resources and a lot of careful thinking and planning to overcome. That is D&D - NWN is most definitely not- regardless that the game uses the rule set - it just does not comprehend the environment.

As an old D&D'er I sympathise. BUT - as mentioned by several people above - the NWN community DOES understand this and they have crafted a few MODs that close the gap as much as can be with this limited tool.

 

My brother plays this game all the damn time. He won't even try IWD2, which is IMO much better. I've played a little way into Kingmaker, which I'll probably finish eventually, but I don't like the overall game much.

Agreed. It doesn't feel like a real DnD CRPG unless one can have a party of at least four fully controllable PCs.

Don't they have classes in computer science school to teach kids how to design a good UI? Clearly the Bioware folks (and anyone else who thinks a radial menu is good) slept through those. Also the camera gave me a headache.

Eh, they were about the same as 90% of the voices in 90% of games (which is to say pretty bad). I wish game designers would license voice sets from older games (infinity engine); it wouldn't be much work, or cost much, and would give the players so many more options. Ditto for character portraits.

The differences between 2E and 3E are simply too much. This ability isn't important to me in general. Just recreate your character in the new game -- if you don't want to start at level one, go download a editor.

I don't care for computer game music, mainly because it is 99% crap. So I turned the volume down to zero right away.