The bad of NWN2

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Now that I've played it a bit more... and quite frankly have enjoyed myself immensely

You couldn't in NWN; you couldn't even control your party. You could barely call what you had a party.

So, you click on their portrait on-screen. How difficult.

Not sure if this is really something you consider bad, or it's just that it's like KotOR, but I have no problem with the character creation.

Nice. I just made myself a Sherridan wood longbow... Happens to be Mighty +5, and I haven't found any decent longbows yet, so that was sweet.

Not sure about that, I guess I never paid that close attention, but I was just noticing the cool spinning attacks Neeshka was making when I gave her two weapons. Sweet.

Eh. so what really? What do you do if a companion dies? Reload or Resurrect.

May be true, but it didn't seem so. I wanted all the companions so far (which is three prior to reaching Neverwinter), so I never chose the dialogs to say get lost, but they seemed to be there.

Again, is this bad or just a comparison to KotOR?

Maybe no auto-level, but a recommended button for every choice, so leveling is quick and painless if you don't want to make choices.

I agree with this one. I think the NWN inventory system was one thing complained about though, so I'm not surprised. Another thing I don't like is that items are automatically identified when you pick them up if you have a high enough Lore. Sometimes it's difficult to find the thing you just picked up. In NWN I used to look for the unidentified items to find what I just picked up and identify them. Now I have to examine them before I pick them up or search through that crazy inventory and try to remember what I had before and what's new.

Meh. I'll take your word for it, but I haven't dropped anything yet

What's wrong with the quick-cast menu? It's quick and easy! *shrug*

I stood around at one point to check this, and they do fidget and look around when just standing there.

I don't have any problem with the default top-down camera. It's easy to change angle, rotate and zoom in and out quickly. The only problem with it that I have is that it centers on the selected character which is sometimes not convenient. I'll have to try the free camera and see how that works... I haven't yet.

I don't know about this, but do you really? It didn't seem like you played very far, so I'm guessing you didn't see too much.

Yeah, I had just finished KotOR 2 before playing this and I haven't even attempted to use it after the beginning when it didn't work too well.

I have to disagree here. The spell effects are great, and I especially like the targeting circle that shows the area of effect before you cast. When Elanee casts Flame Strike she gets engulfed in flames just prior to the strike like she's gathering the fire energy. Sweet.

True, but meh. The + and - indicate what's been changed when you hover over it with the cursor and a lot of other effects are depicted like stunned, prone, diseased etc.

The environments are so much better than NWN, I don't recall any companions getting stuck behind placeables. In fact, the pathfinding was so good that when Kelghar couldn't reach an enemy because I was blocking the doorway, he ran around to the other side through another open door.

Not sure what your talking about here, I haven't had any problems with the interface, but again, I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Mini-map is great. I especially like the "light cone" that shows in which direction your looking. And now that my Ranger has the Swift Tracker feat, the mini-map is fantastic since it shows the location of enemies at all times. True, both the mini-map and the regular map don't show where you haven't been yet, but how hard is it to remember where you've been?

Merchants run out of gold? Wow, I didn't realize that and I've sold all kinds of stuff; I'll have to look out for that.

Disagree. There are all kinds of battle animations. The cleave and flurry animations (color streaks) are actually better than NWN because in NWN you can lose attacks due to running out of animation time if there are too many attacks happening. This implementation is better IMO because you can see what happened even though your character isn't swinging the weapon, and you get all the attacks you're supposed to.

True. But it's not like there isn't an indication when it's done. You do stand back up from the squat before the job is done though.

Haven't noticed this at all.

Much better than the plain blue rectangle trigger points in NWN, and I don't see how a cool looking trigger point destroys immersion more than a giant blue rectangle.

Basically the same as BG2. I have had what seemed to be random encounters when I was travelling between map points.

They don't lead to the same outcome. At a minimum they can affect your alignment, and I was able to fight or persuade in several occasions so far.

Hm. Haven't noticed this one either.

Incorrect. As I mentioned I have had several instances so far where I could have chosen to fight or negotiate and was able to successfully negotiate. Also in Neverwinter there seems to be a choice of evil (join the thieves) or good (join the Watch) path to get into Blacklake, but I can't be completely sure since I chose the good path.

Apparently there is only one choice for love interest per gender, but I haven't had any romantic dialog so far with Elanee which is supposed to be one of them, so I can't comment on how good or bad it is.

Are you talking about the first three companions you come across? One is a Druid. You get a Sorcerer fairly soon in Neverwinter, and I have heard about many more.

Probably true, but I wanted the companions so I didn't mind. It did seem like there were dialog choices to say "get lost I don't need you" though when you first meet them, but not having tried the options I can't say what would have happened if I did.

Like I mentioned, I believe there is an evil path to get into Blacklake whcih is supposed to be quicker than joining the Watch, but you are warned that you will likely have to harm people.

There is exploration. There are quests off the main path. Many doors are sealed until you get the quest to go there.

What would be exciting loot?

Disagree. I was able to open the way to take the ship to Neverwinter by negotiating with the lizarmen and the Highcliff elder. I could have just killed the lizardmen too it seemed, but I didn't have to. I was also able to save a priest of Tyr that got trapped in the Tomb of the Betrayers (and put the beat down on a ghostly Fenthic ) What kind of quest should they have implemented?

The AI is not bad; I use it most of the time. Elanee does have the habit of Flame-Striking the melee-ers at teh same time as the enemies though... BUt regardless, you have the option to control any of your companions if they aren't doing what you want.

Have had many side quests and I'm only in Neverwinter so far.

Can't comment on the multiplayer part since I haven't tried it yet.

 

As BTA has mentioned, there are only 2 available romances: one male, and one female. All the others were dropped.

 

Just left-click on the spell in the spell book and it will go on your memorized list. Left click on a spell on your memorized list and it will be taken off.

Heh. Well, I'm not trying to be a side or anything, I just want to give a different perspective on the game since I'm enjoying it

Elanee casts all kinds of stuff during the battles, but she does buff up first most of the time. You can also prevent her from changing into animal form by herself by deselecting the use of special abilities from the AI. The main problem I have with Elanee's AI is that she sometimes casts Flame Strike into the middle of melee and damages me and Kelghar. She doesn't do it all the time, so I'm not sure what triggers it. Also when she's under the Body of Sun (or whatever the name of that spell is) and the battle ends, she walks up to the party and starts burning us! Oh, and another thing: The spell description says only the flame part of the Flame Strike will damage friends and the divine part won't, but I was taking damage from both!

[ November 13, 2006, 17:10: Message edited by: Blackthorne TA ]

 

Akin to a card-carrying member of Westboro Batsh*t Church, I'm completely and utterly convinced that one is bound to go to hell for liking this game, but I'm not going to leave my cause unattended anyways and I'll address some of these.

You couldn't in NWN? I wouldn't know! I never had any useless NPCs forced onto me in NWN. The only icons I would click are those of my friends, to barter with them, or kick their bottoms for the fun of it.

Very! Retarded, unintuitive, ergonomic mishap. D- for effort and friendliness of use.

Actually, my point was not to blame. My point was to say that OE pulled a Rumsfeld on the whole We'll improve NWN's system deal. They didn't improve it. They took a different system which lacked NWNs features from the very start, and they never bothered to add them.

With these companions? Raise a round of cheers. I was honestly hoping that if I'm forced to take the suckers, I'd at least be able to kill them off. No luck.

I chose the dialogs to get lost. Altough their final word is "Oh, I'll go with you anyways", and you get four options: Yes, Okay, Sure, I guess. Bad storytelling. From my perspective, bad plot. Bad OC.

Neither quick nor painless from my perspective. Why do I have to click through all of their stages if I didn't want to deal with them in the first place? No reason, just backwards game engineering. Oh, by the way, what's the point of even upgrading them if the changes which you put on them personally simply reset once you kick them out of your party and then take them back? Something you haven't noticed either?

Actually, the quick cast bar in my opinion is the only improvement that game introduced. It was sorely missing from NWN, and having played a lot of wizards in the original, I'd have enjoyed the quick cast immensely. The quickslots is a different matter. In NWN you had 36 of them, but in NWN2 you only have 12. The 132 slots to which you have to sequentially switch with a mouseclick are simply pointless in that role.

They sway from side to side as if they're bored, that's about it. I'd be bored if I were them. They don't even look in the direction of a highlighted object. In NWN your characters could make an impression of a conversation because if you put a mouse over your companion, your character would look straight at them. It's not here. Little thing, but to me it was a nice touch which for some reason didn't survive the engine improvement. And then, this game has no style. The designers went for the biggest, most amateurish mistake in the book - realism, and failed miserably, because realistic characters take a lot of effort on a case-to-case basis. Alyx in Half-Life 2 is an example of a reasonably realistic character, with great lip-sync, humanlike fluid motions. But that particular doll was a staple of the HL2 campaign, it's one of the few on-screen characters that draw attention, and it seems to have as much effort invested in it as NWN2 boasts (if you can say so) in whole. You can't just take poser dolls, barely animate them, and hope for realism, and that's just what Obsidian did.

Square patterns in a circle appearing over your head? Honeycomb patterns on the floor? If I was looking for immersion, those things would have given me a hissy fit. Wait, they did.

Ah hell, maybe you have a point. In a game that has no exploration possibilities there are only so many places where you could have been on the map.

What are you talking about? There are no cleave animations. Playing NWN2 and NWN back to back is like playing Super Mario and Tekken back to back, and guess who gets my animation credit. Same goes for walking, idle animations, mostly about everything. It's not hard to do. If I could make models for NWN from scratch with all of these animations perfectly fluid in just a matter of a few days, then shouldn't the professional animation artists at Obsidian be able to pull it off? I guess not!

The giant blue rectangle mostly wasn't visible. It's a minor point, though. My personal pet peeve if you will.

Scripted non-random encounter. Yes, it's like BG2. Lagging six years behind and proud of it.

No, really, they often do lead to the same outcome, because in this game you will act the way it wants you to act. Certainly, if there's an option on the screen that nails your reply, then you don't notice the lack of variety. Like, if you're playing a good docile character. But try play an evil psychopath, and the OC with its script crumbles into pieces. As it did for me.

An option to choose black or white does not constitute choice in my book. I always look for KotOR (both 1 and 2) as pretty good examples of an interesting gameplay as far as morality is concerned, and NWN2 seems simplistic and trite in its choice of words and subtlety compared to those.

What fight have been:
Gang: Hey, let's knock this dwarf around!
Khelgar: Bring it on, *******s!
Me: *shrug* Sure, beat him up, I'll get the popcorn.
G: On no, we'll beat you up too because you tried to con us into fighting the dwarf!
M: Wtf. Okay, let's fight. *two minutes of boring combat*
K: Arr, that was good. So how about I tag along with you?
M: Thanks, but no thanks, sod off.
K: Bah, why don't we go in the tavern, have a drink, and talk about how much you hate me?
M: 1. Okay / 2. Sure / 3. Fine / 4. All right

Well hell, I don't know! In a game that's touted for its flexibility and variety, one might give me something other than fifty gems that I need to sell one by one to merchants that run out of gold (and no Fallout-like system to barter for goods), or a dozen of twin shortswords. Show me variety, different weapons, even of the same time, some cool-looking armours? I know, I know, not in this game.

Actually, there is no other kind of quest you can implement in a single player game without making things too complicated. I just hate it when people say how interesting everything is in this game, while in fact it's the same old stuff with low replayability and dead multiplayer.

You lost me on not bad. Being pelted by friendly flamestrikes by your druid. Your sorcerer standing in the corner and buffing while fighters die in dire need of those buffs. The warlock rushing in melee with a 1d4+2 dagger instead of using their 8d6 eldritch blast. If that's not bad, then I guess getting syphilis isn't all that bad, and Hitler was such a sweetie. (Not technically Godwin yet)

I invite you to help yourself to a helping of that disaster. Most of my complaints are based on the fact that this game killed multiplayer. It doesn't work as singleplayer for me, it doesn't work as multiplayer, it's toolset is not conductive to community development on the scale that NWN's was, just as running large MP servers is beyond the game's capability. To me, this game destroyed everything that was holy about NWN by making it a sluggish singleplayer campaign with programming holes the size of Arizona, and that's why I'm ornery.

 

Hell, here I come!

Actually when you think about it, it makes sense. The default camera angle centers on the selected person, so it makes it easier to switch between party members when they are spread far apart since the portratis are always on screen when the avatar may not be.

Ah! Now it makes sense. I was assuming you'd want to keep your companions alive, but I guess that's not necessarily the case

The avatar doesn't animate in a swing for Cleaves or AoOs, but you get color streaks and bursts. The reason they do not animate those with the avatar is because when you are high level and have multiple attacks per round, there is not enough time and frames to animate all the attacks. Apparently in NWN when that happened, you lost attacks. I'd prefer to get all my attacks and see the yellow slashes for AoOs and (IIRC) purple bursts for Cleaves.

Hehe. Well, at least I didn't say it was fine and dandy. IMO, it's better than the NWN AI and a complete improvement that you can control them directly if you want.

 

I'm in no way saying "Remove the portrait-click selection and replace it with what I want". Just add the alternative for those of us who need it. But noooooo. Bad customer! Don't ask for traditionally convenient features, learn to use ours! - Obsidian.

Which is kind of the point - if you play this game the way it wants to be played, then you will not notice even ten percent of the things which tick me off story-wise. You seem to go along with it in your play style, while all of my impulses went against its grain, and it didn't give me a choice to roleplay.


Late edit:

That's what the devs said too. Along with: "We couldn't come up with a way to skip animations when there's no frames left in the round to run them, so we decided to not animate at all". Even if the lost attacks theory is true, that's still a poor excuse, and the devs' statement holds just as much value as "We were far too lazy and incompetent to improve the engine, so we just cut functionality". I'll make a point of checking out the lost attacks in NWN, though. Got a 28 level hasted fighter at hand for the purpose... (Ain't it a shame you can't make armours look like that in NWN2).

[ November 13, 2006, 18:24: Message edited by: catbert ]

 

Not exactly indestructible HB. If anyone "dies" during a battle they're out of the fight until you do something about it, or the battle is over. Pretty much the same result as if they really died, except if you want them permanently dead like catbert.

 

But, you typically can just go and revive them in the other games. Wands of Resurrection, spells of Raise Dead and Resurrection, or at a minimum trekking to a temple to raise them.

In this game (IMO) it's pretty important to keep everyone alive in order to keep everyone alive (if you get my meaning ). You don't want people out of the fight if you can help it.

This is just a little more convenient. Again, unless of course you do want them to remain dead.

 

Oh, is that right? I've been playing harcore rules, so I didn't realize it was any different for other difficulties.