Most helpful customer reviews
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
THE PATRIARCHS OF cRPGs ARE STILL SLIPPING YET FURTHER DOWNHILL ..., Oct 11 2007
Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars
I remember watching the trailer for the first NWN and actually holding my breath. I had IMMENSELY enjoyed BALDUR's GATE I & II and all their expansions, a well as the ICEWIND DALE series. I had been enchanted by the best cRPG ever, PLANESCAPE TORMENT. Now the same game developers were delivering a 3D, cinematic version that would make total immersion inescapable! Right? Wrong, oh boy, so WRONG!
Measly henchmen replacing our deliciously diversive company, nauseating camera movement, infantile designed objects, slow battle movements, low polygon characters and bland storyline. Now, NWN had its virtues, no doubt. It was such an original approach that games like WOW and OBLIVION borrowed heavily from its innovative concept of a Third-Person RPG. Nevertheless, it suffered from raising the expectations bar too high - and then not delivering but a fraction of its obvious pottential. It eventually got accepted by the MODing community that created numerous ingenious MODs that saved the day.
It has been over a year now and NWN2 does not seem to take off. It is as if no one wants to concern himself with it. And for good reason.
The much higher system requirements do not translate onto the screen. There are improvements of course but not by much. It feels more like an expansion than a sequel.
The camera movement is even worse. Much WORSE! Supposedly it positions itself in the best angle, Well, I found myself spending more time repositioning the camera than the interacting with the characters!
Does it have bugs? Enough to make a horror B-Movie! Patch after patch gets released and the damn thing still stutters and freezes and crashes. Another fine example of an untested product rushed to the market unfinished. While traveling everything seems fine. When the battle heats up, though, and spells fly left and right all hell breaks loose. Tweaking the video and graphics settings helps but does not eliminate all problems.
All in all, a game to avoid if a cRPG fun. If new to RPG games do not start with this one: you will get disappointed and may be miss out on true gems.
Another fine example of accountants and stock-jockeys meddling with an art-form they cannot grasp...
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Warning: You are about to read a review, Aug 30 2009
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best 3rd person rpg's of all time, until they make a #3 I'm sure. Only brought down by its buggyness, although luckily due to it being a good game, you can find solutions and workarounds to the bugs usually from other people that have worked them out, and not from the game company itself (who seems to just hate people in general and not want them to enjoy their really awesome game).
Also, if your running vista or have a slower computer, expect extremely slow loading times. If your using vista and go to windows 7 RC, the loading times decrease from several minutes to 10-20 seconds loading. But there is a direct X problem with windows 7 in that the version (although all the software works fine) isn't supported by the game. And instead of Atari simple adding a couple lines of code so it passes the directx check, they simple say they wont support windows 7 (see note on Atari hating the people that want to play their game.)
Googling the issue and checking around will eventually get you to a forum page somewhere where some person found a fix to replace some directx file with the vista equivalent so it passes the directx check, then you can enjoy this wicked game.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good but it does have its problems, Jun 13 2007
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
I'll try and keep this short and sweet...I did finish the game so I think I'll be able to review this properly.
The pros:
- A fun storyline, with lots of optional side quests to try. It's not just "perform task A, then B, then move on". You can make the game as long or as short as you want, depending.
- The other characters seem to be well fleshed out, with personalities and characteristics of their own. They argue with one another, flirt, betray, etc. Plus they don't interrupt you in the middle of a task to chat, like some of the NWN 1 chars did.
- The new races and classes were very cool. You could choose a tiefling or an aasimar, or multiclass to a Divine Champion or Warpriest, among other new options. It leaves the door open for lots of possible combinations, which makes repeatedly playing the game even more tempting.
The Cons:
- Major lag time, and I have a PC that TECHNICALLY should be able to run the game with no problems. However, sometimes things were soooooo slow that I just got frustrated and switched it off. I mean, when it takes 30 seconds just to rotate the camera view, that ain't good!
- The choices for face styles, hair color and clothing were surprisingly minimal. I was hoping for something along the lines of the SIMS 2 but didn't get much more than 8 face shapes, if that.
- My game crashed a lot during the final battle, I had to reload and quicksave quite a few times just to get through one scene. It would just freeze and then the screen would go dark and I'd get my "Program Not Responding" pop up window. However, after I downloaded a few patches it appeared to run more smoothly...
- One last one, and this is perhaps just me: there were a few too many cut scenes for my tastes and some of them were really long.
Overall, though, I really enjoyed playing NWN 2 and I'm eagerly awaiting the (rumored) expansion pack. It was worth my time and money, but it wasn't as great as I'd hoped it to be.
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