Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition

Following after its predecessor, NWN2 is an epic fantasy RPG that gives you the options of playing the included campaigns or engaging with community-created modules. In the original campaign, you are thrust into the shoes of a young adventurer who must form alliances, hone their skills, and shape the course of the adventure through a robust set of story and inter-personal choices that will determine their fate and that of their companions. There's a great mix of exploration, investigation, party banter, and combat. The characters reasonably well-written, with meaningfully individual motivations and divergent personalities, so that building trust amongst the party feels like the results of real compatibility and time spent together. You truly can't please everyone without some serious meta-gaming, and that's awesome. Its characters and to a lesser extent its writing are where my praise for the game will end. I love CRPGs and love every opportunity I can get to play them in a multi-player context, from the Baldur's Gate series to Neverwinter Nights 1 to Divinity: Original Sin. This game seemed like an easy win, and I was excited to pick it up, even with the mixed reviews. Neverwinter Nights 2 has turned out to be a truly unique experience. Not in a good way. I really, really want to love this game, and I wouldn't have hit 100 hours of gameplay so quickly, if there was nothing here. Unfortunately, the parts of the game that shine are overshadowed by many, many flaws. A small history lesson, based on what I've gathered: This game is based on 3.5 edition Dungeons and Dragons and came out originally during the XBox 360 era. The studio spent time and resources upgrading the engine to make it compatible with the 360 hardware. Then that port was cancelled, because they ran out of resources. Connect the dots between attempting to ready a complex CRPG for a console port and a lack of resources, and I think many of the game's shortcomings begin to make sense. The most succinct way I can explain this game is by borrowing a UX idea. This game is high-friction. Everywhere. Every single thing a player tries to do in this game is met with unusual and burdensome resistance. Everything. Without going into excruciating detail, and keeping in mind that my experience is with the original campaign, these are some broad areas where quality of life is non-existent: -Manually saving the game -Customizing the camera options and navigating the camera "modes" -Changing active party members -Managing full party inventory -Trading items between characters -CRITICALLY poor party AI mechanics* -Cryptic display of bonuses and penalties** -Inconsistent and low-verbosity read-outs on dice rolls * The party AI in this game is genuinely the worse I've ever experienced. There are behavior controls that provide broad behavioral imperatives to the characters when AI is on. AI can be turned off, and individual commands can be given; however, the AI behaviors have to be set on a per character basis when switching party leader. Default behaviors and pathfinding are totally senseless and ineffective. I won't go on. **This game is based on D&D 3.5 edition, which has a fairly complex system of bonus and penalty types which stack in particular ways. In Baldur's Gate 1&2 (based on D&D 2e), buff icons represent the originating effects. Exact effects (specific element resistance, AC bonus, saving throw bonus) are reflected in the character sheet. In the Owlcat Pathfinder games, which are based on Pathfinder 1e, a system roughly similar to D&D 3.5: all bonus and penalty effects are represented by the related icons with clear explanations for what is affecting the character. Neverwinter Nights 2 only displays vague indicators: AC bonus (no numbers), Damage resistance (no further detail), etc. This design decision is so confusing to me. They were translating a complex system, which presumably entices people who are interested in numbers, details, and build-crafting, alongside the roleplay elements, to play. But this lack of feedback feels like an assumption from the devs that the gamers wouldn't care about that. They're handwaving the mechanics for me, making the decision for me. Care about whether your spells are stacking correctly? What a nerd. Have I mentioned half of the spells and abilities don't do what they say they do? Most of the broad stability issues I've seen mentioned in other reviews seem to have been ironed out, but I still experience crashes from time to time. I've had to temporarily remove mods to avoid quest-breaking bugs. There are regular (albeit comparatively charming) animation errors during dialogue scenes. These are not the greatest issues anymore. I'm just tired of fighting with the game's most basic mechanics to get to the parts I enjoy. And I don't see a fundamental redesign coming from Aspyr, when their mandate is likely only to make sure the port of the original game runs stably on 64-bit systems. Score Breakdown: UI/UX: 2/10 Combat Gameplay: 3/10 Exploration Gameplay: 5/10 Multiplayer Experience: 4/10 Story (original campaign): 5/10 Characters (original campaign): 7/10 Technical Stability (Bugs): 4/10 Mechanical Fidelity: 3/10 Art Direction/Visuals: 4/10 Modding Landscape: 4/10 OVERALL SCORE: 4/10