Neverwinter Nights 2

[Rafal Dudek]

So who is interested in this game? I just read a preview about the game editor that comes with it, it puts the aurora editor (for first nwn game) to shame in terms of ease of use and features hehe.

I liked the first game, can't wait for tuesday or wednesday (whichever day the game shops will have the game hehe) and pick this game up =]

[Gary V.]

I will get this the day it comes out. NWN 2 is one of my most anticipated games.

[RangerRick]

Have it preorderd at Best Buy. I'll be picking up the CE version.

[Shaolin K]

I'll definitely check it out. I loved the first one. Can't wait for it to hit the shelves.

[Chylde Roland]

Yup, I'm preordered as well. Looking quite forward to it!

[CrimsonKnight13]

I have the Limited Edition preordered through Newegg. :D:

[Cloudw4lker]

I've played the beta and can't say anything :(: (sad that I can't say anything not about the game)

[Circlebreaker]

From what I've heard it suffers from the typical Obsidian problem: bugs, and lots of them. That doesn't mean I won't be picking it up the moment it's in stores here though.

[Rafal Dudek]

Since many of us will be getting it, maybe we should set up some 3dg online group play? i also cant wait to mess around with the toolset

[Phone(6644)]

looks good, i fancy it. I never played No1 but I hear the online content did not work as expected.

[Cap'n]

So who is interested in this game? I just read a preview about the game editor that comes with it, it puts the aurora editor (for first nwn game) to shame in terms of ease of use and features hehe.

If this turns out to be true, then the possibilities for user made modules will be endless. The first toolset was already one of the easiest I've ever used. This one claims to be even easier and able to allow us custom made cinematics.

I'm waiting to see how the move away from tilesets works out. While tilesets dont allow for as much customization, it does help keep things structured.

Neverwinter Nights was easily the best RPG I've ever played and I can't wait for this one.

[Rob]

We will definitely be picking up at least one copy. Considering I own 3 copies of the first one, I fully expect to pick up at least a second copy of 2 as well.

[Chylde Roland]

We will definitely be picking up at least one copy. Considering I own 3 copies of the first one, I fully expect to pick up at least a second copy of 2 as well.
Is that so you can play it more than once? :crazy:

Just kidding, but I am curious as to why you'de need 3 copies of one game?

[Rob]

My wife and I each bought a copy so we could play co-op over the LAN. Then, when I went to get the expansions, it was cheaper to buy the Diamond Edition (original plus all expansions) then to buy them separately.

[RangerRick]

Just picked up my copy at Bestbuy!

For those interested, the LE version is on a dvd, at least the one I got is. :thumbup:

Time to install! :yes:

[Rob]

Definitely write up a review (or at least impressions). I am hoping to get my copy in the next few days.

[Rafal Dudek]

I picked my copy up today at ebgames. They didnt have colectors edition so I got regular dvd edition. will play later tonight :):

[RangerRick]

There is an update for the game. There server must be very busy. It took over an hour to download 58 mb, then the update install took another few minutes.

Gave me time to peruse the manual.

I then selected a female half-elf as my starting character. Took about 1/2 hour to do my selection. Talked to 'dad' and got my first 'job'. At that point I saved it.

Had to connect to work and finish up the day.

Hopefully, I'll start it up a little later tonight, wife willing!!

[Gary V.]

The game is very laggy. I am averaging 15-20 fps in outdoor areas. This is with shadows off and resolution at 1280x1024. I would think that my pc could rip through this game; the graphics are nothing special. I'm running an E6600 core 2 duo, 7900GT, 2 gigs ram. Hopefully a patch which addresses this issue will be released soon. I have read many others complaining about poor performance.

[Rafal Dudek]

There is an update for the game. There server must be very busy. It took over an hour to download 58 mb, then the update install took another few minutes.

It's going wicked fast here and its 82.7mb from the auto-updater thingie they have.

The game is very laggy. I am averaging 15-20 fps in outdoor areas. This is with shadows off and resolution at 1280x1024. I would think that my pc could rip through this game; the graphics are nothing special. I'm running an E6600 core 2 duo, 7900GT, 2 gigs ram. Hopefully a patch which addresses this issue will be released soon. I have read many others complaining about poor performance.

hmm that kinda sucks, will give this a try soon and see =]

[Cap'n]

The game is very laggy. I am averaging 15-20 fps in outdoor areas. This is with shadows off and resolution at 1280x1024. I would think that my pc could rip through this game; the graphics are nothing special. I'm running an E6600 core 2 duo, 7900GT, 2 gigs ram. Hopefully a patch which addresses this issue will be released soon. I have read many others complaining about poor performance.

Same here. While I don't have the specs you have, my machine is no slouch. Even the game menus and character creation screens are laggy. This is made worse by the fact that the graphics are nothing special. I finally got the game to run at a somewhat smooth framerate by turning off bloom lighting, shadows and a few other bells and whistles. I also had to turn all other setting to medium. Now a game that just looked decent to begin with looks only so-so now. Big disappointment there.

I'm also not too sure about a few interface changes as well. I really liked the radial menu for the first game, and miss it here. Also the conversations and cinematics remind me too much of KOTOR and it's sequel. I do like the improved control over henchman though.

I'll write up a first impressions review tonight and post it in the morning.

[Rafal Dudek]

I like the game. Great story so far and that dwarf companion just makes me laugh whenever he says something.

Performance kinda suck in outside environments but its still very playable. Graphics are nice and spell effects are awesome. I love blasting stuff with my wizard character heh

[Gary V.]

Yeah, the spell effects are nice. Your wizard wouldn't happen to be named Zeddicus, would he?

[Rafal Dudek]

:lol: no. His name is Ereand Dwarftosser. Its the name i use in all rpgs and mmos.

[Cap'n]

Wow, I'm beginning to wonder if this game was released as a bad joke. I honestly can't believe that they were allowed to put the "Neverwinter Nights" title on the poor excuse for a game. Not only is this game a buggy mess, but some of the design and gameplay decisions baffle the mind. Here are a few of the problems I have with this game so far....

1. The game engine is horrible. I shouldn't have to turn off almost all graphic features and lower all other settings to medium just to make the game playable, especially considering that I can run Oblivion with max settings and that game looks 5x better. To make matters worse, the support staff over at the offical forums are basically telling everyone that they need to turn down their settings and get over it. They seem to be ignoring the fact that allot of complaints are coming from gamers with rigs that exceed the recomended requirements. It's just sad. I've also experienced two more annoying bugs that have caused me massive frustration. One of which is where my keyboard will not respond at all during game play, I can only use the mouse. The only way to fix this is to completely exit out of the game and restart it. Absolutely no excuse for these kind of problems.

2. Absolutely lazy design decisions. Anyone else but me notice that the voices used during character creation are exactly the same as in the original NWN? What were the developers doing all this time? Oh, I know! They were busy removing everything from the original that made it a joy to play, like the radial menu , and inserting a clunky interface. And the cinematics, Ugh! They pop-up at odd moments and remind me way too much of KOTOR and it's sucessor. It's like they forgot what made NWN so good and just poorly combined elements of KOTOR and NWN to form a bastard offspring. Oh, and where are all my choices for customizing the appearance of my toon? With games like Oblivion, Tiger Woods, Godfather and others there is no excuse for these utter lack of options.

3. Who broke my wizard? Anyone else notice how they took away your familiar and replaced it with a worthless pet? In NWN I had a killer panther that fought by my side and held a conversation with me. Now I have a worthless kitten that wonders around aimlessly at my feet. What's the point? Oh, and apparently your summon creature spells are just for show now, seeing as how they only last for about 10 seconds before disappearing in a cloud of smoke. By the time the stupid beast aids my attack, he's about to go poof. Wonderful! <-----Sarcasm! Maybe this is a change in the 3.5 rules. If it is then they should have been better adapted for gameplay.

4. Last, but certainly not least is the "Oh my god I'm staring at the ceiling rafters again!" camera view. Every time I enter a house the camera defaults to a wonderful view of the rooms ceiling rafters. Sorry, but I'm not looking to see if the lady of the house dusted recently or not. Bah!


Sorry if it sounds like I'm going on a rant, but this game is just a buggy mess in my opinion. Especially when you consider it's a sequel to such a great game like NWN. There are countless premium and user made modules for the original that are so much better than this, and cheaper too. It's just a complete disappointment as it stands now. I'll continue playing through to see if there is a diamond beneath all this rough and in the mean time hope they release a patch to address the poor performance soon.

[MasterChief]

Huh. Kinda sucks to hear all this, especially considering all the really good reviews (gamerankings has it at 89 right now).

[Rafal Dudek]

Well Cap'n, I have not run into any of the keyboard bugs neither with my desktop and laptop and I've put a bunch of hours into the game already. The camera issues can be fixed either through options or config file. There is really nothing wrong with the wizard class. I actually didnt like those familiars in original NWN. I think the wizard seems overpowered. On a few occasions where I was surrounded by like 7 or 8 enemies at once, my lvl 2 fireblast spell pretty much killed them all in one shot hehe.

My only two complaints are the unoptimized game engine and the dorky companion AI that can be pretty much useless on its own. I have to manually select my companion and have him charge off into battle before my wizard enters the scene and starts nuking the place. Otherwise its "Lets all jump on the wizard" bandwagon.

[Chylde Roland]

I haven't had any problems so far, other than the lag issues. To get rid of those, I turned shadows to low (but not off), turned off point and soft shadows, set my light sources to 4 in the options. No troubles anymore, the game runs pretty smoothly.

I created a cleric and she seems pretty good so far, can really fight well and the buffs and healing are a nice bonus. :):

The engine could definitely use some tweaking, and I've also noticed the AI is a bit slow on the uptake, but it hasn't been horrendous.

I've played about 4 hours now, and have enjoyed pretty much everything so far.

[Cap'n]

Hehe, yeah my previous post was a little harsh. Take a lesson from ol' Cap'n kids, don't type angry. :lol:

After playing the game for many more hours last night, I can say that there is a great game hidden under a funky game engine. The game started feeling much more like what you would expect from a D&D RPG with the Neverwinter name on it. Everything started clicking into place; the story, combat and the overall flow. I get the impression that the game will only become more enjoyable as time goes on.

I think that if they issue a patch to address the funky performance issues, things will be golden. Some of the issues might pertain to just certain instances. For example the swamp area in the beginning is still laggy for me, but once I made it to the Inn and the surrounding areas things ran smooth. It's kind of odd. Even the game menus seemed to have smoothed out, less lag in them as well. I'm going to continue to tweak every setting I can find and post back on what I've found to work the best. Might be a good idea for everyone to share the tweaks they've made as well.

I still have some issues with the game like the AI mentioned earlier and some other design decisions, but the game does have allot of potential. While question I've seen all kinds of things that may be possible for module makers. I can't wait to get into the toolset.

[Torsion]

The original NWN engine was awesome because of its performance and stability. Sad to hear this is not the case with the sequel. Let us know how the game pans out when you get deep into it.

I dont even think this game will run on my PC. I have a pentium m 1.8gtz. I am not sure if this is exceeds a pentium 2.4 gtz processor.

[Rafal Dudek]

grrrr save often. Now I have to backtrack like 40 min because my party wiped out.

[RangerRick]

grrrr save often. Now I have to backtrack like 40 min because my party wiped out.


where at?

What quest?

[Rafal Dudek]

Well there was a pack of zombies that attacked and I ran out of spell uses and I walked through some traps so things got pretty ugly :p:

BTW, disabling soft and point shadows greatly increased game performance. Didnt know this silly game used softshadows, its something that is kinda crappy but takes a huge GPU hit.

edit: How does the Mirror Image spell work? Seems different than it used to be...

[Chylde Roland]

Well there was a pack of zombies that attacked and I ran out of spell uses and I walked through some traps so things got pretty ugly :p:

BTW, disabling soft and point shadows greatly increased game performance. Didnt know this silly game used softshadows, its something that is kinda crappy but takes a huge GPU hit.

edit: How does the Mirror Image spell work? Seems different than it used to be...
hehe... sounds like things went from bad to worse in a hurry!

I know... I couldn't believe the difference soft and point shadows make. I picked up that tweak from the official board, a lot of people are reporting good increases just from turning those off.

Not sure about mirror image, but from the description, it sounded more or less the same as before...?

[Rafal Dudek]

Well it used to create 1d4 copies of me. Now it turns me transparent and have couple of blobs floating around me and if I get hit, one of those blobs disappears hehe

[Chylde Roland]

Weird, gonna have to try that one out now!

[CrimsonKnight13]

I've just tried NWN2 out and I'm quite disappointed in the glitches. The game that I'm most impressed with is Dark Messiah, which a lot of people were complaining about. I guess I've found my favorite RPG for the moment until NWN2 can be fixed.

[chip5541]

I was going to ask is NWN2 worth getting... I guess I will stay with the original until the patches start coming.

[CrimsonKnight13]

It is now up to v1.02 but I haven't seen much good news even from these early patches.

[Chylde Roland]

Funny.... no problems here...

[Rafal Dudek]

I only ran into one bugged quest in the main campaign... It deals with the lizardfolk:

When you free the lizard folk from the castle, you better accept the option to leave now otherwise you wont be able to progress forward if you choose the "stay here for a while" option. Good think I save often so it didnt really affect me too much.

[Melkorus]

All I can say is that controls SUCK. I don't know what they did this time around, but all them camera angles are not working out for me, I'm about to quit playing this game due to controls, they just don't feel comfortable, it's a shame, I never had problems with controls in first one.

[Rafal Dudek]

You do know you can change camera settings right?

[Chylde Roland]

huh, I didn't have any glitches at that part either, Zedd. I honestly have not had a single bug or glitch in this game at all. Now, of course, I'm sure to have tons, just for daring to say I've not had one... :rolleyes:

[RangerRick]

I may have run into another quest bug or 2 THe first is one is minor, and may not be a bug. When I attempt to travel to Skymirror without Elanee, the window will pop up with her in the party, making a total of 5 members when we get to Skymirror. Couldn't solve anything once I got there, so i left, but then could not deselect Alanee from my party.

The big problem that I am having though, is in the " Chasing Shandra" quest.
After the fight in the inn, you then get Bishop as one of the people to choose in the group. We travel to Amber, and take care of the first problem there. Now, here's the problem. I can't do anything else! I'm stuck! I know what is supposed to happen, but for some reason, it doesn't. I've done this now 3 times.I'd mention more, but for anyone who reads this and hasn't gotten this far yet, don't want it to be a big spoiler.
My party members are: myself, Bishop, Casavir and Neeska



Any ideas????

[RangerRick]

I may have run into another quest bug or 2 THe first is one is minor, and may not be a bug. When I attempt to travel to Skymirror without Elanee, the window will pop up with her in the party, making a total of 5 members when we get to Skymirror. Couldn't solve anything once I got there, so i left, but then could not deselect Alanee from my party.

The big problem that I am having though, is in the " Chasing Shandra" quest.
After the fight in the inn, you then get Bishop as one of the people to choose in the group. We travel to Amber, and take care of the first problem there. Now, here's the problem. I can't do anything else! I'm stuck! I know what is supposed to happen, but for some reason, it doesn't. I've done this now 3 times.I'd mention more, but for anyone who reads this and hasn't gotten this far yet, don't want it to be a big spoiler.
My party members are: myself, Bishop, Casavir and Neeska



Any ideas????


Ok gang. I found the answer to the one bug, and it is a BUG!

This is not a spoiler, so here is what resolved the problem. I found this over at the NWN2 forums.

I needed to have my character selected when the last enemy was killed! When you have another party member selected when the last enemy is killed, the script apparently gets fubared. This may not occur in all occasions, but I found this problem occurred to multiple people, on different quests.

Hope this helps others from having this problem.

[CrimsonKnight13]

Patch v1.02 has cleared up many issues. I recommend people update to it. :wink: