General Game Play

Note: There are no spoilers in here.

The first thing you are going to notice is the graphics. This game is extremely pretty. While pretty doesn't really make a game for me, it does help with immersion into the game world. The swamps are swampy, the forests are foresty, etc. The environment seems to be alive, as opposed to earlier games where the environment was usually a 2D representation. The 3D environs really help set the mood. It's nice to see that something came out of the extremely high system requirements that this game has. It's possible to create mountains that not only look high from the ground, but seem to be high when you get to the top of them. The panoramic views that are possible are astounding. They can trigger your phobia of heights, if you have one, and roll the camera angle to look over the edge. I don't recommend that for the faint of heart.

For all of that, path finding, the way characters move through the world, is every bit as bad as it was in Neverwinter Nights. Characters will get stuck on the simplest things, seemingly unable to lift their feet over a simple twig, or over the boards that make up some of the pathways. In combat situations, this can be a very bad thing if your main fighter type character isn't the first one in the door. It has the effect of making you possess one of the other characters to force them to move into combat. They get to where they are totally unable to "see" their way around an obstacle. However, sometimes they will "push" you, or another character out of the way, just on principle, it seems. It makes me wonder why they can't do that in combat.

The very first thing that actujumps out is character creation. The process is much more involved than it was in Neverwinter Nights, giving you a bit more control over your character's overall appearance. Instead of having two basic body types to choose from, there is an option to adjust height up or down, and girth, er, in or out? There are a variety of different heads to choose from which basically change facial features, and a lot of different hair styles, for you fashion gurus out there. For male characters, you can toggle facial hair on or off too, giving the several head models several different possible looks. While they aren't limitless, there is enough variety to make them hard to accidently duplicate, unless you just choose the default look, every time. Which is an option, if you don't want to be that involved in what your character looks like.

Another innovation to this game that I find to be rather nice is the influence system. It's a bit quirky, but it enables you to play the way you want to play, and still keep most of your party members happy. That being said, I don't like the way the NPC's that can join your party are "forced" upon you. "I can't mark the location on your map if I'm not travelling with you". This isn't role play, although the game is supposed to be a role play game. I don't pick my friends for what they can do for me, but the game forces this style of play upon you. To me, it makes it hard to build "relationships" with the chars in your party, since you have to change this one or that one out all the time to make room for a different one. This is a big black mark for the game in my book.

While there are more feats to choose from, character traits and abilities, all of the basics from Neverwinter Nights 1 are there. Even veteran Neverwinter Nights players may want to pause long enough to look through these. The character background is new, and is really handy for setting up what your character should be like in game, if you are into role play, at any rate. This is a part of the game that confuses me somewhat, as I can't for the life of me figure out role playing alone...If I tried that in my home, they would have me locked up...I tend to save my role play for multi-player(MP) games, as then there is someone to notice. However, your choice will affect the way NPC's (Non Player Characters) will react to you. If you aren't much of a role play gamer, then the No Background option may be for you, until you get a handle on how the game works. There are more aspects to this, of course.

All in all, I'm happy with the game. I am not having show stopping bugs or major graphic issues that weren't caused by my own hardware. The story line is decent with some engrossing sub plots, and it can be a bit addicting sometimes, although I don't find it as enjoyable as Neverwinter Nights. This isn't a flaw with the game, per se, as much as a personal preference. I prefer to play MP, as opposed to Single Player (SP), so the game has a hard sell right out of the gate since the toolset used to make your own campaigns isn't as "simple" to use as the one in the original game, and you have to download a walkmesh file that can easily get up to 3 gigs in size to play in online worlds. This is a pain but is necessary since you can control the lay of the land, as it were, to a very great degree in the toolset. At any rate, all in all, it's a very nice game, if you can afford the hardware to run it, I'd suggest it for at least one run through in SP mode, more if you can find an online module you like.

Happy Gaming.

Robert the Bard