Yes
@danutz_plusplus Afaik, there is zero connection between NWN and NWN2, so you don't need to feel like you missed anything by not playing NWN if you want to play NWN2.
Good to hear. I thought I heard that, but never confirmed it for myself. But ideally, I did want to go through NWN before going onto NWN2. Oh well, looks like I won't be doing that.
In the mean time I finished a very short game, compared to most other ones. It was one I kept hearing about, but never sat down to go through it. But I'm glad I finally did, since it was a good story, not dragged down too much by the painfully average game supporting it. And it was also very short, since I finished it in around 6h. Which was good, since I really felt it overstaying its welcome.
Spec Ops: The Line, my review:
This was another title that I kept hearing about, that it's worth going through at least for the strong narrative. And yep, they were right. It's got a pretty solid story, althrough inspired by existing works. And it does a few winks at that here and there. But that shouldn't really detract from the appreciation. It's not very often that games have good and solid stories.
Unfortunately, all of that is in the body of a pretty generic and sometimes painfully mediocre third person shooter. One that often feels unpolished, and can sometimes get on your nerves. The save system especially is awful, with some pretty few and far between checkpoints. Which was especially aggravating since for some reason I died quite a bit in very stupid situations, not all of them my fault. And I wasn't even on any high difficulty or anything. Second to easiest, and it still managed to annoy me a few times, making me replay certain parts. One particular moment was when, in usual "quick-time" action setpiece moment, I had to guess exactly what the game wanted me to do, otherwise I kept dying over and over. Quite frustrating. I even turned down the difficulty to easiest in the last 2 missions.
The other issue with the vehicle that carries this story, as is the issue in a lot of games with strong and poignant narratives, is the dissonance caused by what you're doing in the game when playing vs the story it's trying to tell. This game could've really used a more gritty and realistically portrayed campaign, and not just your usual mass murdering escapade that you have in most shooters. I mean, for god sakes, I think you end up killing hundreds if not thousands of enemy soldiers throughout, in a Rambo-style shooting gallery. Last of us part 2 had it's own dissonance, but something like that could've really improved everything. But of course, we have to be sensible, and realize that not every studio will have that kind of astronomic budget and support behind it. With what they had, the team probably did the best they could. But maybe toning everything down, and killing a lot fewer people, wouldn't have cost much.
But even with its fair share of negatives, the best parts still manage to shine through in the story. There's also quite a few little story touches in the actual gameplay, that I kind of missed myself and was made aware only after watching a pretty good analysis of the whole experience. It's also one of the rare games that focuses on an anti-war, anti-interventionist and anti-american exceptionalism story. And it could also be the only one where the protagonist kills american soldiers, and does so by the boat-load? I'm not sure I ever saw that in any game. Of course, those are deemed soldiers gone rogue, so of course there is that caveat. But still. It was a pleasant surprise that the main enemies weren't middle-easterners.
7/10 due to the strong narrative. With a Last of Us style game behind it, it could've jumped to a 8 or 9, probably.