Dhruin
SasqWatch
A trio of additional NWN2 reviews are now online. Let's head to SciFi.com where the score is 'C':
Game Vortex heads in the other direction, with a score of 95%:But wait: "I know D&D, and you, sir, are no fan of D&D." Not true. I'm just not a fan of games that daisy-chain sparsely detailed areas together and require you to run from one end to the other battling enemies pulled from the tired old passive-aggressive playbook. I don't want to go spelunking in dungeons where every corner's perfectly squared and every segment's implausibly flat as a pancake. And I really don't care for situations where, for instance, you clear out a bandit camp, trigger a script and then the bandit camp's suddenly—presto—full of bandits again. It has nothing to do with D&D, but rather the collision of tortuously detailed rules with a mediocre game engine and a dog-tired storytelling approach that—in 2006—no longer entertains the way it thinks it does.
Finally, RewiredMind curiously finds the interface makes it less of an RPG and the score is 6/10:You are joined most of the time with a cast of characters who are directly in your party. You can use them directly and control them by choosing their character. Depending on how you interact with the members of your party, it will determine how well or how hard they will work for you. You may find a teammate who does not trust or like you to be very handy in a fight. Besides your group of four companions, you may often be joined by NPCs (Non Player Characters) for special missions.
Now that you and your party are armed and on your way, you will encounter a rich and unique world. The official story is well done and the dialogue well thought out. Enjoy your adventure into new realms and choose your fate. Expect about 55 hours of play time to experience all that the game has to offer.
More information.Quite a few things that really helped the first game as an RPG have been taken away, strangely. Two things off the top of my head that bug me about it are the inventory and the lack of the radial menu. For those of you who didn’t play the first game or didn’t use the menu, you could press 0 on the keypad, and from there you had 8 submenus, all of which could be accessed using the number pad by pressing the required direction. It was very quick, efficient and easy once you learned where things live. They took this out completely, and now you have to right click, wait for the delay (which is in the options, but you can’t turn it down to be instant) and search through the menu. This takes far too long and will probably get you killed on more than one occasion. As for the inventory, it’s gone back to single icons which are nearly indistinguishable from each other. This causes great confusion if you’re in a hurry, for example, mistaking a potion to cure serious wounds with one that cures light wounds, will almost certainly kill you if you can’t rectify your mistake in time.