Neverwinter Nights - How much is it worth?

M

Misteryo

Still Mildly Glowing
So, I've never played this one.

1) Is it worth any money? I can get it for $12.

2) There are many expansions. Are any of them worth anything. They all seem to be $10-$20.

3) The Diamond Edition comes with some expansions. Does it come with the ones that make this edition worth the price?

4) Should I just forget the whole thing and play BGII?

misteryo
 
Very funny you should mention it. I heard a wide variety of opinions about NWN. Some said it sucked. Some said it was great. Most said it was tolerable.

I bought it a few months ago and started playing it a few weeks ago. Its hard to judge.

There is good and evil. There are always dialogue options. However the options really just decide whether you roleplay a holy character or evil character...nothing else really.

There are many types of equipment and lots of different individual examples of each. However only a small amount will be useful to you since it's just you and one henchman and the henchman's inventory isn't acessable by you.

There are a huge amount of character creation options available. Pretty much everything you can find in D&D is there. All the stats, all the classes, the feats, and best of all the skills.

Combat is done in real time and if you're a fighter (the class of my current and only character) you basically click who you want to attack and if it's a tough enemy occasionally using a potion as well.

The setting and story...good setting, but the story is predictable.

Overall it's a mediocre game. Good for passing the time and getting a little fun until you find that next great game or one comes out. I will make an exception for the character creation...even though I've not had enough fun to bother replaying it I am very curious about trying the many different classes, skills, and feats. I may play it once more with an evil character.

I haven't gotten far enough to reach the other two expansions though.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
NWN1 original is a boring grind with a typical linear story.

NWN1 Shadows of Undertide is a great albeit short campain, I loved every minute of it - the battles are fun and challenging, there isn't too much running around, and level progression is quite fun.

NWN1 Hordes of Underdark is a high-level campaign. It's relatively fun, but imo not as good as SoU, and it's even more combat-oriented. Though, I do recall some nice challenges and puzzles in the tower.

Some "premium modules" are fun. I loved Kingmaker, especially since it was largely dialogue-oriented. Also, there are TONS of fun fan-made modules for any taste - from puzzles and quests to pure diablo-like h&s.

If you don't mind a combat-heavy rpg, go for it. It's well worth the 10-12 dollars you'd pay for it. It's basically a lot of fighting with some puzzles and dialogue here and there.

To correct VD's description - the two expansions add a lot more premium classes, abilities and items. Henchman's inventory is accessible starting SoU, more henchmen are available in HoU (up to 2 or 3, not sure), with an improved control scheme. I believe it also applies to the original campaign if the addons are installed.

Also, fighter has got to be the most boring class to play, unless you go for Blackguard prestige class. My two best experiences were with Blackguard and Arcane Archer/Wizard


EDIT: To answer question #3, yes, Diamond is pretty much the most complete version for single-player NWN experience. There is also, of course, the online play, but I don' know much about it. It seems pretty popular though.

If you never played BG2, go for it, but if it's just re-playing, give NWN a chance. May be not the best RPG you've ever seen, but it's decent. As long as you save yourself time and frustration and go straight to the expansions - they're a more linear, but a more fun experience.
 
Thanks for the info. I'll weigh my money in my hand and see how heavy it feels. In the meantime, I think I'll play through BGII. Never have before.

misteryo
 
BGII has an overall superior art direction. It has a pretty cool atmosphere, as well.
 
Misteryo said:
1) Is it worth any money? I can get it for $12.
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With expansions? Then yes, go for it. Otherwise, pass.

2) There are many expansions. Are any of them worth anything. They all seem to be $10-$20.
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SoU is a shitpile, but HotU is a decent dungeon crawler with some pretty substantial choices in the latter two thirds of the game. I'd probably have played it all the way through IF MY DAMN SAVE HADN'T BECOME CORRUPT DUE TO THE FACT THAT AURORA IS THE BIGGEST PIECE OF BINARY SHIT TO EVER POLLUTE THE EXISTENCE WITH ITS EXISTENCE!!!

3) The Diamond Edition comes with some expansions. Does it come with the ones that make this edition worth the price?
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I don't know, I've never played any of the premium modules, though I imagine they must suck pretty badly.

4) Should I just forget the whole thing and play BGII?
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Not necessarily. NWN's biggest redeeming factor are the free modules you can find on NWNVault. Some of these are small masterpieces in their own right, with hardcore roleplaying, non-linear storylines, mature themes, nudity, furfaggotry and other features that make a good RPG (in other words, the sort of features you can't expect to encounter in BioWare games, hur hur). There is a thread at RPGCodex which lists the finest free modules, I can look it up if you're interested.
 
Ratty said:
2) There are many expansions. Are any of them worth anything. They all seem to be $10-$20.
Click to expand...
SoU is a shitpile, but HotU is a decent dungeon crawler with some pretty substantial choices in the latter two thirds of the game.
Click to expand...

I found SoU to be the best of the bunch, for one simple reason: Variety. There are class-specific paths available in SoU that I did not (or have not) come across in HotU. Play as a Paladin and you get access to parts of some dungeons that are unavailable to anyone else. Play as a Druid and talk to all the animals for info, treasure and XP.

Ratty said:
3) The Diamond Edition comes with some expansions. Does it come with the ones that make this edition worth the price?
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I don't know, I've never played any of the premium modules (biased tripe removed).
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Most of the Premium modules appear to be uninteresting, that much is true, but I can recommend the only two I've played so far: Kingmaker and Infinite Dungeons. Kingmaker is short but very good, while Infinite Dungeons turns NWN into a Rogue-lite game with random dungeons, encounters and monsters.

Ratty said:
4) Should I just forget the whole thing and play BGII?
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. NWN's biggest redeeming factor are the free modules you can find on NWNVault. Some of these are small masterpieces in their own right, with hardcore roleplaying, non-linear storylines, mature themes, nudity, furfaggotry and other features that make a good RPG (in other words, the sort of features you can't expect to encounter in BioWare games, hur hur).
Click to expand...

While I do not recall the name of the module (which would make these words all the more relevant) I do recall at one point downloading "the most acclaimed NWN mod of its time" according to NWN Vault. The mod began in a city and I could travel east, north and south. I started by going north to explore the city, but in doing so I broke the whole module, because I was supposed to start by going directly east to trigger an important event that would advance the main quest and give much-needed exposition. But because I didn't do that straight away, that encounter never appeared, and nothing short of a restart could fix that. What little documentation was included didn't breathe a word of this to me.

This taught me that in general, NWN modules are made by amateurs that know everything about how the engine works, but next to nothing about game design. Keep this in mind when downloading NWN modules.

Another good example of "good idea, bad execution" are the two EOB-conversion modules available for NWN. They pretty much port the first Eye Of The Beholder game into the NWN engine (as both games use a grid to portray the dungeons) but completely fail to import any shrivel of the atmosphere or gameplay elements that made EOB the game that it is. As a result the mods are stale and uninteresting.

As a single player/co-op game going through the official campaign/mods, NWN will be a few hours of entertainment, nothing more. The multiplayer online aspect of the game, however, should last you for a good while.
 
Unkillable Cat said:
This taught me that in general, NWN modules are made by amateurs that know everything about how the engine works, but next to nothing about game design. Keep this in mind when downloading NWN modules.
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I've been warned that many of the best-rated modules on NWNVault aren't nearly as good as their ratings would indicate, which is why I refer people to the RPGCodex forums for recommendations. In general, though, narrative-driven modules are probably a safer bet than open-ended ones, as long as they have at least somewhat mature writing rather than stereotypical fantasy emo-faggotry.
 
I'd not get NWN at all if you only plan on playing the official stuff. I guess HotU was somewhat decent, but alltogether it was one big meh.

It's hard to wade through all the shit on the NeverwinterVault, but there are some mods that are very good and some mods that are highly flawed but have interesting ideas that are not explored in any full-on game. But yeah, there's a whole big pile of shit to dig through in order to get those. The mod called Almraiven is my favourite one. There are some others which are quite good as well, such as Honor Among Thieves.

If you don't really care for user-made content, then I'd skip on NWN.
 
Unkillable Cat said:
I found SoU to be the best of the bunch, for one simple reason: Variety. There are class-specific paths available in SoU that I did not (or have not) come across in HotU. Play as a Paladin and you get access to parts of some dungeons that are unavailable to anyone else. Play as a Druid and talk to all the animals for info, treasure and XP.
Click to expand...

HotU had some class specific stuff. I remember the part where you can make your very own golem if you are a mage.

Most of the Premium modules appear to be uninteresting, that much is true, but I can recommend the only two I've played so far: Kingmaker and Infinite Dungeons. Kingmaker is short but very good, while Infinite Dungeons turns NWN into a Rogue-lite game with random dungeons, encounters and monsters.
Click to expand...

Infinite Dungeons was designed primarily with multiplayer in mind, iirc. It really has no point in single-player whatsoever. That said, ID is not included in Diamond.



Fan-made campaigns can be very good. For example, I had a module where you had to solve the puzzle of your consciousness :D Then, there's a more or less non-linear and much more PnPish Curse of Levor (I'm not sure if it was ever translated to English though).

Then again, linear=/=bad. BG2 is largely linear as well, except for the Shadow Thieves/Vampires choice (which in the end matters little).

Ratty said:
SoU is a shitpile, but HotU is a decent dungeon crawler with some pretty substantial choices in the latter two thirds of the game. I'd probably have played it all the way through IF MY DAMN SAVE HADN'T BECOME CORRUPT DUE TO THE FACT THAT AURORA IS THE BIGGEST PIECE OF BINARY SHIT TO EVER POLLUTE THE EXISTENCE WITH ITS EXISTENCE!!!
Click to expand...

If anything, SoU had the best writing, story and art design of the three.

As for the saves... I remember having been taught the "save often, in multiple slots" the hard way. People like you should be forced to play vanilla TOEE to learn :wink:

Misteryo said:
Thanks for the info. I'll weigh my money in my hand and see how heavy it feels. In the meantime, I think I'll play through BGII. Never have before.

misteryo
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I'd say, if you like cRPGs, both BG2 and NWN1 are definitely worth playing. Both offer two pretty unique experiences.
 
NWN is worse than BG in almost every way. It's just a bad game.

The one redeeming quality is that NWN is extremely moddable, and some of the user-made content is really, really good. For $12 I'd get it and check out this link:

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=User.EntriesListing&id=25

These are the modules of Stefan Gagne, and they're great. If you start with Penultima 0, you'll see his work from the beginning as he's learning how to craft with the NWN system. The Penultima Rerolled series expands on this. When you get to the Eternum modules (ee1 and ee2) they start to be mind-blowingly good, and they finish up with the HEXCoda series, which are simply amazing. The Eternum modules and the HEXCoda modules are high on my list of best CRPG experiences ever, even though they're based on crappy NWN. They put the official game content to shame, and that's being polite.

I wouldn't waste ten minutes with the OC.
 
TBH, NWN is extremely similar to BG2. Both are pretty linear stories involving a lot of fighting and dungeon-clearing. The only difference is the team-based vs one-person style. The writing in BG might have been marginally better. NWN uses a superior D&D rule set. If you're playing as a spellcaster, the experience is very similar, at higher levels especially. The only problem is that OC had serious balancing issues and a bit too long to be fun.

I could probably find the two similar in more aspects than I'd find them different. It's an almost exactly same game construction. The use of different engines is deceiving.
 
I recently picked up NWN with SoU and HotU on budget release for a fiver, I still feel like I've been done. I can't comment on the story, the combat is so tedius that I barely managed to finish the tutorial. I just can't motivate myself to play any further, how on earth does anyone find this more interesting than turnbased combat?
 
^ Just because it's not TB doesn't mean it's bad. BG is not TB either, nor is IWD. If anything, NWN is closer to TB than Infinity Engine games.

Combat is pretty boring for fighters, and particularly on early levels. I'd also say, skip the OC - it's long and slow; it's 5 acts with lvl cap of 20, while SoU gets you to 13-15 in two acts.
 
BG's combat was also crap. But perhaps you were so busy trying to keep your mages from running up to point blank range and getting in the way of your fighters that you didn't notice. At least BG & PS:T had better art and sounds to take people's minds off the tedium.
 
IMO you should buy BGII, the expansion, and play a monk. It's so awesomingly (?) kick-ass that it's almost unfair for your enemies, you can win all battles by yourself, almost (don't do it, though, some of your companions are great... who can forget: "GO FOR THE EYES BOO, GO FOR THE EYES!!!). I think there were a couple of unoficial patches that added some stuff.

I found NVN boring, and i liked best the implementation of the second edition rules.
 
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