I recently started playing Neverwinter Nights, and I honestly feel like I should have done some more research before purchasing this game. I bought it because I enjoyed Bioware's other games to a decent level. After playing for an hour so, I feel like the game is just terrible. The controls ans UI are absolutely unintuitive, it's impossible to control my AI party members (or even make the fighter march ahead of my fragile sorcerer PC), the character creation lacks depth, and the gameplay itself is completely boring.

Am I missing something? Why is it so beloved? To me it certainly feels like Bioware's weakest game (disclaimer: I haven't played DA2), Is it just popular because of the modules, or the multiplayer, or something? Does it get any better later on? ( I am still on the prologue)

I gave up on The Witcher for similar reasons, but I kind of want to play through this so I can understand the plot of NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer, which I hear has fantastic writing (for a game).

So yeah. Is there anything I missed that makes the game good, or did people just buy it because of Bioware?

the combat is a horrible hybrid or pseudo realtime and turn based. i couldnt finish the game just because of that. the dragon age games were a bit better but you had to play it on easy mode in order to play realtime otherwise you were constantly pausing and issuing commands from the menu WHICH IS CHEATING no matter what anyone says. DAO2 demo was just a clickfest like diablo so if you like those kinds of games then it should be fine.

The story is terrible, the voice acting is hilariously cheesy but its fun enough. The game works best if you're a 'tank' and you have a stealthy archer and some sort of magic caster backing you up. Rolling a dwarf barbarian is easiest, I think. Lots of health and strength. What you can't get by guile, cunning or deceit, you can usually get by smashing heads.

Personally, I like the monk class.

lol, its like 7 years old. it was great(ish) when it came out. but after playing DA:O sure it seems like crap, but so does pac man.

but, yes, I tried replaying it not too long ago and I didnt last long.

So beloved? Most reactions I've seen to it are either love or hate, and the series does seem to have a larger hate crowd than most Bioware games. I'm not sure what to say other than that the game isn't for everyone, possibly more strongly than most games, and you were unfortunate and fell on the bad side. It does probably get better (the opening chapter is widely disliked), and combat in my opinion gets more interesting when there's a larger variety of abilities flying around, but obviously the core gameplay isn't going to change.

However, if you're just not having any fun at all, there's no reason to stick it out for Mask of the Betrayer. It has no connection at all to the first NWN, and only a passive relation to NWN2.

Dragon Age was a terrible mix of whatever it is that they tried to do and KotOR. Actually, KotOR because fail sauce after you picked up the lightsabre. What kind of nitwit brings a sword to a fire-fight?

I liked the game. It does get a little better when you get out of Neverwinter. I hated the ending though.

The best thing though is the player made modules. I've played more player made content than Bioware content for both NWN and Hordes. Here: http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/modules/HallOfFame.shtml


The nitwit who can use the sword to reflect the blaster bolts back to the nitwit who is shooting at a jedi. There were other things that irked me far more than that though. For the story they wanted to tell, it wasn't that bad, imo.

Worst RPG I ever played and one of the worst gaming experiences I ever forced myself to sit through. When people talk about how they loved NWN they usually refer to user-made content, apparently. Back when I tortured myself by playing it I had no reliable internet connection, so I wouldn't know

It's not the age of the game that deters me. In fact, I think one of the reasons I dislike it is because I keep comparing it to the IE games, and it feels a lot more restricted.

As for what everyone else said: I did hear bad things about it, too, but I figured that it was probably just "not good" instead of "bad".

Is there anything like BGTuTu for NWN? I heard you can control companions in NWN2, like in Baldur's Gate, which was my biggest problem with the game. I may decide to reroll as a melee-oriented class, though. Are the expansions to NWN closely related to the main campaign, or only tangentially? I hear that they're better (particularly HoTU). I do have the diamond edition, so maybe it would be worthwhile to do those.

As I recall, even "tangentially" is pushing it.

You can use your NWN character if you want, but Shadows of Undrentide is a completely separate game. You start off as a beginning adventurer, training at a school run by a dwarf mage.

Hordes is, again, completely separate from NWN and allows you to build an epic level character. Your character is "carried over" so to speak, from Shadows. Eventually you will run into a few familiar faces from NWN, and can have Aribeth as a henchman, as well as Deekin. [the Doom song has been around for a while]. I did enjoy Hordes more than NWN. Some epic builds: http://nwn.bioware.com/underdark/character_builds.html

NWN2 is not the same, and wasn't made by Bioware. You can control your party; unfortunately there is a "forced party" type of thing going on that I really didn't like. I really hated the ending. Masque of the Betrayer was better, imo, although there were minor story/party issues with that one for me as well.

I haven't seen a decent Bioware game since Baldur's Gate 2.

The Witcher is quite possibly the best RPG I've seen made since Planescape (I'm not saying its better though, just that its fantastic; I wish Fallout 3 (barring that it should have been an improved Fallout 2) had been essentially the Witcher set in the Fallout game world).

NWN was lard IMO. It's strength is in it's framework for players to play D&D multiplayer. You don't have to play any of it to play NWN2:Mask of the Betrayer. That said... I just bought it again I may find that it's expansions are decent, I don't know, I've not played them yet.

I felt the same way when I first played it, probably because I had already played Neverwinter Nights 2. But now that I've gotten used to the controls, I play it more than its sequel and it's one of my favorite games. Granted, I never actually played the original campaign, I much prefer the expansions, the second of which is actually the sequel to the first one.

Not being able to control the other characters like in most such games started out annoying, but I came to like how it seemed to emphasize the idea that they're supposed to be somebody else and not just a puppet. And it's greatly improved upon in Hordes of the Underdark, where you can ask your allies to cast buffing spells outside of a fight.

As for controls, I'll see what I know. I think Tab highlights all selectables and NPC's, most useful when you're looking for something. Clicking and holding the mouse wheel allows you to change the camera angle with the mouse.

Well, the real heroine of the main game reappears in Hordes. Grandly so, I might add. Other than that though, both area and plot are very far away in both expansions.

Never really could get into NWN, but apparently many of the player modules are tons better than the original campaign.

I prefer the Baldur's Gate series.

NWN is/was another major reason why I don't like 3rd person isometric view games. I was beginning to play Morrowind, and.....WOO HOO.... NWN came out and my son got into it, and I tried it and actually played it for a few hours. I never did get into games like Diablo that he was big into at the time. NWN naturally looked better than Diablo, but I personally find that whole view thing very disconcerting and I simply refuse to play games that do not have a 1st person view. I just don't like watching myself fight....I like to FIGHT! Head ON!
I like 3rd person sometimes in OB & MW, but it's only when I'm running long distances or screenies.
That is my only issue with NWN and needless to say, I didn't get very far.
Your mileage, of course, may and quite possibly....will vary.

I liked it, when I was playing it I didn't have much else and Morrowind was played out. The month or so I spent playing it was pretty enjoyable. I don't really have any of the qualms you guys seem to have with video games. Bad story, bad controls, rarely affect me. Mostly because I don't think the game had bad controls and anything about a kindergarten level picture book is story enough for me (IE it doesn't have to be Shakespeare). I enjoyed NW2 a lot less, but mostly cause my system at the time wasn't good enough for it. I could probably go back and try again but meh. I also didn't like the closed off world as much (kinda like how it is in DA), NWN felt much bigger to me.

I have the same edition (Diamond edition) and found that NWN is one of those games that's not that memorable. However, Hordes of the Underdark is better than the first game. I especially liked this "exploring music" from the soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r46yzCB82kA

Unsurprisingly, the composer is Jeremy Soule.

The original campaign is long and dull, but the expansions are much, MUCH better. Especially Hordes, the final part in the [spoiler]eight hell was pretty interesting.[/quote]

The expansions are betterer than the original campaign. Never finished any single player campaigns though.

I put alota hours into this game, but most of it was in multiplayer on a roleplaying server. Someone had a world they created and a bunch of us played on it, had characters and would roleplay.

There were 3 main areas, one area that was good (no necromancers allowed, there was law and order, clerics and paladins ran it), there was the neutral area (necromancers were allowed here, there was law and order, it was a neutral ground), then there was the bad area (total chaos, somewhat, anything goes as long as you dont mess with the guy who runs the area, and the guy who ran the area was DMd).

I played a gnome wizard who was burnt black lololo. He totally pwned. He was a necromancer who found a way to stay unbanned from the good area (he joined the imperial mages guild, so he was a necro that could not be banned), I couldnt use any necro spells while anyone was in the game so no one would know I was a necro before I joined the mages guild (of course, if there were DMs and they saw while DMing they cant hold it againt my character (no meta gaming allowed)). After my gnome wizard joined the imperial mages guild things changed, he made tons of enemies because necros had certain color robes. The clerics and paladins who ran the good area had to respect him lololo. It was sooo much fun. Good times. I know.. rambling on.. My wizard was planning a takeover of the bad area, he had a small crew and was getting ready to go to war with the evil guys, doing this behind the mages guilds back. But I never got to go through with it because the server shut down for a couple months and in that time people moved onto other things, switched servers, new games came out, etc.

It was so much fun.

This was a good server, there was a level 20 cap with no expansions so people with the basic copy would be able to play. But spells and feats from the expansions were in the server.

I was very very heavily involved in NWN modding and world development up until late last year, but even the remaining hardcoe playerbase will mostly tell you that its strength is in two areas, neither of which are its (terrible) original campaign or expansion modules.

1) Its online persistent worlds (essentially miniature MMORPGs with dungeon master input [sometimes] and a modder-defined game style, world, rules, etc). In my view, most of these are average, some are poor, and some are excellent. Player numbers are pretty low nowadays (the game's something like 9 years old), but there are still great modders, DMs and roleplayers around if multiplayer is your thing.

2) Its community-made modules (some single player, some multi). Quality varies, but there are so many of them (check http://nwvault.ign.com/) that you're bound to find several that you like, many of which will be of vastly higher quality than BioWare's campaign modules.

Not trying to sell you on it, though; it's a great platform for traditional D&D style play with a group or for solo adventures, or for designing your own adventures and content for some friends, but it's also a very old game with obvious visual/technical limitations and a now very small community. I wouldn't recommend its original campaign to anyone, but that's unfortunately what most people who pick up the game will see first and foremost.

This.

I felt the same about The Witcher and NWN. I think it is because:



I think if a game starts with isometric view, other immersion breaking things in gameplay, presentation, controls, dialog come as natural side products. I thought isometric view came from the limitation, no 3D. Now what is the reason behind making a 3D game and make it isometric. It is a prime example of mixing what are good about RPGs with non-related technical things.

I like it, but I think that any game which bases its combat off DnD should be turn-based. The Temple of Elemental Evil did it best.

You'll want to play NWN2, and NOT NWN. NWN was a pile of crap. NWN2 had a good story, but the ending has a serious WTF moment.