More Nights in which it is Never Winter...

[jsbowden]

So, I picked up Neverwinter Nights 2 yesterday. I went ahead and grabbed the slightly upgraded version. The book of art is nifty, but having one DVD instead of a half dozen CDs was the real motivation there. There's no good reason to ship anything on multiple CDs anymore. DVD-ROM drives have been standard equipment for five years now. If you don't have one, spend the $28 and upgrade already.

The first thing it did after installation was run the update tool, which proceeded to download 85MB of updates. The game only takes 5.5GB of disk space, and if you're on a modem, forget updating, ever (unlike CD-ROMs, I won't pick on modem users as there are a lot of places you still can't get anything else).

The interface is not as bad as I was expecting. Except for the annoying inability to stack multiple items in the Quick Slots, key assignments and gameplay are fairly close to the original.

I did find a way to crash to desktop. Reliably. I dropped a .bic file from the Localvault directory in my NWN install (yes, I still play NWN/SoU/HoTU) to the NWN2 Localvault and attempted to import it. Wham! Instant crash. I tried it a few more times with different NWN chars, just to verify. Even merely having them in NWN2's Localvault will cause it to crash if you view the import list (but not right away, it won't crash then until it tries to load a module after you've viewed the list of chars that can potentially be imported). This is annoying. I'd like to use my NWN chars, thanks. BG2/ToB imported from BG/ToSC; NWN2 is an update from 3.0 rules to 3.5, but it should have the capability to convert chars to the newer ruleset. You can't tell me there isn't a way to upconvert existing pen and paper chars for long running campaigns. I preferred the radial menus, but right clicking (and holding until the context menu pops up where it's not an immediate response) isn't terrible. Just different. Needlessly, IMNSHO.

Performance wise, I haven't had any issues. It's running on my P4 3.0Ghz/800Mhz w/HT, 2GB RAM, and Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB graphics adapter without any stuttering or drops in framerate even in heavily populated scenes. I let it pick the graphics settings and a lot of the bells and whistles are either at very low or off settings, but that's exactly what I'd expect for a brand new game on a 3.5 year old GPU.

Camera wise, I've got the camera centered on the current active char with free motion, and it behaves exactly like NWN in that mode, so I leave it there. The only thing the original did different was make walls semi-transparent when necessary and overhead bits of architecture disappeared when you walked under them instead of blocking your view. I slew the camera around a lot.

The NPC AI is dumb, but only slightly dumber than the ones in BG, IWD, BG2, IWD2, and NWN (I'd actually say it's just dumb in different ways than some of the others), so I turn it mostly off (it's not allowed to cast spells or use items, but it is allowed to engage in melee and protect me) and handle spellcasting and using items just like I did in BG[2] and IWD[2]. You couldn't control your NPC buddy in NWN, so you just hoped they didn't do anything incredibly stupid. Usually, they would. I only grabbed an NPC henchmen in the first one at very specific points, for specific tasks. Mostly, they were just annoying ways to end up carryng their corpse to a healer to be resurrected.

I'm only at Fort Locke currently, so story wise I'm still pretty near the beginning, but it's what I expected so far. I'm doing side quests with a vengeance since I'm playing a Dark Elven Ranger w/Dual Weild focus. Lots of racial bennies, but level requirements are higher, so where my party was at 4th level back in town, I was still only at second, just to give you an idea.

So far, despite some minor annoyances and one HUGE one, I'm having fun. There's no excuse for not being able to put dual items in a single quick slot. This really fucks me up when I switch from a bow to dual longswords in melee. I have to pause, open inventory, grab the item, unpause, and manually dump the second sword into my off hand. If I could specify where a weapon equiped, I could live with having to hit two buttons to switch off, but no, it'll always dump a single sword into my primary hand. It's a major point of half the ranger class characters out there. Bastards.

Comments

[prince-corwin.livejournal.com]

The NPC AI is dumb, but only slightly dumber than the ones in BG, IWD, BG2, IWD2, and NWN (I'd actually say it's just dumb in different ways than some of the others), so I turn it mostly off (it's not allowed to cast spells or use items, but it is allowed to engage in melee and protect me) and handle spellcasting and using items just like I did in BG[2] and IWD[2].

Wait until your 15th level Sorcerer starts wasting Dismissal spells (5th level? 6th level spell?) on FUCKING GOBLINS!! To which you might say, "But I don't let the AI cast spells," and which I respond, "Wait until you've got a party with a 15th level ranger, paladin, sorcerer, wizard and cleric, in it and there's very little to do for the first three rounds but cast spells."

Only an AS could come up with something that stupid. I'd have been happier wasting a Maximized Fireball becuase at least that would, y'know, do something.

And if there's a way to make the game advance one round and then poll me for activities, I've yet to find it. I boil with wrath at this game's interface and AS.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Wait until your 15th level Sorcerer starts wasting Dismissal spells (5th level? 6th level spell?) on FUCKING GOBLINS!! To which you might say, "But I don't let the AI cast spells," and which I respond, "Wait until you've got a party with a 15th level ranger, paladin, sorcerer, wizard and cleric, in it and there's very little to do for the first three rounds but cast spells."

I'll end up playing the party just like I did in BG[2] and IWD[2] by turning all AI off and using the space bar a lot. I'm probably one of five people on the planet who liked not having a large party in NWN. It made combat more dangerous, but much easier to manage.

And if there's a way to make the game advance one round and then poll me for activities, I've yet to find it. I boil with wrath at this game's interface and AS.

Making it behave in turn based mode isn't an option that I've found. That's something it should have since you're now managing a full party instead of a single character.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

I'm probably one of five people on the planet who liked not having a large party in NWN. It made combat more dangerous, but much easier to manage.

Call me crazy, but shouldn't the AI be capable enough that you don't have to deliberately hobble yourself by using a smaller party because larger parties are impossible to manage?

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

I've never found an RPG of any stripe that was very good with AI. There are a ton of options in any combat situation, and you and I build the list of spells our casters are carrying around to complement each other. None of the AIs I've had the pleasure of dealing with were able to coordinate spell casting with multiple mages/clerics (and their subclasses). Duh, Fighter is easy. You run up to the monster and hit it.

[publius1.livejournal.com]

That's actually a problem in my eyes.. I had to stop playing my Monk, because ... really... point on object, click, whack whack whack.. boring.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

When I played BG2, sure, I had to do fancy shit to beat a nest of beholders or a red dragon, right. Total micromanagement and fancy tactics 'n' shit. But for a handful of orcs? Leave 'er on auto, and they'll do the right-enough thing. In this game, if I leave it on auto with a bunch of orcs, I end up with many dead people.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

To be fair, "wasting" spells isn't a big deal, because resting and replenishing them is a 10 second process after each battle. So there's little reason to do other than just cast your most powerful area spells over and over again.

[publius1.livejournal.com]

Having the Quick Cast bar close on me every time I move to a non-casting character is really very annoying. It should simply display no spells if my character can't cast it. I wish I could get it to stick around permanently...

And can ANYONE tell me whether Diplomacy, Bluff, Taunt, Intimidate, Spellcraft, and Appraise are checked based on the maximum level of your characters, or just the one you had selected when the dialogue began, or just your main char? It's very hard to tell.


I'm still enjoying the game immensely. No, really. But there are some design decisions that leave me saying "huh?"

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

I don't use quick cast yet, I've always dumped spells into quick slots and cast them from there, but I'm not at a point where I've got more spells than slots yet.

NWN had more quickslot spaces, as well as better behaviour (shift, ctrl, and alt all showed an additional 12 quickslot spaces each.)

[publius1.livejournal.com]

It's truly annoying when, if you're like me, you have 5-6 pre-battle buff spells to cast. And no, I don't want to shuffle through 6 quickbar slots to find my "Buff bar", thanks - that's why I like Quick Cast. If only it'd stay open!

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's actually selected based on the main character's stats, regardless who you had clicked when you started the conversation. But I can't prove it. Not without debug mode and more time than I feel like investing.

What is really annoying is the object identification system. If you move something into your inventory, you automatically apply that character's Lore skill to it, to try and identify it. Of course, inventory management sucks, so this isn't as cool as you'd think, and it only applies that character's lore skill.

But if the object is in the chest, you have to manually try to ID each and every object. Why? For the love of God, why not just apply everyone's Lore skill right there?

I'll tell you why-- because instead of advertising 60 hours of game play, they designed the interface to require 540 hours of meaningles goddam point and clicks so they could advertise 600 hours!

[prince-corwin.livejournal.com]

Grr.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

So identifying things in chest is terribly annoying (40% of the reason I'm a bard is for automatic identification thanks to massive lore), so I went to just dumping it in my inventory and then looking there. Only, of course, it's impossible to find things in your inventory, because it'll fill in some random open slot on the first page with one item, then dump the others on the third page, and good luck visually identifying the new item on the first page via the impenetrable icon.

As for the stat checks, every other game in the world makes it the main character, which is why I always charisma-load that character (the other 60% of the reason I take a bard), which probably means that NWN2 does it differently.

Assuming that anything is actually calculated correctly. With a game like this, my confidence in that is not strong.