After creating the character you will be presented West Harbor, the town where you were born and where you grew up. Here you will be given a small tutorial and also start to discover the story of the game. I must say that in the beginning you will be wondering what is it that you must do because as all the good RPG's, the story will be unveiled to you in small doses and only when needed.

More than 50 hours of gameplay are available, so you will have to solve dozens and dozens of  main and optional side quests (each with different choices to make during and after the quest).

The party

Along with your character you can team up with three or four other NPC, depending on the act you are in. These characters have their own alignment, their own stories, their own personality and most of all, their own goals. This will make the story very interesting because these characters will be affected by your decisions and will respond to them. You can improve your relation with then or you can make it worse. In time, all these decisions will count as you will make them you allies or your enemies. Sometimes it's very interesting to hear them talking to each other, telling jokes or just making observations about what you say or do. They will argue, praise you, creating a spicy conversation.

Along the game you will encounter various NPC's ready to join you so you will be able to create a party as the situation requires but be careful what party you create because you can't change the party on the spot so it's better to create an all-around party who can handle themselves in different situations.

To help balance the varying difficulty, your party members won't die if they reach 0 hitpoints, they will just get knocked unconscious. If anyone survives the fight, all of your unconscious characters will automatically wake up with one hit point allowing you to rest and continue the game. On the other hand, if your main character dies, it's game over and you will have to reload the game.

The bugs

One of the things that need Obsidian's attention is the inventory system. Each character has 128 item slots into their inventory, split in four pages. This means a lot of weapons, armor, potions, scrolls and various items which in time will create a mess sometimes. Let's say that you want to find a particular item into your inventory or in one of your party members. Good luck on that, because it will take some time to find it. Maybe Obsidian will address this problem and implement a sorting feature to ease the inventory structure. There are bags which offers you 24 slots so you can sort your items while making the items weighting less (there's always the encumbrance problem) but they could do more.

Sometimes, your characters will be struck by stupidity. They will rush into battle even if they have 5 hitpoints and you try to keep them alive or your wizard will cast the most powerful spell when the enemy has like 10 hitpoints left. The good thing is that you can issue commands to each or all characters, easing the party management. You can even put your characters into a puppet mode, which will force them to do nothing and just follow you. While in this state, they won't engage in combat, wont' use spells and won't drink the potions that they have into their inventory. You can customize each character from the behavior panel to force them to behave as you want. You won't get a very realistic behavior but it's better than nothing.

Also, there are scripting problems. While playing the game I found some plot stoppers while translates into not being able to complete some quests. It's true that I reviewed the original version of the game with no patch installed so I strongly suggest to install them because Obsidian released patches that solve many problems.

The keep

An interesting feature added to the game is the keep that will be given to you. This feature made many players happy as it gives you full control over a stronghold. You will have to repair it, improve it, recruit and train soldiers, secure the roads and the surrounding areas, take care of peasants and merchants needs and of course collect the taxes.

You will have to complete quests for the keep, find ore to improve your soldiers weapon and armor, and at some point defend your keep.

Technical stuff

Regarding the graphics, NWN2 moved from the Aurora engine to a 3D engine. I don't know if this was a good thing because the graphics look like the ones in 2003. Maybe they didn't want to use a powerful engine or this one offered them what they needed but to be onest, the only thing that looks amazing are the spell effects. They are the coolest looking things in the game. The models used for the party members are good with your own being the worse. I must say that Obsidian could of worked a little more on the graphics because NWN2 is not just a game, it's a sequel to a very popular series and you can't just come up with the game as it is now and hope for the best.

I reckon that in the RPG genre the most important thing is the story and the gameplay which in this case are excellent but sometimes you must pay attention to the other things as well.

The music is very good with the ambient sound sometimes a little repetitive but what's present it's very good. The effects are well done as always and manage to get you in  right mood. The game has that specific D&D atmosphere which the old fans love.

Despite average graphics, NWN2 has some pretty high minimum requirements. According to the game box, you'll need at least 128MB of video RAM, 512MB of system RAM, and at least a Pentium 4. Even if you meet these requirements, the game has not been as optimized as well as it should have, and you'll encounter some stuttering, mostly when walking around a town, casting spells, or on large scale battles. Even on a high-end computer you won't be able to play it as you should which translates in frustrating moments sometimes and hurts the players who probably upgraded the computer in the hope that they will be able to play the game smoothly.

Bundled with the game, also comes a toolset which allows the fans to create their own campaigns and scenarios. This ensures the game a big longevity and replayability because the NWN community is big and additional content is being created every day. Considering that the first episode was released by BioWare in 2002 and that two expansions were released (Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide was released in June 2003, and a subsequent expansion pack, Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark was released in December 2003) I believe that NWN 2 will benefit from the same attention and longevity as its predecessor.

{pagebreak}

Gameplay: 91

More than 50 hours of excellent gameplay, neat new features added, a toolset to create your own adventures and a flavor of old RPG's equals a recipe for a great gameplay. Thumb up Obsidian.


Graphics: 83

The graphics are average which is kind of disappointing. The spell effects and other visual effects are excellent, which is good, but we are in 2006 and most gamers expect good graphics. This is probably one of the points that can lower the overall score but since I'm not into graphics when playing a RPG, I won't slash the score so bad.

Audio: 87

Average to very good sometimes, the audio section could be improved but there's nothing to impute to Obsidian.

Multiplayer: 88

Just like the first Neverwinter Nights, you can also play online. You can play through the entire campaign cooperatively with friends (starting from the beginning) or you can play player vs. player if you want to see which one is better.

Hardware: 79

There is still room for optimization, a problem that appeared on most games this year, and the game demands too much for what it offers so let this be a warning sign for the next year because we are buying games not looking for excuses to upgrade our computers.

As a closing comment, if you are looking for a lengthy, complex, and engaging single player role playing experience than Neverwinter Nights 2 is perfect for you. There's plenty of enjoyable tactical combat, interesting story, strong characters and strong replayability, but with lot of bugs that can hamper your gameplay; NWN 2 can be a worthwhile, lasting experience, even if it frustrates you sometimes.