gorocco's Full Review: Neverwinter Nights (PC) for Windows
Bioware Corp, the group responsible for bringing the epic computer role playing game (CRPG) back to the forefront with the hit Baldur's Gate series, is back with Neverwinter Nights. With promises of a robust scenario editor and the ability to play Dungeon Master, Neverwinter Nights looks to be a role player's dream come true, a program that takes away the hassle of nitpicky rules and dice roles while letting you play god in a virtual world (a.k.a. the Dungeon Master). The big question is whether Neverwinter Nights is worth the big hype that surrounded it.
The 3rd Edition Rules
Neverwinter Nights takes the leap from the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition ruleset and uses the newly released 3rd edition rules. What does that mean? The conventions and nuances from previous D&D games such as the Gold Box series and Baldur's Gate are gone. In its place is a system that is much more flexible in terms of character development but takes a bit of getting use to.
You have a wide choice of character classes and races to choose from in developing your character. The standard D&D races of human, elf, half-elf, dwarf, gnome, and halfling are back; the half-orc races is thrown into the fray. Stardard classes such as fighters, paladins, rangers, rogues, priests, druids, and mages are back along with the new barbarian, monk, and sorcerer professions. Each class have special abilities (unlocked when you reach a specified level) to distinguish them.
To further define your character, a host of skills and proficiencies, now termed feats, such as two handed fighting and spellcraft (which allows you to identify magic that is used, most of the time against you) are available.
The biggest changes in character development involve multi-classing. Previous D&D rules let human characters dual class (abandon one profession for another with the hope of later regaining the abilities of the old class) and non-humans multiclass (begin with a mixed class such as the fighter/mage). The 3rd edition rule set ditches all that. In its place, we have a standard experience level chart for all classes and option to choose which class you want to level up in, separated as character levels and class levels. So when your level 3 fighter gains a level, you can opt to use that level and gain the abilities of a level 1 mage. Then your level 4 character will have three fighter levels and one mage level. The fifth character level (when you get it) can be used to raise the fighter level to 4, the mage level to 2, or to start up another class altogether. In effect, you have a system that looks horribly cumbersome for a paper and pen game but works well in the CRPG setting.
The Solo Experience
Neverwinter Nights is composed of two products: the single player quest and the DM editor. The single player game lets you create one character and explore Neverwinter, a city along the Sword Coast of Faerun. A deadly plague labelled the Wailing Death is spreading across the city, and her leaders have laid out a call to adventurers from all around to help. You play a young adventurer-to-be, just completing your training in Neverwinter's academy. Your graduation ceremony is interrupted as components to a potential cure for the city's plague (conveniently stored in the Academy) are stolen by a group of mages and goblins. As one of the few survivors of this raid and the academy's most hopeful graduate, you are charged with retrieving the cure and uncovering the plot to destroy Neverwinter.
Neverwinter Nights uses a full 3D gaming environment. The game's graphical user interface provides easy access to hotkeys and character/party information without being overly intrusive to the playing area. Transparent windows open up when you start conversations, examine character stats, journals, maps, and inventory. Since all of this is occuring in real time (meaning the world can interact with your character as you examine that newly found Long Sword +1), you can see what's happening with various windows up. The system works very similarly to Diablo 2's, except that Neverwinter's windows provide more of a distraction to you.
The camera can be adjusted from a top down view and chase views. The wheel on your mouse can be used to zoom in on the action. Various keyboard controls can be used to help you take that Kodak moment. For the most part, the camera works well in letting you choose how to view the action. The only thing missing is you have to go to the options screen to switch from top down and chase/driving camera modes. A hot key to change things on the fly would have been nice. An option to move the camera's center off your character would also be nice as you cannot view the area ahead well except by using the zoom function.
Moving around and playing in the world is a synch. You can use your mouse to point and click various areas and objects to instigate simple actions such as moving to a location, opening a chest, talking to another character, or bashing a thief's skull. Path finding is very poor and your character will often get stuck by objects. Luckily, you can use the keyboard to move your character as well.
More complex actions can be done using the radial menu system. With a click of the right mouse button, a circle of options for a object appear. A second click lets you choose an action.
When it comes to interacting with objects, this system works well and is fairly unobtrusive. The problem comes in that the radial menu system is also used in combat and when giving your party members actions. If you just want to attack, it is simple enough to just left click an enemy. If you want to use your monk's quivering palm, or worse yet, cast a spell, you have to navigate through the radial menu system to find that option. Luckily, Bioware saw the limitations of the radial menu system and put in three pages of hotkeys (the function keys +/- shift and control keys), so you can have your favorite options always at your disposal. You can also pause the game at any time to fiddle with the radial menus, a great boon in combat.
Neverwinter Nights is really a solo gaming experience. You create one characte (with a maximum character level of 20), but you have the option of hiring "henchmen" to create a party. You have limited control over your henchmen. You cannot view their stats or inventory. You can bark out orders such as "Stay Here," "Follow," "Heal Me," or "Attack Nearest," but that's about it. In a way, this is nice as fumbling through the radial menu for each character would be an unbearable chore. On the other hand, henchmen have an awful trendency to charge enemies. With the limitations of the camera system, you can lose track of your henchmen as they charge a group of thugs two blocks away. You have to use the radial menu system to control your henchmen, so your buddy can easily get mauled in while you hunt for them to drag them back to you. A quick menu for combat orders would have been helpful here.
The world of Neverwinter Nights is wonderfully laid out in full 3D. While the environments are not as splendidly detailed as the 2D landscapes of Baldur's Gate, they do a wonderful job of giving you the sense of being there. Area lighting is in full effect with real time shadows displayed. Characters are richly detailed and will alter their appearance based on the clothing/armor and weapons equipped. Mundane objects such as tables, bookcases, and altars are nicely detailed. The level of interaction with objects is still quite limited and you cannot tear the house down during an intense battle.
The game supports a variety of resolutions from the default 800x600 on up. I did not try the higher resolutions as the default resolution was taxing my computer. I played Neverwinter Nights on a Pentium 4 1.33 GHz Dell with 256 MB RAM and a nVidia GeForce 2 32 MB graphics card. In enclosed areas, the game moved along at a less than stellar pace with much skipping. It looked almost as bad as playing Quake on a low end modem, except this was the solo quest! The performance improved as I zoomed up close, and at maximum zoom, the frame rate was very good. Exploring large, detailed areas such as the city of Neverwinter taxed my computer greatly. I dumbed down all the graphics options and still had less than average performance at the maximum zoom. Combat wore out the system even more, but thankfully, combat in Neverwinter Nights is patterned after the tactical model of Baldur's Gate than the click fest of Diablo.
The audio is excellend in Neverwinter Nights. A brilliant, haunting score provides much ambience for the game. A host of sound effects decorate the game world from the shuffling of the masses in Neverwinter to the creaking of chests as you open them. Non player character voices are generally well done, although your own character can sound very hokey.
The solo quest will keep you occupied for a while, providing roughly 60 hours of questing time. The quest itself isn't hard, but it is hampered somewhat by the at times clunky interface. There are plenty of side quests available to keep you busy, though none really match the complexity seen in Baldur's Gate 2. One sore point in the solo quest is the lack of memorable characters such as Minsc the ranger who took one too many blows to the head and his companion Boo, the giant space hamster. Henchmen are fairly filler material to give you a host of abilities to complete the main quest. They do little to add flavor to the story.
Be a Dungeon Master
The other half of Neverwinter Nights is the robust scenario editor. Neverwinter Nights gives you all of the tools to build your own adventure from the ground up. Using a series of easy to navigate Wizard tools, you can establish the groundwork for your own epic.
On the plus side, the editor is very powerful. You can tweak just about anything in the game. You can clutter a room with various objects. You can make an artifact Darth Maul light saber for your D&D world. You can create an orc with enough power to challenge the likes of Bhaal himself (created in less than five minutes to boot!). On top of that, you can create detailed scripts as to how this superhuman orc will interact with the world. The possibilities are quite endless provided you have the patience to create it.
Getting your own adventure up and running is a different matter. The game provides little documentation to help you, and it will take some time to figure out the scenario editor. The editor itself is surrounded by menus and buttons galore. Once you open up the proper wizard, tweaking is a snap. But a lot of trial and error is required to sort out the editor and to put it all together.
For those of us without that luxury, user created scenarios are starting to crop up on the internet. Going to www.neverwinternights.com, you can find an nice arena scenario for download. More scenarios should be cropping up with time.
In addition to creating and playing your own adventures, you can assume the role of a Dungeon Master, the head cheese who tortures that hapless group of treasure seekers, adventurers, and trouble makers. This mode is also a lot of fun as you can tweak your game on the fly. You can control NPCs in the game, drop reinforcements in the middle of a heated battle, and more. The only difficulty is in getting everyone together to play a session of D&D (much like real life).
Bugs and Stuff
Neverwinter Nights was surprisingly stable. The single player game went through with a minimal amount of game crashing bugs. The editor itself is crashed a couple of times, but I don't know if it had to do with the game's stability or Windows ME. Given the flexibility of the system, I expected a ton more crashes and reboots.
Neverwinter Nights requires a Windows 98+ compatible computer with at least a Pentium II 450 MHz or AMD K6-450 MHz processor, 96 MB RAM, 1.2 GB hard drive space, and a 16 MB TNT2-class Open GL 1.2 compliant video card. You really want a machine that goes above and beyond the call of duty for this game, especially with the video card. I feel that my performace was hampered mostly by my cheap graphics card and unstable Windows ME.
Final Thoughts
The hardcore CRPG player will be in heaven here. The single player quest opens your eyes to the power of the game engine and wets your appetite to fiddle with the sceanario editor. The DM mode is the closest game to bring the true paper and pen experience to the PC without the dice and rule books. You will want to double check the minimum requirements, however, and make sure you exceed them to get maximum enjoyment. Nevertheless, Neverwinter Nights is a must have in your CRPG library.
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Platform: WINDOWS 98/ME/XP/VISTA Publisher: SOLD-OUT SOFTWARE Packaging: DVD STYLE BOX Rating: TEEN In order to save the inhabitants of the town of Ne...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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