soulveil's Full Review: Neverwinter Nights (PC) for Windows
Wow what can I say, I LOVE this game. The last game I can compare to this was GemStone III (another review) which was strictly a MUD text game, a bit like controlling what happens in a book. I had stopped playing that game after 6 years because of the "management". Anyway, now let me start off by saying I have never, ever played Dungeons and Dragons pen and paper (PnP) or otherwise. I have not played EverQuest nor have I played Baldur's Gate. A friend at work began telling me about NeverWinter Nights, and showed me the rather thick instruction guide that came with it. Many of the spells and character types reminded me so much of GemStone I decided to pick the game up. I had never heard of it before this.
Anyone familiar with D&D type games will already understand most of what it going on, since this is based on the 3rd edition rules; which means absolutely nothing to me. You start off setting up your character from a list of things... well let's go over a few.
Gender: Male/Female
Race: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Half-Elf, Gnome, Half-Orc, Halfling. Each race has it's own set characteristics, such as the elves magical qualities or the gnomes hardiness.
Class: Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, and Wizard. I couldn't even begin to get into all the differences, you'll just have to borrow the instructions or go to www.neverwinternights.com. You are also able to multi-class if you wish.
Alignment: A number of classifications here, certain classes must stay a certain alignment to be that class, such as paladins must be Lawful Good. I just think of it as a way to roleplay your character. Good people don't try to kill citizens, for example.
You can choose skills based on class, skin and hair color, body shape and tattoo types and colors. Phew, I think we are ready to play! In my case I was left with a Lawful Good Human Cleric female, of Sun and Healing circles, light skinned with blonde hair and white and silver upper arm tattoos. As I write this I am currently level 19! Woo hoo!
In the single player champaign you can start in the Prelude which gets you started with the game; setting up camera angles, trying out weapons, and other basic information. This should only be necessary for anyone not already familiar with the game (me) and will only need to be done once.
Now it's time to start the first Chapter! We start off in NeverWinter in the midst of a plague called the Wailing Death that is killing off much of the population. You are one of the handful of survivors of the attack on the Academy that held several rare creatures that were to be used to cure the plague. Unfortunately after the attack the creatures scattered throughout the city and it is your job to retrieve them. Oh and did I mention the undead has overrun one part of town, and prisoners have broken out of the PRISON in another? Well I must say this is the extremely light version of Chapter One, but there are so many side quests and information to discover I simply could not write it all down without running the Epinions server out of space!
Storylines and other Such Things
I ADORE the stories and conversations in this game. This is no horribly scripted Resident Evil, there are actual plots and backstories. Should I go to a sorcerers estate and clean his clock just because another noble says so? Should I let him go or destroy him? Walk past a thief and listen to him try to convince himself to steal from you "Should I? ... they look pretty strong, I don't know...". Tomi "Grin" Undergallows, one of the henchmen you can hire to work at your side has some of the best dialog I've heard so far, though typing his lines would do little justice for the voice acting in the game. Much of the voice conversations are limited to text, but important players such as the henchmen and NPC's are voice scripted as well and BioWare has done an EXCELLENT job on the voice acting. And ok ok... whoever does "Aarin Gend" my gosh, I think I love you! :D Heh heh. And yes, Aribeth IS ANNOYING I think but most of the time the voices are good.
Also when you talk to people, there are different responses you can choose during conversations. It all depends on how you want to play your character. For example, me being lawful good and all, if someone tries to reward me for finding their baby, I'll choose the option to refuse the money and give the mother another 200 gold, winning good points and that happy fuzzy feeling. A not so nice character would refuse to give the baby back until the mother coughs up another 300 gold.
At this point in time my first time character is in Chapter 3, and I already know I will need to play this game again to pick up on things I have missed. The replay value on the single player game alone is good, but with the Dungeon Master Client, it is infinite. More on this later.
Gameplay
The controls took a little getting use to but it's not half bad. Almost all the menus are radial based, meaning I can click on my henchmen for example, and see a radial dial of options, such as "heal me" and "stand your ground". You can assign spells, potions and other object to your quickslot bar to quickly access many items during battle. So I can click my insta-death spell, click on an enemy and BOOM he's dead. Or right click the enemy, choose spells, pick a spell, aim, and BOOM he's dead. Well I wish, but you get the picture.
Music
Oh so beautiful, music done by Jeremy Soule (www.jeremysoule.com) fits the game so well and in my opinion is movie worthy. Now don't get me wrong, this isn't The Three Tenors ok?, its music to fit into the background of the areas to give it a "mood". I LIKE this, but then again I have been collection video game music since I was 15. If this games' music comes out on CD I am adding it to my collection of other game music.
Graphics
Now this is a tough one because I don't have the best video card one would wish for. Reading over the message boards it seems many people complained about the graphics but I rather enjoy them. I wear a suit of shiny scaled dragon armor, it glints and shines in the light. I walk through the grass and I can see individual blades bending in the wind. Fire giants carry flaming swords and my lightning mace shines white. I am not able to set the highest video settings possible so I can only imagine it is better with a much nicer card than I now possess ::sigh::. But all in all I enjoy the gaming environment.
Problems
Ah well what product is without its flaws? Soon as I purchased the game I had a patch to load, then another, and another. Patches themselves bother me very little, seeing that my job is to support a product with well over 50 patches per version. A few minor problems I encountered is the path finding, in other words, problems going from here to there. There are times where your character will get snagged on something en route to where you wanted them to go, and just STOP. I've read that Bioware is working on this, but it's an annoyance especially after you've been caught in a door frame for the 100th time. I also had an issue with my game module reporting a corruption problem and I had to redo most of Chapter 3, which occured right after a patch that was supposed to fix said corruption. Fortunately I save often and backup, and backup my backups, and with the aid of the DM (Dungeon Master) client it took me only a little while to get back where I was.
Dungeon Master
Well! Speaking of which, the toolset and the DM Client allows you to create your own modules, adventures, what have you. I had fiddled around a little bit with both, creating areas and rooms, enemies and characters, and as you can imagine the adventures in these are almost endless. People can create their own storylines and allow other people to play. The DM client manages this, and can create and destroy object, move quickly between modules, take control of NPC's (non player characters) and other things. I see great potential in this tool.
This game may be a tad pricey, and certainly won't run well on older machines but if you enjoy games of this type I really recommended getting it. I found it to be a lot of fun and very engrossing, and I plan on being entertained by it for many, many hours.
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