Unlike other illustrious groups, such as game magazines and the like, I have only recently acquired Neverwinter Nights 2, and also don't have a life that revolves around gaming, so my look at NWN 2 is somewhat later. Also, I'm going to assume that you've read the reviews and don't want me to say the same things that they did, so I'm going to be discussing a few things and giving a few tips for running it that one might find in a typical article. Also, I'm going to give a disclaimer here that this review is based on my experiences, and on my computer, so I don't hold myself as the ultimate authority (or even necessarily objective). In fact, calling this article a review may even be straying a bit too far from the traditional notion, but that's up to you to decide. 

Given that there are a great number of other reviews you can view for a basic overview, I'm going to go through the game roughly in the order that I noticed things: Getting Started, FPS, Interface, Graphics, Gameplay, Multiplayer and Conclusion.

Note: There isn't much I can say on the purely Multiplayer front until my prospective party are ready, and it may be added in another article at a later point, as at present I haven't done much with it. This may strike you as odd given the nature of NWN 2 being geared towards such activities, but currently the NWN 2 multiplayer / world community is still starting up.

Getting Started

Firstly, the box. It's a great shame that games these days come in tiny DVD boxes, rather than the nice ones that they used to. The days of the wonderful Baldur's Gate box with it's map and interesting CD folder is obviously long gone. That's obviously not a situation exclusive to NWN 2, unfortunately, but it's something that did occur to me. Next is the manual, or what passes for it in the UK version. It's titchy, and doesn't really give useful information or breakdowns, and only minimal information on the interface etc. Also contained within it, on page 11, is a paragraph describing that a “full manual” is on the DVD. Oh, the horrors of the cost of paper these days! Given that the game is half a dozen Gigabytes and the installation process consequently takes awhile, I was looking forward to having a manual to read, so that I knew what I was getting into. As I am familiar with the D&D rules and classes, this was a point of special interest to me, as I was curious what they had changed in the rules to make them a better fit in to a computer game. Low and behold, there is no “full manual” on the DVD. There are various translations of the non-full manual, but not the full one. That one is located in the NWN 2 directory once it's installed. Naturally, it's a PDF, which I dislike generally anyway, but I personally find it quite insulting that apparently I am not worth giving a real manual to.

Moving on, once the game was installed and patches implemented, it started quite slowly, with a long (compared to any other game I possess) wait between executing the program and something actually happening beyond a blank screen. After the wait, there is a quite nice video, a superior one to the introduction of NWN1, although like the former, it's not geared at anything specific other than looking cool, as the single player storyline is not the main focus of the game.

Naturally, once at the menu, the first thing I did was set all of my settings to the best I could, as my computer should be able to handle it with no problem. Then there is the truly starting point: creating a character. For the basics of appearance, you can only really choose from a small selection of faces/heads and bits of eye/hair colour, but there is still quite a lot of potential variation (aside from all the people inevitably playing Drow, that is). You cannot choose any other physical features though, so you have a stock height, weight etc. Statistics wise, there are quite a number of options, and they've incorporated most of the races from the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, all of the core classes, along with the Warlock, so there is quite a lot of choice. Sadly, deity selection doesn't seem to play any part on the domains you can choose as a Cleric, and the average joe can, for some unfathomable reason, choose Ao as their patron deity. Once you get past creation, they've implemented a number of prestige classes, although some favourites of mine such as the Arcane Devotee, Archmage and Hierophant are missing, as is the promised Mystic Theurge. Also, the (Red) Dragon Disciple lacks wings, which would be useless as there is no flying implemented, but would be pretty, and the Pale Master does not possess graphical alterations when it gains skeletal modifications.

FPS

From what I have read, this is one of the main (if not the main) bugbear of many players, and it's true for me as well. After skipping past the initial cutscene, I immediately noticed that walking around was incredibly choppy; a few FPS (frames per second). Given the graphical options being the highest they could be, this may not have struck me as a great surprise, except that I know my computer should more than be able to handle it. After fiddling about with it for awhile, it was still quite sluggish, and only really reached a passable level of speed when I turned off shadows completely and toned down the texture detail to medium. I found this quite disappointing, and so looked on the interclick to see if there was any quick fix, where lo and behold, I was not the only one with this problem. After spending a goodly long time looking about and installing things, I can now run it at a reasonable speed, yet I still have to have medium shadows (or low if I want a really good speed), no bloom, no point light sources, and no water reflection and refraction. To even achieve this, I looked at this page, which is great. Currently I'm using nHancer and DXTweaker, as it shows there, and it is a definite improvement. Nevertheless, I am still unable to use the best settings, and it is disappointing how much I had to go through to reach this level.

I currently have an FPS of all the way up to 14 when I am very lucky and doing absolutely nothing, but normally have somewhere between 8 and 10. Even with all graphics options turned to minimum, I still only go from about 10 to 16, and it looks ugly. This means that all of my commands are very sluggish, although it's still playable.

Interface

All hail the second bugbear! The interface is a large change from NWN, although this didn't affect me much as I played it little, but it has irritated many players greatly. Even ignoring the learning curve, there are some irritations. Firstly, the inventory. It is back to an Infinity Engine style of inventory rather than the NWN or Diablo style, as each item takes up one space and there are large number of spaces to choose from. There is no more “inventory tetris”, but there is a slight suspension of disbelief involved with how someone can fit all those suits of armour in their backpack. Nevertheless, weight restrictions still apply, so it's not totally unbelievable to me, but does seem to have annoyed some players. The main problem with the inventory is the icons, in that they're too small, and too generic. It's extremely difficult to tell what an item is by glancing at it, and it wasn't until I installed this inventory UI mod (specifically the Bag_Icons.zip and inventoryscreen_4x8x4.xml files) that I was actually able to tell that my pair of gauntlets were being represented by a glove with a wrist in the top left corner with the fingers pointing towards the bottom right corner. Originally, I wasn't sure whether it was a broken piece of wood or a fur.

Connected with this is the problem of the spell and scroll icons, for they too are difficult to tell apart. The spell scrolls are, by and large, utterly unrecognisable to me, and the spell icons themselves are quite small as well. They're undoubtedly very pretty, but I find myself having to double check what a spell actually is, as I am unable to figure out what icons actually represent. I have a feeling that some of this will pass in time, but I would prefer simpler icons that are more instantly recognisable to decrease the curve somewhat.

The quickslot bar at the bottom of the screen is useful, as it was in the original, with an enormous number of possible actions (120) that can be placed there, although unfortunately, one cannot quickslot dual wielding weapons (although this will be added in the next patch, apparently) or unarmed strike. The former hasn't affected me so far, but the latter is a shame, as I have to manually unequip all of my party if I want to look vaguely sensible wandering about town. Something about striding around a tavern and ordering drinks with a flaming mace just strikes me as slightly non-RPish.

There are also a number of modes for characters which are selectable on a handy little bar in the bottom right, such as defensive casting or power attack, but alas, there are no keyboard shortcuts to use them. More importantly, there isn't very good feedback when using them. If you activate defensive casting, for instance, it will not activate it if you have any actions (such as spells) queued, won't always take affect until the beginning of next round (or even then), and won't always tell you if the mode is queued or not, meaning that you can accidentally activate and then deactivate it, causing you to wait another round. Of course, that's at least one round that you're not doing anything, which is a long time given the duration of many battles. Also, the mode randomly deactivates itself sometimes, and there's a very good chance it will deactivate itself whenever you switch character.

Gone is the radial menu of NWN, replaced by the context menu, which requires holding down the right mouse button for 0.55 seconds and while this can be lowered, it only goes down to 0.1 seconds, so just right-clicking will not do the job. This option occasionally unchecks itself for no apparent reason. Going through the options in the menu to find the appropriate spell/ability can also take awhile, which can be especially annoying in any multiplayer situation or when the game is not paused.

It is virtually impossible (and I'm hesitant about the virtual) to target anything while moving, so standing still (or pausing) while targetting is essential. I'll leave it up to the reader to assess the annoyance this would provide in multiplayer.

Positively though, the quickcast panel is very good, allowing rapid access to spells (easier, I would say, than quickslotting all of your spells), as well as metamagic (if a Sorcerer or Warlock) and spontaneous conversion (if a Cleric or Druid).

For area changes, there is a return of the worldmap of the style of the IE games, although for some reason there is an over the top “world transition” graphic at all area transition points, and having giant blue glowing objects in the middle of gates and streets really cuts down on the immersion for me. While useful in some respects, it's very, very silly, and seems far more suited to, if you will pardon my bias, a console style of gaming than a true RPG.

When saving, if you save over an old file (or "slot", as it is called, erroneously), it does not inherit the old file name, meaning that you have to type it again, which is a funny thing to be an annoyance, but it quickly does become one.

Finally, I found camera more than acceptable, allowing a great deal of freedom in point of view. It does have a few minor shortcomings however, although one can be fixed. The first is that the default camera pan speed is quite slow, at least in comparison to many other games, but this can be changed. The second is one I find in a great deal of 3^rd person 3D games, in that if the camera view is such that an obstacle is in the path of viewing, the camera often zooms in greatly towards the character or obstacle, obstructing view greatly. I often found this happened when exiting buildings, with the only thing I could see being the roof of the house or the floor in front of my character. The third and final issue I have with the camera is that in single player, where there are several members of the party under your direct control, having the camera centred on the character selected is quite irritating, as the view of the battle keeps changing. Given that NWN 2 is designed for multiplayer, this is not a great surprise, but it would make BG-like modules/campaigns annoying, as true battlefield party control is hampered.

As a little aside, I also use the slim blue health bars UI mod (all the files in the slimhealth.zip to be extracted into the same place as the inventory one above), as I find it to fit in with the rest of the interface better, as the rest of the interface is blue-ish and the normal health bars look fat.

Graphics

I like the graphics. They're quite beautiful, and for those few moments when I have all of my graphics turned on full, it looks even better, and I would love the FPS issue to be fixed so I could view it like this all the time. Nevertheless, even on the mode I have it on it's still pretty. The main flaw with the graphics, is that while the spell graphics are quite beautiful, many of them are quite similar to the others. I remain unable to tell the difference between a Melf's Acid Arrow, Daze or Web projectile. Also, there is sometimes an error with the sky being replaced with a repeating pattern, although this is easily fixed by switching out of full screen mode and back again.

Also, it's interesting to note that all characters are always clothed, probably due to the GTA:SA influence. No more bare chested barbarians beating their muscles and charging in with natural fury.

Gameplay

Ultimately, NWN 2 is fun. It's very enjoyable, which is really what you want from a game. The D&D 3.5E ruleset is implemented well, and I look forward to loads of user/expansion modules that take advantage of it. As with everything though, there are some irritations, which I'll list in ascending order of power.

You are allergic to spells. When you travel between different areas, even if just leaving a warehouse, all of your buffs will probably disappear, even if they have a 24 hour duration. Prepare to recast those buffs!

You cannot tell the time. There is no in game clock, which is a great shame for true immersion and quests, etc., and because of an issue with resting (see below), you can't even advance time easily. This is also theoretically irritating if playing a Drow, as they suffer from weakness in sunlight. I say theoretically, as at present the penalty is always active when outdoors.

You are the only sensible person. The AI of your party members is truly and utterly appalling. Left to their own devices, charge into melee with bows, cast fireballs into the midst of their own party at best, and forget to use spells at worst, charge at enemies who are far away rather than those pounding on their friends, wait a round after killing someone before moving onto the next opponent, and so on. Generally it's okay as long as the opponents are weak, but harder battles will almost certainly require the use of puppet mode (in which they do nothing), although given the previously mentioned caveats on the camera and modes cancelling out, puppet mode is not as perfect as it could be. Bring on multiplayer!

You are nigh-immortal. As long as one party member survives an encounter, all dead ones are resurrected immediately. Given the extensive options available within the D&D / Forgotten Realms world, this is barmy, and again, I would cynically attribute this to the console gamers. As there are rules concerning stabilising the dying, spells for raising the dead, etc., I find this a very poor decision to have on all modes. If it was just available on the easiest of easy modes then I might forgive it, but it's not.

You have REAL ULTIMATE POWER. You may have thought that being nearly unkillable would be enough, but no! In D&D, resting allows you to recover lost hitpoints, memorise spells and recharge items which are only usable X times per day. Normally, you can only rest every so often, as your character won't always be tired, it takes 8 hours to rest, there is a risk of being ambushed while asleep, you can't sleep in the middle of the street as guards will tell you to get lost, and so on. In NWN 2 though, this is not the case. The power of Greyskull is yours! Resting takes 6 seconds, you will recover all of your hitpoints (not just some), etc. and you can do it whenever and where ever you want, without any risk of being attacked or thrown out. Spellcasters are necessarily overpowered due to this, and Warlocks especially are weakened, as their power is to use their “spells” at will. There's also no point in taking a Sorcerer either, as a Wizard can prepare new spells instantly.

The single player campaign itself is also pretty good, and far, far better than the one that came with vanilla NWN. It's slightly familiar to a certain other RPG, but then, many fantasy RPGs have a fairly similar plot line, as the playstyles, motivations and identity of each and every player/character cannot be factored in well. The basic story line tends to work better if you are a good character (as with almost all RPGs in existence, unfortunately) with a low Int score, and probably a fighter/ranger type as well. The areas themselves are generally quite simple, and nowhere near as extensive as they could be, but as it is only meant to be a showcase for the toolset rather than the whole game, this is forgiveable. Also, irritatingly, an unfriendly deity (or some form of cosmic entity or otherwise powerful spell caster) is apparently watching over you, meaning that teleporting you to the front of all battles that begin with a dialogue. If you are a spellcaster, be ready to be pounded upon despite positioning yourself at the rear before speaking to someone.

Oblivion did bring some of the nice features of KotOR II with them to NWN 2 though, such as companion influence and an alignment that actually changes with your deeds. They don't seem to have a perfect understanding of the D&D moral and ethical alignment system (especially the ethical axis), but then neither do some of D&D's own content creators, so that's excusable.

Multiplayer

The Electron toolset seems to be far more powerful than NWN's Aurora toolset, although with a steeper learning curve. While there is some complaining about it being too steep, I can remember very similar things about he Aurora toolset, and even with WarCraft III's Map Editor, so I expect to see some good content coming up. Also, it's far more customisable via plugins, as within a few days of people complaining about having now easy way to preview created items, someone created a plugin to do just that.

Given what NWN 2 was designed for, this is worth watching.

Conclusion

I strongly suspect that NWN 2 won't be really good until at least 6 months from now (as with many games, actually), when some of the major bugs have hopefully been patched out and the community truly understands the toolset / UI and so on, but it should be glorious. NWN 2 is far superior to NWN was when it was launched, although at this moment it's probably not quite as good as NWN with all of its expansions, however it also has a much higher potential. Buy this game.