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Wheres Bioware when you need them

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

the spirit energy angle ruined it for me. Would like to have spent more time in the adventure and less time looking for spirit energy.

I thought it was actually better than the original campaign

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I've played most of the major BioWare (as well as others') RPGs -- Baldur's Gate, Planescape, even the most of the original Ultima series -- and really enjoyed this game. Engaging story line, rich characterizations, good NPC AI, immersive environments.

In many ways I found this even better than NWN2 OC, because frankly, I found all the empire-building aspects of that game very tedious after a while, what with building the castle, etc.

The thematic plot of the game really played on the good versus evil aspect that's so much a part of the series (as evidenced by the stress on character alignment) and though the nature of the ultimate foe wasn't a surprise (and I won't say more to avoid spoiling) I think it was very well executed, and a lot of fun.

The side quests aren't just go-fetch, either. They add a lot to the game, and are fun in and of themselves.

Buy it and enjoy!

Not As Good As The Other Packs

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I am writing this review for my husband, as he is the player of this game.

He told me to say that he has always liked (very much ) the rest of the NeverWinter Nights series. He has about everything from the start.

He said they changed some things in this one that made it more difficult to play, also a little boring in spots. Wish I could be a little more specific, but I don't play this one myself.

He just said suffice it to say it is quite a bit different than the other packs, and he personally did not care for the changes.

Interesting story, problematic curse.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: May 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

PROS:
Number one pro would have to be the feeling of continuity. If you carry over a character from NNW 2, you keep all the titles (with pertaining plusses or minus') you earned. While, if you generate a character from scratch, you have none of these. I also like how all these little bonus' gave you a little something here, a little something there, to add up into some truly worthy gifts.

At first, I found the spiriteater meter novel and entertaining...that quickly changed, though (see CONS below).

Much improved, and much more entertaining, is the new character influence system. In NWN 2, it was easy to deduce what an NPC wanted to hear, and respond accordingly. On the other hand, in MotB, it kept me guessing. One example that comes to mind was when my female character attempted to sympathize with one of the NPC's (Gann, a half-hagspawn). Turns out that I wound up offending him and losing influence. Just out of curiosity, I went back and insulted his plight with his mother, and gained because! I had the hardest time with the half-celestial. Perhaps I just have a natural bend towards chaos and evil =P.

Next would be the wonderful and sharp dialog. Not once was I bored (the first time around!) with sections where you stop to converse for extended periods of time. Especially the dialog with Gann, who I found to be the most interesting NPC in the entire game.

Lastly, I just have to comment on the story: Who wouldn't love mincing it up with spirits, witches, and dead gods? The mood remains dark and brooding throughout, helped by the tilesets and music. When you find yourself in the hag's underwater city, tell me you weren't first a little creeped out by that exiled hags rantings (then slightly annoyed, and finally, driven just a touch mad?)? And I won't spoil it, but the whole thing with Gann and his mother? Whoo! Talked about messed up. Brings to mind visions of Dexter's childhood.

CONS:
Let me start off by saying that, at first, I found the whole "spirit meter" thing interesting and challanging...but that changed about 4 hours into the game. I spent a great deal of time, initially, just trying to stay alive, not having my own soul devoured. My suggestion is to allow the bear-god to live and travel with you. From there, head straight to The Woodman and clean up the woods. Afterwards, fuel The Woodman with some of your essense instead of eating him. Along the way, make nicey-nicey with Ozzie (can't remember the d@mn bears name). Between the two of them, by the end of act 2, you should have enough soul fortifying abilities to not have to constantly focus on just staying alive. At this point, it's safe to go back and cover skipped ground. Until this time, fly like a bullet to this goal, or you'll find yourself seriously hobbled.

Next is the selection of faces for some of the new races. I was disappointed with the face selection of NWN2, but completely disgusted with MotB. An average of 3 faces to choose from with the new races? I can't help but compare this to NWN and Elder Scrolls, both games you could seriously spend 30 minutes just trying to figure out what you wanted to look like. Some may say "so what?", but I must point out that I'm a serious story/character development kinda guy. I wan't to care about the character I'm playing, like some omnipowerful caring god =P. Part of this is choosing the look for your alter-ego.

The angles still blow, but at least the camera doesn't phase into walls and faces this time around.

Finally, I carried over my Warlock from the first game, even though I found her weak and one-dimensional. With some extra epic improvements, I can now burn the average baddy into oblivion. My eldrich blast now smacks 10 or so baddies, at once, for about 100+/- points each in the space of a few seconds. Such amazing power comes at a price, though. If an enemy combantant has any kind of spell protection versus spells 4th level or lower (it just so happens, all of your eldrich abilities don't pass 4th), you might as well throw rocks at them. Two troublesome individuals that come to mind are the Ancient Vampire, and any Paragon beasts. Who thought up these @ssbiters? You can avoid the Paragon beasts, who take almost no damage and regenerate 100 or so ridiculous points per round, but the Ancient Vampires? Well, better hope your clerics high enough to burn out their retinas with holy light, because your going to spend the next 20 minutes timming these @-holes back to death. Hope you find this review helpful!

worth the wait, not worth the hassle

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: May 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

i put this game on pre-order the moment that i heard they were coming out with it. after months of anticipation, it arrived and i immediately installed it, and played it for a few hours. when i loaded it up again, it would not work. after combing through the Atari forums, i was able to discern that the product had some bugs that could be fixed via patch. the automatic updater would not work, so i had to download all of the patches individually, un-install then re-install both the base game and the expansion, and finally was able to play the game normally.

having such problems in the beginning put me off, naturally, but the game once working properly was well worth the wait - and it made the hoop jumping only just tolerable enough. a good game nonetheless, and newer versions of the expansion being made today have the patches included. i wish they had worked through the problems before mine shipped.

Mask of Boredom

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: April 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Mask of Boredom

(Note this main contain Spoilers')

I'm not exactly sure why this game received a higher rating then NWN2-baffles me really. MOB is a terrible game with a boring storyline. The companions in this game were just as boring. They didn't interact with each other like in NWN2. Most of your companions were way too serious and acted more like stone animations then letting them come off as real people.

Furthermore later on in the game you soon find out about most of your former companions in NWN2. Most are either dead or missing. I found this to be a rather brutal way of just eliminating them. The companions in NWN2 I grew quite fond of them because of how much they interacted with each other and they really came off as if they had real feelings. With that I was really ticked off Ammon came up and said, "Oh by the way your former lover, Casivir is dead." This was rather heartless of the developers. You're only able to interact and grow your relationship with him towards the end of the game and now you found out he is dead. I really did enjoy my female character being involved with Casivir. They should have allowed him to live and allowed you to try and find him at some point. Maybe in the future they will bring him and have more adventures with more of your former companions.

The world you are in this game looks too dark and depressing and you're forced on some quest that in the end doesn't make any sense, leaving numerous questions unanswered.

Again I still say they should have allowed your character to continue on adventuring through Neverwinter instead of being in this boring land and with this boring story arch.

I do have to agree with people the spirit eating bar is rather annoying and really becomes the focus of your game then actually being able to do other things. Also the "new" Rest system they have in the game ticked me off, I preferred the rest in NWN2.

Looting is this game was crap, most of the time you end up getting essences off the enemies' you defeat, basically forcing you to craft items. Look I don't like crafting, it's too time consuming. I guess the developers were taking the lazy route and didn't want to come up with any new items for the game.

The end of the game made me somewhat happy (I got the good ending) seeing as to how I finally was able to go back to West Harbor. But once again it didn't make sense. It said at the end if you choose to take back up the role of Knight-Captain or find some other adventure is a tale for another time. Oh yeah my character just saved all of Fauren, got a sliver shard ripped from her chest, got some spirit eating curse on her and nearly died because of it and too add found out most of her companions are either dead or missing, including her former lover. Yeah, I'm sure my female character is so looking forward to finding something else to screw her over.

Bottom line watching paint dry is more fun than this Game. The developers need to look at Fable and Oblivion for references. I know they're trying something new, but honestly, it's just not working for me.

A game that ended a 4-year slump on the RPG market

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

21st century hasn't been a particularly good era for RPGs. Despite its fast start (Baldur's Gate 2 and Arcanum) a downhill trend as far as RPG quality is concerned soon became apparent. With Vampire: Bloodlines (2004) being the last quality RPG and still failing to achieve commercial success, followed by demise of Troika games, RPG market became dominated by generic RPGs, exploring generic setting, with generic protagonist and generic NPCs, generic plots and generic dialogues suitable for cerebrally challenged audience. Paragons of RPG dumbification were Morrowind and especially Oblivion, where the essence of RPG, choice and consequence, was utterly lost and dialogues were, to say it mildly, retarded (so they can match Radiant AI). Unfortunately, since both mentioned games were appealing to a wider, less demanding audience, other developers followed suit and quality on the RPG market was nowhere to be found.

Unlike its predecessor (the original NWN 2 campaign), which was a huge disappointment, Mask of the Betrayer excells in almost every RPG aspect. A very interesting plot takes place in a rarely explored setting of Rashemen, with its unique connection to the world of spirits and the main theme. NPCs and the main characters are well developed through dialogues and plot advancement, with NPCs motives and personalities exposed clearly and in an intriguing manner. I haven't encountered such well written dialogue, interesting plot and compelling characters since Planescape: Torment (1999). Main theme represents a refreshing addition to the game mechanics as well. There are plenty of choices, both those regarding the main theme and those not directly connected to it, and naturally, most of those choices entail distinct consequences for the game world and the player.

So, this game has managed to capture the essence of RPG gaming on PC and hopefully it will help reverse the trend of simplification of RPGs. I consider it among the top 10 games I've ever played.

At least as good as Fallout, Deus Ex, and HotU...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: February 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Just as Hordes of the Underdark was much better than the original campaign of Neverwinter Nights, so is Mask of the Betrayer everything the original campaign of Neverwinter Nights 2 should have been, but wasn't. In NWN 2, whatever you chose to do in almost whichever situation, the result was always the same. In the trial episode, for example, you always ended up fighting in the arena, the outcome of the trial had no consequences. In Mask of the Betrayer, real choices with consequences abound. The story itself is much more imaginative. The milieu has some magic in it (though it's not as enchanting as much of Hordes of the Underdark). The combat is more difficult than in NWN 2, though still perhaps too easy. The curse that some reviewers have complained about can make things very interesting for you. I tried to beat the game as fast as I could, so I never learned to control my spirit hunger, and by the time I got to visit what was left of the former God of Death, I had to devour him to satisfy my spirit hunger (the meter was close to zero, and I was about to perish). Succumbing to hunger in such a grand way turned me into a ravening spirit eater for the rest of the game. This path had its good sides, such as continuous True Seeing, but it also made resting more difficult (resting for 8 hours would take away half of my spirit energy, when it previously had taken much less). In the end, the Betrayer's mask remained broken, most of its pieces hidden, and I chose to turn on gods themselves. Well, it's an immersive game. They should make more of these, not the garbage that the original campaign was. The curse was a great idea, and very well implemented.

Great Engine Bad Story

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: February 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Neverwinter Nights 2 MotB Has a great engine battles are fun. Bad guys use decent tactics they attack your healers and swarm to your offensive casters.

The Plot however leaves much to be desired. With out giving away to much your end choices much like the end of the first game leave you ruined. (Unless you decide to go evil in which case you become a world killer)

Sorry just not my cup of tea.

high degree of difficulty and frustration outweigh depth, fun

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: January 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The "spirit-eater" aspect to this game makes it ridiculously, rigidly difficult to do anything, get anywhere, without backing yourself into a dire situation you can't escape from, much less function in. Fortunately, online I found a cheat code to turn it off, and then the game became enjoyable. Either I'm a total RPG wimp, or else this game is for a more hardcore type of player.

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