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Improves the Original by Leaps and Bounds

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 18
Date: October 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

As one of the many who were somewhat disappointed with NWN 2, I approached this expansion with a little hesitation. Deciding to let this be the make-or-break game for me in regards to Obsidian Entertainment (the developers of this game), I went ahead and bought it. And boy, am I glad I did.

This expansion tremendously improves the original NWN 2. I loved the story of the campaign - it's more mature, the writing is better, the pacing is better, and the characters are all more enjoyable. I wasn't sure how they were going to incorporate the story of the first campaign into this one, but they managed it quite well. If you miss some of the dialog it may not seem to mesh, but trust me, there are explanations in-game.

The environments are absolutely great. Some of the new tilesets and placeables should add a lot to those that are making modules. The music is fantastic as well; each piece suits its location perfectly, and really helps add to the atmosphere.

The additions are both good and bad. As the other reviewer noted, the Genasi race are pretty crummy, and the half-drow are basically half-elves with darkvision instead of low-light vision. The new base classes are interesting, but the prestige classes are where the new additions really shine. Sacred Fist, Stormlord, and the Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep really add options to some base characters in regards to builds. There are some others as well, but I'm typing this review too early in the morning to remember 'em. :-p There are also new feats (epic, mostly) and a lot of new spells, some of which come in really handy during the tougher fights.

As for performance and mechanics, it's much improved. The gameplay is smoother, the graphics are better, and overall it's got all of the polish that NWN 2 should have had. The new camera takes getting used to, but once you do it actually comes in quite handy.

Before this gets too long (Amazon recommends between 75-300 words...hah), let me close up by saying that if you thought the original NWN 2 was even halfway decent but were annoyed due to its feeling rushed and the myriad bugs and issues, you really should get this. It's a fantastic RPG, and it's one of the best new RPGs I've played in years.

Atari is on the right track!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 9
Date: October 16, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I'm very excited with this title as i've waited forever for this expansion pack to come out. Great graphics, great sound, and overall great overall gameplay. I haven't put this game down since i got it the other day.

I love Atari

Entertaining

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 17
Date: November 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This was a fun expansion where you play the victim of a curse trying to find out how and why you are cursed. I (like others) found the curse to be a bit of a drag and spent most of my time suppressing, the evil hunger. I kind of wish there was a way to auto-manage that since I spent a great deal of time dealing with it. I enjoyed the NPC's, Gann (a half-hag), and Safiya (a red wizard). I didn't take Okku, (I'm not a big fan of talking animals).

The quests were decent, but I felt the storyline was a tad dark. The wall was portrayed as the ultimate injustice and the dialog eggs you to destroy it. I was disappointed with the way this ended.

Cons: I didn't like the academy and wished there was an option to destroy the library and free the souls. Likewise the dark mulsantir was cool looking at first, but I missed the color. Didn't care for the Furnace plot or the evil ghost kid.

I found part 3 to be a bit rushed. The city wasn't fleshed out, and you pretty much are railroaded through it.

The half-elf head models are still seriously fugly. But now they have drow half-elves which look like liverish old men.

On the plus side, I enjoyed the pc's relationship with Gann (I never cared for Casavir), I liked the Hag city it was cool... I liked the new models and the Genasi, particularly the air and water ones were awesome.

Overall this was a fun game with some great new content I hope modders will utilize.

NWN 2 - fun for old-time D&Ders

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: November 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I played Advanced D&D through my teen years, but stopped getting together with other players in late-night dice-rolling sessions when I "grew up". The NWN series (going back to the oringinal NWN on AOL) rekindled my interest in the game. The computer acts as the DM, which is fine with me. Anytime I want to play the game and just engage my imagination, I can hop onto my computer. The online NWN2 world is getting better all the time, as more people write better mods, but it has yet to catch up to NWN1 in the variety of mods you can download and play. On the other hand, it hasn't been around as long.
Anyway, NWN2 and its expansion, Mask of the Betrayer, are a lot of fun. You need a good video card, though!

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.

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.

I like it, except...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 23 / 26
Date: October 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I was late getting Neverwinter Nights 2, and I was very happy with it. I'm running Vista with an NVIDIA 8500 graphics card, and it's super smooth. The look and feel and play of the game is great. I have to say that I haven't played any other games since I loaded this on my computer about a month ago.

For the expansion, there are some new races, new classes, new feats, new spells, and new areas to explore. These are all top notch. I love most of the game. My only real beef with the game is that they did not really stick to the 3.5 D&D rules, but came up with a different rule set where the player is cursed with a spirit energy addiction that requires feeding on the energy of spirits and undead. It forces the player to either suppress the addiction, making your character more LG, or indulge in the addiction and eventually need to kill everything that moves to live and feed your addiction. It doesn't really support LE, CG or TN alignments very well, since there is not much middle ground due to this spirit eating addiction. If you normally like to play as LG or CE, then you will love this game. I prefer more middle ground, frankly, but I still give it 4 stars. There are plenty of mods and other things available with the gaming community. After you have finished the official campaign, if you want you can download modules created by other players. Many of them are very good.

What NWN2 should have been to start with

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 10
Date: October 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Many new things are added in this expansion. The plot for the new campaign is interesting, but seems a bit forced. The new races, which consist primarily of the various types of genesai, are absolutley terrible, as is the half drow. The epic levels are good and seem well thought out, although it only goes to level 30, rather than 40, like it was in the original NWN. The new prestige classes are average to poor, but the new primary class, the favored soul, is a good option for people wanting both melee skill and the versatility of a sorcerer.

In addition, several tweaks seem to have been made to the game engine. The game runs much more smoothly, and cut scenes no longer suffer from glitches. This greatly improves the experience.

Some differences between the original

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: October 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Let me start off by saying that I was... am a big fan of Neverwinter Nights 2. Great storyline, cliffhanger ending. I looked forward to this expansion.

The storyline here continues on where the NWN2 left off. You wake up in a strange land on the other side of the continent from where you ended NWN2. There is no trace of your allies from that game, and you have a gaping wound in your chest...

The story takes off from there.

The allies/friends you gain in this new realm are intriguing. Each has their own reason for wanting to help you as well as some pretty strong powers. It's up to you to figure out how to get them to trust you enough to help them. And when they do begin to trust you, they'll share their power with you.

OK, pros and cons of the game, the stuff everyone wants to know about:

Pros - Story. Graphics.

Cons - Camera angles. They've changed the camera controls from the original NWN2. In this game there are only two camera controls that equate to "chasing camera" and "free camera" in the original NWN2. Personally, I can't really stand either. I wish they had kept the camera styles/choices from the original game.

Another con is the "plot device" that they've added. Yes, I get it. This game is for characters 18+ levels, so things are needed to balance gameplay so that you're not a god among mortals. But this... affliction they've chosen to add to the character is annoying. I know character development/stories are best when the main character is twisting on the horns of a dilemma, but this just seems contrived, as if it was added at the 11th hour. The affliction is not unlike a drug addiction. The story unfolds as you figure out what's happened to you and why.

But, all things aside, I'm enjoying this game. The story slowly unfolds where you find out little snippets of what happened to your past allies (who survived, who didn't...) as you deal with you affliction. You help your new allies with their problems and receiving their help with yours.

Much like the first game, this one starts off slowly, allowing you to get a feel for the game before things take off.

If only they'd fix the camera controls...

Great expansion, somewhat annoying gameplay...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: October 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Firstly, I played this on a dual-core 2.13ghz pentium, 2gb ram with a Nvidia 8600 GTS on Vista 32-bit.

Okay, I loved the vanilla Neverwinter Nights 2 and the expansion is great in terms of storylines and the involvement with your new buddies is superb. Rather than have a variety of NPCs that travel with you following traditional race/class lines you will gain very distinct and original companions, I'd say more but I wouldn't want to spoil anything!

One of the bad things mentioned countless places is the Soul-Eater "feature" that rears its ugly head at the end of ACT I. I have mixed feelings, in that it makes the game more challenging but really detracts from your ability to explore freely, talk to NPCs because you are constantly watching your soul meter. Also, if you deviate from any extreme alignment like Chaotic Evil or Lawful Good, you are going to have a heck of a time.

The gameplay overall is fun and challenging, with a big increase in difficulty level for the fights you will have. Unless you are a melee fighter type its going to be pretty rough for you initially, especially if you don't import your 20ish level character from the original Neverwinter Nights 2 as you only start at level 18. Granted that's not a huge leap, but its enough to feel it at the beginning especially if you are a caster type character.

There isn't much of a frivolous atmosphere in Mask of the Betrayer, from the areas you visit, the NPCs you encounter and the story you traverse...everything has a sinister and dark nature to it. There are some good fights and action in this, but expect lots of dialogue, reading and choices in terms of Good and Evil.

Pros:
- Everything that was good about NWN2 and removed some of the bad!
- Great Music
- Good storyline
- Wide variety of class/race combinations

Cons:
- Spirit Eater Meter sucks
- Might be annoyingly challenging for non-imported characters/casters.

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