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I haven't had this much fun since Ultima 4

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 14
Date: June 26, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Simply put, I think this game is a masterpiece. However, the general consensus seems to indicate a dichotomy in opinion. You either love it, or you hate it. I truly believe that if you are a true RPG fan, then you will absolutely love this game. I was sucked into the single player campaign over the weekend, and literally played for about 15-18 straight hours over the course of two days. I also played some of the newly created user made modules, and the ability to create modules and play them with your friends is where this game is really going to shine. The ability to translate the enjoyment of true PnP(Pen and Paper) roleplaying from the table to the computer adds a massive replay value to this title. I'm a long time RPG fan, and I don't believe I've had this much fun since Ultima 4, which was in my opinion a ground breaking title for it's time and should be taken as an amazing compliment to Bioware. Bioware... Keep up the exceptional work.

Perfection

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: January 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Perfection. That's what this game is. I must admit that I was not totally crazy about the battling system, since it starts a bit slow, but that changed when I played the creating aspect of it. In this review, I will focus on the game creation aspect, so only read this if that interests you.

You start off not having a clue what to do. I'm a writer first, a student second, and a gamer third, so it wasn't easy for me. Also, I tend to jump into things, overlooking the instruction. Even so, after only an hour of starting up the toolset, I was able to pretty much understand it. It's the simplest concept ever: Select, drag, and click. Of course, placing the NPCs and making them complete actions is a bit different. The sounds are full of variety and the sound very fluid, as well do the graphics. Creating a completely 3D game is what I've always wanted, but RM2K can't match this. So, the graphics are superb, sound's great, and one other thing really stuck out: The ability to customize all weapons, monsters, and NPCs. I, personally, enjoy making the stories from my writing become interactive, in a gaming world and with this I created an actually chilling atmosphere, complete with horror and other things you'd tend to find in Silent Hill!! Can anything else do that effectively? NO!! If you're interested in basic game creation, get this. This toolset is a must have for you!!

The Closest Thing to PnP, Amature Designer's Dream

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: December 30, 2002
Author: Amazon User

While one can find many faults in the game (especially if comparing it to "Pen and Paper" DnD), Neverwinter Nights represents the closest attempt yet at reproducing the original DnD experience. It also represents a new kind of entertainment -- you do more with the game than merely playing it. There are several distinct ways in which to enjoy the game:

1) As a player
2) As a "Dungeon Master"
3) As a designer
4) As a content creator

Playing the game is quite fun, although I have to agree that the original campaign is somewhat lackluster. However, there are over 1800 user-created adventures out on the Net as of today. These run the gamut of play styles, as each individual designer caters to whatever style he/she likes the most. This means that there are modules out there for fans of role-playing, hack-n-slash, story-driven adventures, humorous adventures, horror stories, adult-themed adventures--just about anything. These "niche" adventures often don't have mainstream equivalents, and can be very entertaining.

When playing as a Dungeon Master (or "DM"), the game takes on a whole new dimension. Suddenly you find yourself trying to define "fun" for yourself and your players, all the while trying to make a world and its inhabitants come alive. Not a small task, but when done well, the feeling of accomplishment is unbeatable.

The game comes with some of the best and easy-to-use tools to design your own modules. There are numerous free resources on the Net to help you along, and the people on the BioWare forums are very helpful. For me, this is the single most rewarding part of the game. If you've ever wanted to try your hand at game design, this is a good place to start. It is even more interesting to watch a few players make their way through your creation while you DM.

It should be pointed out that many people inside and outside BioWare are hard at work creating new content for the game. NWN is the only non-MMORPG around that has an on-going professional staff assigned to continue work beyond its release. Between this "Live Team" and the game's community, several new monsters, items, portraits, utilities, and rules add-ons have been released. The game's community of 2D and 3D artists, programmers, and others are constantly expanding on what you get "out of the box".

Finally, I think to properly enjoy the game to its fullest, one should use a matching service such as Neverwinter Connections to find like-minded players. My weekly NWN game is every bit as good as my favorite PnP campaign from days long past, but only because I've found some great players from around the world to play with.

The bottom line is: if you are at all interested in RPGs or game design, buy NWN.

A Good, Fun RPG

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: May 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The Neverwinter Nights game series is one of my all time favorite, if not favorite, games. It's strength lies in it's diversity. This is not just one single player game nor is it just one multiplayer game. It can be about anything you want it to be. The game comes with one story to play through with many side quests. The game is massive, which is good and bad. Sometimes things seem to drag on, but then they pick up again. Overall it is a good story that will take up a lot of your time and keep you entertained.

Once you have completed the main campaign, unlike in most games, things are not over. You still have many choices. Since you get to create your own character and shape it how you want, you can always play through again with a character completely different than the one you just played. One negative to the story the game comes with though is that regardless of your character the story does not change much if at all, only how your character handles things. If you tire of that story you can download countless others that have been created by other creative players or Bioware. These vary in style and quality but there are many good campaigns out there to entertain you, all for free. Though Bioware does have some that you can pay to download, all player created content is free.

Think you have a good idea for a campaign? Think you can do better than Bioware or others? Then go for it! Neverwinter Nights comes with a toolset that has everything you need to create your own stories and worlds.

Tired of playing single player games by yourself? Then just connect to the internet and look through the many campaigns or persistent worlds that other players have created and are playing 24/7, all for free. Chances are you will find some place that feels right to you. Or create your own and have others enter your world and be at your mercy.

Neverwinter Nights is over 4 years old now. This should not put anyone off from buying this game. In fact it is a big plus. It means it is cheaper now than it was when it was new. There is still a good community with plenty of content to find to download. Most if not all the bugs you might have read about have been worked out by now, and work arounds have been made for things that were found limiting originally. Bioware has not left the game alone either as an update was just recently released and they have released new campaigns to download. Being older the graphics may not be top notch for today's standards, but they are still very pleasing with beautiful scenery whether you are walking through a zombie infested city or taking a nice stroll through an autumn woodland.

For what you get with Neverwinter Nights it is well worth the price. If you want to get the most out of the game though you really need to buy all the expansions. Buy Neverwinter Nights alone if you want to just take a test drive but if you want to really get the most out of the game spend the few extra dollars and get the bundled packages that include all the games and be sure to check out the Bioware forums.

Will the Community come through?? If so, a perfect 10!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 12
Date: July 02, 2002
Author: Amazon User

To start, let me say I really like the game! I have played single (Chapters 1 & 2), and Multiplayer (Chapters 1&2), but I have not worked with either the Toolset nor the DM module. I would also like to say that the anticipation I have had for this game has lasted for well over a year, was elevated by the previews and commentary of the community, and almost guaranteed some level of disappointment. Nevertheless, the majority of what I see I like, and much of what I don't, I hope can be corrected with some good community support. So... to begin,

NWN is FULL of potential and much of it realized... that has been said in many of the reviews. For me, almost all of the game's great advances come with some drawbacks. The 3D graphics are a much better approach than the previous 2D; however, the blockiness cheapens the experience... e.g., in one seen is a globe that looks like a stop sign. Yuk! Also, some of the special effects of spells are just poor. For example, the trajectories of magic missles are much less graceful, very angular, than in the BG series. Although, a major arcane battle is something to behold... much more impressive in NWN that in BG! And the sound is absolutely phenominal...

I think feats are a great idea; however, I am not impressed with the implementation of them in NWN. Instead of involving you into your character more, they are mostly automatic and mindless... they just happen. Here is a scenario that could exist with better implementation... if there were a climb feat (and there is not!), someone in the party could assend an otherwise impassible object to get into a locked location. Your mage could put protective spells on the climber in case he fell or immediately was put upon by the guards. All this could happen while your fighters secure a secluded area around your target... Implementing feats in such a way would allow greater strategic flexibility, and tatical decision making (thus increased immersiveness)... instead you have feats that pretty much take care of themselves and could not be regulary interacted with during combat. The major strategy involved is which feats to chose and the major tactic is remembering to turn them on (combat, conversation, spell casting automatically stops ongoing feats). I was a bit disappointed here.

On the plus side the combat is spectacular, fast paced and realistic. Monsters will come from closed doors if you just started a fight outside of them. They will seek cover if you blast them from a position too hard to assault, and will drop in a surprise or two.

As other reviews have indicated, I too miss the party member system for its interaction and flexibility; however, I feel the henchman system is actually more realistic. After all, how many people really control their employees no matter how much micromanagement they attempt, and so it is with the henchmen you hire and the beasts you summon. Unfortunately, the pathfinding is very, very poor. THE WORST feature of the game (IMHO!).

There are some elements of the BG series that I really liked that are missing in NWN. You cannot change you characters history after creation (at least I have not found how - which brings up documentation...), there are no statistics - favorite spell, greatest enemy killed, etc. Perhaps scripting can fix that problem?? In fact, I had hoped for greater number of statistics - how about # of bugbears killed, # chaotic evil players killed, etc., alas, no. The best time-keeper was that in the original BG (the inner clock workings). And, I REALLY miss the World map!

There was also a visible lack of general polish. Many, many typos in the dialog, poor documentation, and if any chat commands exist, they are not documented at all, anywhere. How do I quickly go to the chat box without lifting my fingers away from the keyboard... need a hot key to initiate a dialog and one to abort it, but I have not figured out how or if it can be done! Tehcnical support is heavily based on community self help, FAQ's and email. I usually play when the Infograms phone lines are closed and have had one-or-two bugs I had to fix myself w/o help. I would also like the flexibility of the windows that the game ChessMaster 6000 and above demonstrated. Which ones are open, how big they are, and save a customized setup... but I can live with what they got.

I also miss the complete accessibility of the world that was present in the original Baldur's gate. I like strategy and exploration. Even BGII lacked some of the exploratory nature and expansiveness of the original BG (although, from what I read, I am in a minority on this issue). I would like waypoints. I would like to click on the overview map to send my character a long distance. I would like the world in the palm of my hand! Whoops, slipping into charcter... sorry!

While I have spent a lot of time saying what NWN is not, I got to tell you it is FUN!! It recaptures that online gaming experience that I had with the original NWN on AOL (I left AOL when they dropped NWN). Lord Nasher is a little older, but then so aren't we all. Buy it! Play it! You'll enjoy it!

Pen and Paper is dead!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: June 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

...

Got together with some friends and played Neverwinter last night. It's everything I hoped it would be (thought I haven't played with the editor, so I can't vouch for that yet).

Game play is a compelling mix between the strategy and role playing aspects of the BG series and Icewind dale with a 3D look and action game aspects of Dungeon Siege. Because it uses third edition AD&D rules, though, what you can do with your character is far, far more advanced than what you can do in any other game of this type.

Character creation allows you to go as deep as you like. There are a whole bunch of pre-generated characters to choose, or you can use "kits" which have all of the skills at feats chosen for you. Or you can create a character completely from scratch. At every step of character creation, you have a "recommended" button that gives options based on what you've chosen before. A minor thing, but it was a delight to find so many portrait and voice options (and hair and body-type options for that matter) after the limited choices in the BG games.

All of the screens (character sheet, dialogue, map, inventory) are done as transparent overlays (which was disconcerting for a long-time BG player). You can right-click on your character or target to get an event tree of performable actions (takes some getting used to) and drag-drop program F-keys with frequent actions (I put my favorite weapons in F3 (sword) and F4 (crossbow) and healing potions in F5. You can see how you've assigned the F-keys at the bottom of the screen. Makes game play quickly convenient and customizable.

The included adventure is okay. People who were disappointed with Icewind Dale as too straightforward, walk-through-kill-things will have the same complaint here (at least as far as I got).

What excites me is the promise that we should be seeing many more modules in the future. And the game engine looks like something I'll be using for a long time. I DMed for years; it looks like it might actually be *easier* to create a NWN adventure than a pen-and-paper version. And I think it would be funner to play as well, with no loss of what made the pen-and-paper gaming compelling. Pen and paper gaming is dead.

GAME FREEZES

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 15 / 47
Date: June 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game simply does not work after installation. I have already tried uninstalling and re-installing updated versions of video and sound drivers. I have also reinstalled the game itself to no avail. If you take a look at the bioware forums you will notice that a significant number of people are having problems having the game start. This is very disappointing.

More bugs than 99% of the games out there

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 13
Date: September 07, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game has been incredibly buggy for me. I've tried every patch, and 1.23 and 1.24 (only available on the support forum right now) do not work for me -- the game just won't even play. So I've reverted to 1.22 for now. Each patch fixes some things and breaks some others. Here is a list of all the bugs I personally have had to deal with. Some of the bugs below have finally been fixed with patches, but some still exist (freezing 4 minutes after launch is what happens if I use the current patches), so be forewared before buying this game.

After initial install, the first run of NWN causes a config utility to launch. It tries to autodetect your hardware. It crashed at 11% every time.

Upon launch, the initial company logos/movies play, and then the screen fades to black and stays there.

Once in the game, FPS drops to 1 per second, or less. Character movement is nearly impossible, and certainly unplayable.

The game has a bug which causes it to sometimes corrupt a file and then it won't display ANY text. Dialogue becomes impossible, and clicking buttons is guesswork.

Going into the Advanced sound options caused my settings file to be set to the wrong sound card (even if the correct card was displayed on screen), which caused the game to freeze.

Random freezes about 15 minutes to 4 hours into the game, forcing reboots.

Consistent freezing exactly 4 minutes after launch, while still in the "create character" screens (usually around the Alignment selection, but if I went fast I could squeeze a few extra clicks into that 4 minutes).

One particularly brutal freeze somehow corrupted my disk, and when I tried to reboot, my computer complained that there was no bootable OS installed. I had to wipe the drive and reinstall Windows from scratch.

It's not that good of a game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 20
Date: June 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

And those words fit it well. This game is pure and simple another Diablo clone---how so you ask? Well first lets take the old henchmen,you can't add too his armor or weapons,and he simply tags along to help you fight. Another gripe I have with this game is it has many "non" D&D features in it. For example there are "level limits" to what items I may use and equip,not spells I can learn (which are level dependant) but enchanted items (D&D does not have this,but guess what does---Diablo and it's many clones out there!). Another thing I have a gripe about,this game runs a 3D engine,a supposely good 3D engine,but when I put on bracers,cloaks,etc. do they show up on my character icon (the little toon that runs around in the game world) no they don't---only worn armor changes such. And am I the only one that thinks that most of the suits of armor and clothes in the game make one look just plain silly? Another thing that makes this a simple Diablo clone is the Stone of Recall (can we say Town Portal),it allows one to teleport back to the core places (ala towns) of the game---though the unique gold cost is a nice change there. All and all with this being one of the most anticipated games of the year it was a "BIG" let down for me. I have the feeling this was a game that someone took,decided to write their own rules and version,and then pay to have the D&D and Wizards logo slapped on it to make it sell. Now don't get me wrong,I like Diablo,but this game does not even do a good clone of Diablo to be honest. And the idea of being able to play with others online like it was a table-top D&D game is just plain absurd---even if this was a "D&D" game which the way I see---it's not. If this is what we have to look forward from Bio-ware in the future well let me say they are going to lose alot of customers. You know I should have known when I saw the Atari logo,and then opened the box to find the CD's "not" in a jewel case,but instead cheap paper-slips that this was not going to be a good game.

Read This Before Wasting Time and Money

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: July 09, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Do not buy this game if you have a Windows 2000 system especially if you have a AMD Athalon Processor and AGP card. No matter how many Megs of RAM you have or how good your graphics card you will still have problems. People with high end systems (Windows 98 OS) that exceed the recommended system requirements have also reported problems. This game smells of beta. Wait another 2 months before a purchase and save yourself the frustration ...

If you think you are going to come home and DM your own LAN game with one CD you will quickly find out that the CD-Key authentication and BioWare's EULA extends into your own home. Each person that comes over to your house for a LAN party must have their own CD and the CD-Key must be different.

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