Neverwinter Nights

"Dear Bioware: Doom. Doom. Doom. Doom. Doom. Doom. Doom. Doom. Doom."

I've played some excruciatingly painful games in my day. I've even kind of taken a schendenfreud kind of enjoyment from them. I own a copy of Shaq Fu. I've played F-22: Interceptor. I've even suffered through a Genesis RPG so bad that the name is the only thing about it not permanently burned into my memory. But I don't think any game has hurt as much as Neverwinter Nights.

NWN begs you to love it. It has a sweet logo, a promising rulebook and a rockin' opening FMV. Like so many twisted predators, it allures you with sweet, sweet awesomeness shortly before it tears your senses limb from limb in a clever trap.

Okay, let me put it this way: This game is based on the D&D 3.0 engine, with some features changed to allow easier playability by a single person. It'll take you back to that very first game of D&D... when you were 14, you had to stop incessantly to figure out the rules and your rookie DM kept screwing up. Honestly, this game somehow manages to combine all of the annoying aspects of by-the-book rigidness with an insane and gratuitous amount of detail to parts of the game that don't need any fixing.

Well, let's start our train-wreck observation unit:

***GRAPHICS - 7***
Alright, I'm going to get in trouble for this one. I'll give them this: the texturing on metal armor was really good, and most of the texturing in general was pretty good. It's an RPG after all. It shouldn't come as much surprise that the characters have horribly deformed N64 lobster claws for hands. It shouldn't even really come as a surprise that so many of the characters look the same. I mean, do we want a game or do we want 7500 individual townspeople? I'll take the game, give that choice. However, given that choice, it would be nice to get at least one of them. So why is the score only average? Because the game shoots for so very, very much more than it can do. They clip the number of character models down to tiny numbers, so that by, oh, the time you first cross town you've already met the same guy three times. In exchange, we get unbelievably awesome shadow flicker... that unfortunately gets old in about three minutes.

HELLO!? Bioware? If anything about the game is more absolutely inconsequential than the shadows, please call and let me know. It's as though God, when designing man, decided to kind of gloss over the heart and lungs and all of those unimportant things and gave him stunningly, drop-dead gorgeous and extremely functional earlobes. Who needs a good skeleton structure when miniscule reverbations in otherwise-muddied white noise are clear and articulate?

Near as I can tell, Bioware spent about 2/3 of their graphics budget on stuff no gamer in their right mind will care about, and sort of threw the rest together. The result is even worse than you're probably thinking. It leaves this bizarro-world of deformed, haggard hunchbacks and detailless men with beautifully textured shirts that leave immaculate shadows.

***SOUND - 5***
This is about as forgettable as it gets. The songs are pretty awful. Not jarringly so, but enough that Mr. Clapton and I wound up playing the game after a few hours. The most frustrating thing is the voice acting. You have to pick a voice for your character, so that he can yell ridiculous and hackneyed catchphrases in extremely sophomoric vernacular.

Go to your local library. Walk into the young teen fiction section. Pick out a novel with the word "sword," "wizard" or "dragon" in the title and flip open to the last few chapters of the book. Find out what the hero shouts to the evil villain as he plunges his sword into the heart of darkness. Odds are, you will find a better written phrase than what your 7th-level fighter will be shouting atop his lungs as he jogs slowly into combat.

Most of the voices are bearable for an hour or two, and then you're scurrying for that mute button. Honestly. Your henchmen especially become unbearable after just a short while.

And the sound effects? Uh... wow. Well, they're... no, nevermind. I hated them. A sword makes a vaugely sword-like sound, but again, you might think that maybe, in this day of computer discs and that there inter-web they might have recorded more than one sound for it, so that ten hours into the game you're not wishing to God your computer came without speakers.

***STORY - 3/10***
Think back once again to that first D&D game. I don't know about you guys, but my first DM was a pretty good storyteller... for a fourteen year old. Bioware at least isn't that bad, but... honestly, it's a shame that I'm not allowed to spoil the plot because Bioware already spoiled it.

It's written in an extremely generic, linear and above all recycled fashion, to the point that Final Fantasy X starts to look like a branching, multifaceted arc of subplots. (Note: Nothing against FFX. I love that game. But you have to admit it was damn linear.) Your character does things, just 'cos it's fun. Fable wasn't the nonlinear smorgasboard we were promised, but at least whether you were good or evil had some kind of affect on the plot. There is NO point to being good in game, so rob and kill everyone you see, always.

Or don't because there's NOTHING in it for you.

Speaking of which...

***GAMEPLAY 1/10***
It was almost, ALMOST a zero, but character creation is fun. After that, the game is a nightmarish dive into the cesspool of merciless, monotonous oblivion. I can't think of a game that rivals this monotony, short of E.T. or maybe Xenosaga I.

The combat is so very, very awful. AWFUL. They give you a single character and maybe an accomplice, and then stuff dungeons so full of vicious enemies that you'll have to either spend hours upon hours gaining a single level to maybe improve your chances 5%, or just go find something better to do. That really might be the best solution.

How tough are the enemies? My MEAT-TANK FIGHTAR UV JUSTUS!!!1 with a kajillion HP and mighty armor died 3 times to an evil spider thing. It poisoned me over and over and over, my ridiculously high Fort saves of no avail. Finally, after 3 respawns, I killed it. I mean, this thing dodged and blocked like mad, had more HP than me, and sapped a third of my HP with each stroke. I chugged at least 20 potions of Cure Critical Wounds, often spamming them every round just to live (or not.) What was my reward for killing this evil, difficult, optional boss? 120 EXP (I was level 6, so this was about 1/500th of my EXP to next level, but about 10 times what the generic monsters were giving me,) a gem that sold for 10 gold pieces and a dagger. Not a +2 Vicious Dagger of Wounding. A DAGGER. %^&*!!

The only worse part than the enemies is the treasure chests, which are all completely randomized and therefore ALWAYS USELESS. I saved just before opening a treasure chest and continuously opened it over and over because the trap on it was enough to kill my MEAT-TANK FIGHTAR UV JUSTUS!!!1 in one blow, even if I passed my save, unless the computer's random number generator rolled low. A baker's dozen or so tries later, I survive with 2 HP. Rubbing my hands together in anticipation, I open the treasure chest to find... 1 gold piece. ONE. GOLD. PIECE. There are, literally, no exaggeration, between 35 and 75 treasure chests in every dungeon. At least 45% of them are locked, trapped or both, because otherwise the rogue class is really, really worthless. All of them, locked, trapped or not, generally are not worth opening. I've played through the opening 5-6 times because I like to try new classes, and I eventually just didn't bother opening more than 1 or 2 chests each time because they do NOTHING. This game is all monotonous work and no reward.

Most importantly, even as a mage class, combat is a bleeding CHORE. If you're a fighter (which, incidentally, is the only thing I could survive as beyond the second dungeon) you just click on the enemy and watch for awhile. Hip-hip hooray. It's completely a roll of the dice, and even with your meaty BAB and AC, you're still going to get your butt kicked by random things because apparently that random bum that's attacking me has a massive sword that, no, I cannot loot from him when I kill him, that saps a quarter of my HP with each mighty blow. If you decide to break this monotony up by making a spellcaster, woe unto thee, for your HP and AC will be so bad that you'll die a thousand times. I even picked some good, meaty tank allies. Guess what? If another caster (there are, like, 6-10 in every dungeon) targets you with a spell, you DIE. Even if you manage to make your reflex save, 9d6 damage is more than your 20 HP can handle, even if you're chugging healing potions. The game is cheap and monotonous, and it got really old. WORST of all is that if you choose the cleric or the bard as your companion, who at least ought to be the most useful allies due to their class abilities, they suffer a severe case of Kingdom Hearts Artificial Intelligence Black Hole Syndrome, wherein they burn all of their most powerful spells and abilities on the first minor wounds you suffer at little or no provocation, or else stupidly rush into the line of fire and waste all of their talents healing themselves.

The equivalent of a boring desk job for minimum wage, NWN disappoints, and disappionts thoroughly.

***OVERALL - 3/10***
And I'm being generous. I really cannot describe to you how disappointed you will be if you waste your money on this atrocity against God and man. It's like playing D&D... if D&D was a synonym for "Defiled and Drenched (in battery acid)" You'll hate yourself and you'll miss your $50.00 US.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 08/02/06