Neverwinter Nights

"One of the best RPGs on the PC."

Neverwinter Nights is an adaptation of Dungeons and Dragons, essentially. It's made by Bioware, and if you've played Knights of the Old Republic before this, you'll spend a lot of time thinking how KOTOR is better in a lot of ways. But it doesn't interfere with the fact that Neverwinter Nights is one of the best RPGs avaliable, in spite of its age.


Graphics: 7
The graphics are average. Nothing is amazing, and there are a few flaws, like how the texture lacks definition, which makes the NPCs look like faded-out paper dolls, even on highest settings. Forests look like bleedingly painful brown-on-black splotches. Large monsters tend to look better than small ones due to the lack of small details. Rats looks like vague oval polygons, while dragons look... like dragons.

One of the most glaring problems is the camerawork. The camera will always keep you in the center, but will not automatically point in the direction that you're facing. The result is that in areas in which all directions are basically the same walls, you have no clue where you're going without checking your map and moving around in a random direction to see where you face.

Sound: 8
The voice acting is good for the most part. But you have to choose a voice very carefully because you're probably going to have to stick with it. I chose a voice solely based on the fact that in the preview he said, "Once more into the breach!" which was a line from Shakespeare. This mild amusement turned to sheer dread when it turned out that he sounded like the most completely stereotypical nerd, "Stand still so I can hit you!" While a few times wouldn't be an annoyance, my character likes to say this whenever he fights, leaving me in a state of self-kicking.

The music is fitting. When you're in a tavern, it plays the minstrel-type song, when you're in a battle, it plays a more dramatic bit with strings. When you're in a forest, it's kinda quiet, and you can hear footsteps crunching on the ground, and splashing when you cross water.

Gameplay: 9
The gameplay is based off of Dungeons and Dragons, which is fairly popular in some circles. It's quite impressive that Bioware managed to merge a turn-based game with real-time movement. There are different classes, each has its strong point, but I when it comes down to it, this game is about combat. The main quests and the final battle are all about killing powerful things, including dragons. A character who can do this is going to be easier to play than a character that can't. For instance, many of the boss-type battles are in a small room with one or no exit with just you and a powerful enemy. This situation is better handled by a Wizard who can really dish out pain or a Fighter with high attack. It wouldn't end well if you were say, a Rogue, since you have nowhere to hide, and probably won't get too many sneak attacks since henchmen die kinda quickly to bosses. (Not to mention a lot of them are immune to Sneak Attack/Critical Hit.)

You also get a henchman, and apparently the difficulty setting assumes you have one. The AI isn't that great and doesn't have a lot of settings, but it's nice to have a helper. They'll hold position if you tell them to, they'll heal you if they can, but they have a ridiculous tactic of healing themselves when they're getting bashed on by three enemies, so that all of the enemies get in attacks, and the end result is that it was pointless to even have healed in the first place. There isn't a retreat command, although they will follow you if you retreat. But it's not the same.

But what keeps gameplay from getting a perfect score is the movement. It's not always possible to get to where you want to go by clicking with the camera angles and all. Your sight is often impeded by various large objects in front of the camera, buildings, trees, etc. The game does support moving with the WASD keys, but instead of strafing, left and right correspond to turning, making moving about a disjointed nightmare. The game also supports strafing, but it's incredibly slow and is even more of a disjointed nightmare than the default setting was.

Storyline: 10
A plague has befallen the city of Neverwinter and brave adventurers arise to combat it. Darker forces are discovered behind it and so begins the hero's journey. The game is terrific about telling you an immersive story while you play it. What starts off as a simple job expands into a tale of intrigue and betrayl.

The story isn't entirely linear, which is good if you want to play the campaign over again. There are choices of who to side with, which path to take, and you can even kill whoever you want for no reason, although this may have a deleterious effect towards your alignment. But a lot of it is done in a rather obvious fashion, like there are four escaped monsters and there are four sections of the city to look through; there are three Words of Power to look for and three exits on either side of the camp. And it's always possible to find exactly one in each exit.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/22/08

Game Release: Neverwinter Nights (US, 06/16/02)