Neverwinter Nights

"An ambitious game that makes great claims but ultimatly falls a bit short of actually accomplishing them."

Ah Never Winter Nights, a much anticipated game for any D&D fan and one of the most hyped RPGs of the year... what happened?

Story 6/10

After The story lines presented in previous Bioware games Never Winter Nights is of a letdown in its genericness. A horrible plague has suddenly appeared in NeverWinter and its up to you to find a cure. Sure this is only about a quarter of the story but still, things don't expand much from there, just more genericness. Big evil bad person out to rule over us all, yes yes GET IN LINE.
On the plus side theres a lot of back story to the game which you will find out as the story progresses and by careful questioning of various characters and gleaning wisdom from various historical tomes, but in a way this acts against the main story because most of it is irrelevant to the main story and mearly provides people with more stuff to read. On some accounts the back story actually conflicts with the story at hand, creating several plot holes and very massive one. Not the hallmark of good story telling.

Graphics 7/10

The Graphics are serviceable, but not much more than that. Even by the end of the first chapter the repetitive nature of the dungeons and their looks started getting to me. Every house looks the same, every crypt looks just like the last... The game in total has 10 different tilesets and it shows. Actually only 9 of them are used in the game to the best of my knowledge so basically throughout the whole game your subjected to the same 9 environments over and over again.
Another nagging point is the fact that by the end of the first chapter, bioware seemed to get tired of all that work that would be required for buildings to be the same size and shape inside and outside. You know all that size and dimension nonsense. Small Shanties will hold decent sized manors inside, one story buildings will magically gain a 2nd story upon entry, and exit doors will be on the complete other side of where the door was when you were outside the building. Man Dr. Who would probably love to live in this world.
The low poly count of the models is easily ignored when you consider the fact that the game is geared for online play and as such cant put to much of a strain on the computer. And the character models themselves are quite nice, featuring hair and clothes that move realistically. Not likely to notice unless your zoomed in on your character but a nice touch none the less.
Theres also some nice features for those of you who have nvidia cards. Shiny water and the like. ATI and Voodoo owners? Sorry, your going to have to do without.

Sounds and Music 7/10

Nothing really special here, the voice acting does its job and the sound effects sound like they belong. Bioware did add a nice selection of player voices for the game including strangely enough a evangical voice for the male character.
Music wise nothing special either. None of the music really sturred any sense of a great battle or tragic loss or such. None of it even stuck in my head after after hitting the quit button really. On the other hand seeing as its not very memorable its not bad either, or else the music would have made an impression out of sheer annoyance.

Gameplay 3/10

This is where NWN really... dulls. At the risk of causing mass hatred towards me the game plays damn near close to diablo. That's about where it is. For the most part your going to be wondering around dungeons looking at your map, and getting rushed by mass quantities of enemies which you will *click click click* watch your character slice through and move onto the next one. Theres no ditching the enemy or blocking them off here, no no. Most doors cannot be locked behind you and the enemies will run straight towards you no matter how far you've managed to get yourself away from them. Doesn't matter if you run down the hall as fast as you can through a couple of rooms and shut the door, enemies will home in on you, politely open the door, and continue the attack. Very simplistic AI. Hack and Slashing counts for about 90% of your gameplay seeing as their are very very few quests you can do that don't involve going to X tomb or Y person and slaughtering whatever you find. Oh and magical items are thrown around the dungeons like sprinkles on a cake, taking away from any excitement you might have at finding one.
Yes between dungeons you will find plenty of people to talk to and whatnot, but they are pretty shallow as far as characterization goes and for the most part you'll find yourself just going down the dialogue tree until you either get a quest or realize the character is just there as filler. I really couldn't feel for any of the characters.
As far as the other members in your party go, they're just... there. You can't manually control them, only give them orders that they may or may not follow. They don't level up normally either. Basically they stay one level below you and if you need them to level up, you tell them to, they kneel disappear, and a new version of them appears nearby. Can't give them new equipment.. potions. and your limited to Only one other party member. Unless your a druid or a mage type. Then you can summon a familiar or an animal companion taking the total party members at one time up to whopping 3.

As far as Mutiplayer goes, the game has many flaws in its design as far as quest rewards and experience go. Basically whoever gets to the reward giver first gets the reward. So expect to be fighting your friends for the most part once it comes to the payoff.

Replay Value 2/10
This game has VERY little replay value. Its very linear and while there are plenty of side quests to do, for the most part they'll take you into the same area your going to be going to for the main quest. Very few of them actually take you off the main quests rails and onto something different. Other than playing the game once as a fighter type and then again as a mage type there isn't much reason to play the game again. This is due partially to the fact that most character classes aren't really specialized. If you want to adding skills that belong to other classes is as simple as picking those skills when you level up. Once your done, your done.

Technical Aspects

Toolkit Not scored

For a lot of people one of the main selling points of NWN was the promise of the provided toolkit and its power to take most Pen and Paper games to the PC with ease. Couldn't be further from the truth. The toolkit seems like it was designed half complex/ half idiot proof. While creating items, monsters, and characters the user will find himself locked out of many things, taking the customization of monsters way down. Similar problems with the creation of items and such. Adding new spells to the game requires you to code them in in C+, as does any customized scripts you want to use. Dungeon creation is also limited. When you create an area you select how big the grid is and what type of area you want it to be. And those options are locked in once you hit finish. You cant mix between tilesets either so if you want to.. I dunno.. stick mine parts between rooms of a tomb creating the effect that people had been here before excavating it or some such, your just out of luck unless you feel like creating a new area for the tunnels. If you want a river of lava, or just a river going through the middle of a room, well tough cookies, its not going to happen.

Engine Not Scored

Geeze 4 years and this is the best we can get? Not to be mean but from a technical standpoint other than texture size and poly count the engine sits somewhere between Wolfenstien 3d and Doom as far as technical sophistication and versatility.
Let me explain. Everything is stick to a 32 by 32 cell grid. Very cubic. No diagonal hallways or circular rooms for you, no sir. Which is odd given how most AD&D modules ARN'T grid huggers in nature. out of all the ones I own I only found two that were pure grid huggers. In a few there were no rooms that were planned out right along the grid at all. But NWN sticks you straight on the grid, no diagonal nothing. Not bridges, not rivers, not even caves and the like, very much like Wolf 3d and its 64x64 grid levels.
On the other side, the one that almost hits dooms engine... Your characters arn't simply stuck to the x and y axis, there are ramps and such that let your characters move up and down the Z axis, but at the same time you cannot say... have a bridge that goes over a lower peice of land and be able to walk over and under the bridge. Much like Doom, but not quite because Doom wasn't stuck to a grid.
Really combining the limitations of the engine and the toolset I couldn't find more than a couple modules that I own that could be faithfully recreated in NWN. Seeing as that was one of the selling points of the game, I can't help but feel severely disappointed.

Overall 6/10

Overall.. this game is a bit of a letdown and probably wont appeal to any but the hardcore D&D fans, and to a certain degree not even them due to the limitations presented in the game. Its certainly not the same quality as The BG or IWD series, nor does it play anything like them, except maybe the Console BG game, Dark Alliance.

Tough luck on this one bioware. Hopefully IWD2 wont be so bad.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/24/02, Updated 06/24/02