Neverwinter Nights

"An amazing game for any D&D fan..."

My first reaction to this game was... ''wow.'' The amazing
3-D graphics, amazing gameplay, and wonderful sound kept me staring in awe at my first glance. Then after delving into the game a bit further, I found the rules of play to be far better than that of Baldur's Gate, which also surprised me.

First off, I must say this game has more than enjoyable graphics. They are now 3-D, equipped with a bunch of fun new battle animations to watch. Arrows stick in their targets, the trained can catch arrows, and your characters go so far as visibly dodge attacks. Baldur's Gate was impressive, but their idea of dodging a sword thrust was standing rooted to their spot as they swung back. The spells look cooler than ever, and the textures of the environment around you are clearly visible.

Then comes gameplay and story line. It is simple enough to follow without being too complicated, and the story line picks up the speed early enough to get you hooked and playing for a long while. O' course, its hard to talk about the story line without revealing anything... so...

This game is very much compatible with multiplayer, so team up with a few of your friends. Or, play the single player mode by yourself, and enjoy the game at your own pace.

The D&D rules have advanced themselves in Neverwinter's gameplay, and they (in my opinion), are much better, but not too complex to become tedious. There are about 100 spells also for the dedicated spellcaster to choose from, giving even more control over how you fight your battles. My final amazement for this game was the range of powers any individual class can achieve. Races have much more distinguishing characteristics that tells them apart (also with special abilities and stats belonging more to their race; such as a dwarf with a charisma maximum less than that of an elf). Also the great thing is there really arent any bad classes. All of them have astounding things about them that makes you want to create about fifteen characters hoping to finish the game with every single one of them.

I give this game a 10 out of 10, because there is not a fault I could really see at first glance of this game. Not counting getting old, because you can't play all games forever and everything gets old; but so far I've seen nothing of the sort! So go out and burn a 50 dollar hole in your pocket, it'll be well worth it in the long run.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 07/29/02, Updated 07/29/02