300 replies to this topic

[Bluenose]

Yeah, I've been using the chase camera mode, it just doesn't turn in the right direction fast enough/with enough accuracy (Most of the time I have to manually turn it around, and that's so slow...)

You should be able to speed up the manual turning in Game Options > Game Settings and change one of the camera settings. I've done that for the default mode and can turn 360 degrees about as fast as I could in NWN1.

[Archmage Silver]

Yeah, I've tried it, but the game doesn't seem to register the changes... I'll have to check on that.

Edit: Switched to using the top camera view and now it's much better.

Edited by Archmage Silver, 07 November 2006 - 10:08 AM.

[Grunker]

The chase cam is utterly useless, but the top-view is decent enough.

As for NWN1, I do, and will always, blame Atari somewhat. Although most of it is secret business-stuff, some fired Atari-staff said (about two years ago?) that Atari has a tradition of "friendly reminding their developers" that action sell, while reading dialogue and hiring writers to come up with solid stories doesn't.

Of course, the failure that was NWN1 was so massive that not even Atari could have handled that alone.

BUT, they did bring us the toolkit, which is a good tradition to begin.

[spika_da_hypa]

well i'm really dissapointed....

i don't know why they bother with single player NWN, the story is weak and predictible, the people stand outside the houses like they'v been rush-spawned

you can't even enter the villige inn... it just seems like the whole game was a rush job.... does't really "addict" me or pull me into the game at all.... not what i expected after all this time they'v had plenty of time to create a good RPG

multiplayer should be better.. especially the pvp.

i still think BG series and Icewind are far superior.. infact i think i would rather play bg1 then single player nwn2 at the moment

[MorningGlory]

I suppose it is too late to get my money back... So far, a major disappointment here, too. I'll continue to play a bit more, but if it doesn't offer more than what it has so far, then I'll pack it away in the cupboard without ever finishing it.

I'm depressed.......

[Archmage Silver]

i still think BG series and Icewind are far superior.. infact i think i would rather play bg1 then single player nwn2 at the moment

I still think Baldur's Gates are THE greatest CRPGs to date.

I suppose it is too late to get my money back... So far, a major disappointment here, too. I'll continue to play a bit more, but if it doesn't offer more than what it has so far, then I'll pack it away in the cupboard without ever finishing it.

I'm depressed.......

Well, the next new titles I'm waiting for are Bioshock, Hellgate: London, Dragon Age & Fallout 3. And those are only the announced ones, not counting Knights of the Old Republic 3 and various others.

Unfortunately it seems that we still don't have any good D&D RPGs under development.

Edited by Archmage Silver, 08 November 2006 - 10:36 AM.

[theacefes]

You know, for a while I really doubted DA would even come out. Then again, I also thought that about Oblivion, and look how great that one was!


I think there's still hope for developers, problem is, I think maybe we've reached a standstill where unless the graphics are out of this world "I have to buy a 300 dollar graphics card so I can run this 60 dollar game" hack n slash, "you are a mercenary/youe town was burned but you are still a mercenary", the game won't sell and isn't worth putting on the shelves.

Surprisingly enough, there are many many people who are completely fine with this style. Us hard core BG fans will probably never be satisfied with anything that the game industry can offer us because the market demand has changed.

Honestly, let's all go back and play Wolfenstein 3D.

[DalreïDal]

OK, so people seem pretty disappointed by NWN2 from what I read here... But since I didn't mind NWN1's gameplay toooo much, and what seriously bugged me was the playability, I'd ask what's it like? Do you still get forced to control only your protagonist and send her/him first into melee before her/his cannon fodder? Are there still stupid moments when you wished you could tell your one and only melee fighter to stop bothering with the underlings and set to the task of actually fighting the big bad boss? How many companions do you get and is it enough to get a basic set of skills (i.e. fighting, thieving, magic, maybe healing) in your party? Are there cinematics or sth of the kind?

[Kellen]

I believe you are able to have a party of 4 including you. But I've yet to play it.

[Bluenose]

OK, so people seem pretty disappointed by NWN2 from what I read here... But since I didn't mind NWN1's gameplay toooo much, and what seriously bugged me was the playability, I'd ask what's it like? Do you still get forced to control only your protagonist and send her/him first into melee before her/his cannon fodder? Are there still stupid moments when you wished you could tell your one and only melee fighter to stop bothering with the underlings and set to the task of actually fighting the big bad boss? How many companions do you get and is it enough to get a basic set of skills (i.e. fighting, thieving, magic, maybe healing) in your party? Are there cinematics or sth of the kind?

Once you've found enough NPCs, you get a choice of three characters to be in your party apart from your PC, so you can certainly set up your party to cover the four basic monster-chow categories of fighter/arcane/divine/expert. Some of the time you'll have other characters attaching themselves to your group temporarily, and sometimes they insist on accompanying you.

You can control most NPCs directly in combat if you choose to, selecting their targets and picking any special abilities you want them to use. Pausing the game lets you set up a series of actions, so if you want your druid NPC to cast a Call Lightning spell on the enemies, heal the dwarf, then turn into a bear and enter melee you can set that up. You've also got a lot of quickslots, not the three bars of NWN1, and you can set these up for the NPCs too. There's a similar quick menu for spellcasting that lets you view most of your spells when you call it up. If you don't choose to do that, there's a page in the character sheet where you can modify the NPCs behaviour which is worth having a look at. Personally I've found that most of the NPCs will do quite sensible things if left alone.

One criticism I'll make of the controls is that you can't drop the broadcast commands onto your quickbar, or at least I haven't found any way to. That means that if you want to issue a general command to the NPCs to stop what they're doing and rally to you, you have to go through the drop-down menu. That's something that will hopefully be fixed in a patch. It's also quite annoying that you can't set up a two-weapon fighting style on the quickbar, but have to go into your inventory to do that .

Edit WITH SPOILERS:







As for whether it's an enjoyable game, I like it so far. It starts slowly, and the bits around your home village are dull, but it picks up as you travel towards Neverwinter and start to meet the NPCs, and once you reach Neverwinter it becomes more interesting. Several of the NPCs have quests of their own, and while you don't have to do anything there are often consequences if you don't - and for that matter if you do. Sometimes completing an NPCs side-quest gives you more options with them, such as leveling them in different classes. And completing their quests usually leads to increased influence with them. Some of the NPCs have "interesting" personalities, and they aren't reluctant to express their opinions.

Edited by Bluenose, 09 November 2006 - 02:18 AM.

[Grunker]

WHAT THE F..?!?

Are people really disappointed? I'm about half done, and although it's not BG/PS:T material, it's great game, that easily is as good as KotOR.

Maybe people expected too much?

[Archmage Silver]

That was me above.

[Grunker]

I understood that out of the Pool of Radiance comment

[DalreïDal]

Thanks for the info on playability Seeing as this seems much more pleasurable than swearing at Valen: "The priestess! Stop fussing around with the skeletons and get the priestess!!!", maybe I'll go and buy it in a few years when it's going to cost half the price Or maybe just in a few months when I'll finally have run through all corners of KotOR I & II. A party of 4 including you is a lot better than just your 1 henchman of NWN OC...




Edit: Can you believe I ALWAYS write WMW (Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney) instead of NWN??? *sigh*

Edited by DalreïDal, 10 November 2006 - 04:12 PM.

[Archmage Silver]

I understood that out of the Pool of Radiance comment

Yeah, I guess it's pretty obvious since we have only one person here who likes PoR:RoMD.

[Kellen]

I've never played it but Imagine I may enjoy it.

[khay]

Why do I have this very odd feeling most big review sites get paid off to write stellar reviews for some really crappy games?

http://www.metacriti...erwinternights2

Just check out the scores given by the sites themselves, then scroll down for user reviews. There seems to be a significant discrepancy in opinions, wouldn`t you say?

I can`t tell you mine for I haven`t played it yet, even though I had (and still have) high hopes for it. My PC won`t run it and I`m only upgrading in March, after the new Intel E4300 processor appears. Until then it will be patched properly and maybe even some nice mods will appear as well. The only other games I`m looking forward to are Fallout 3, Bioshock, Hellgate: London, Assassin's Creed, Dragon Age and Stargate Worlds.

[Bluenose]

Why do I have this very odd feeling most big review sites get paid off to write stellar reviews for some really crappy games?

http://www.metacriti...erwinternights2

Just check out the scores given by the sites themselves, then scroll down for user reviews. There seems to be a significant discrepancy in opinions, wouldn`t you say?

Some of the user reviews seem odd to me. Claims about how awful the camera is don't really match my experience. It has problems, but there are plenty of ways to adjust it and it's certainly better than the NWN1. Complaints that the OC is linear are also odd. It's not noticeably more linear than BG2-SoA, and certainly less so than ToB. Also, some people are complaining that the game keeps crashing. It hasn't for me at all. There are some bugs, but if you don't do the things which set them off then you should have no problems.

I'd also say that people complaining about the toolset are talking nonsense. While it isn't easy to start with, it's a very powerful tool and most people who are using it, including me, think it's a great improvement on NWN1. I'm fairly sure too than anyone claiming the game is written in .NET languages hasn't understood a thing. There are plugins for the toolset which can use .NET, but all the scripting is done with C, while the rest doesn't use any .NET language at all as far as I can tell.

I can`t tell you mine for I haven`t played it yet, even though I had (and still have) high hopes for it. My PC won`t run it and I`m only upgrading in March, after the new Intel E4300 processor appears. Until then it will be patched properly and maybe even some nice mods will appear as well. The only other games I`m looking forward to are Fallout 3, Bioshock, Hellgate: London, Assassin's Creed, Dragon Age and Stargate Worlds.

Although I didn't like it when I first played it on Xbox, after another try I found Jade Empire a good game, and that's coming out on PC early next year. I might not be buying much else until it does. Playing and Modding NWN2 will take up a lot of my time, and Medieval II Total War is sat by the side of my computer waiting to be installed.

[Archmage Silver]

I'm just waiting for my new upgrades before I play NWN2 more... it's too crappy on my current setup.