OK, what do you hate about NWN? (very long)

[free_fall]

I just got the game this week and am at the beginning of Chapter 1 now.

My first impressions are:

The 'Look' - I find the graphics way too cartoonish, which detracts from the 'seriousness' and, hence, the realism of the game. The IE games, with their elaborately-detailed hand-drawn art, had a deliberateness to them which significantly enchanced the seriousness of the undertaking, which greatly contributed to the sense of realism these games achieved. This sense of realism is lacking so far in NWN, I feel. Having read many of the posts in this thread concerning the shallowness of the story-line, I fear this may not improve as the game progresses.

This isn't to say that I'm not enjoying the game. It's more the feeling of "How do you top the epic grandeur of BG/SoA/ToB? Well, obviously, you don't." NWN reminds me of Dungeon Siege, except with a story thrown in for good measure.

The Interface - these right-click satellite menus are goofy enough but the multi-layers of transparency makes them even worse. The right-click context menu system in PoR2 (say what you will about the game itself) was much better than this.

Well, that's my initial gripes. I'm looking forward to an enjoyable romp, nonetheless. Coming off of 6 weeks of Morrowind, everything else is bound to pale a bit by comparison, I realize.

[Xyx]

Originally posted by fable
Actually, you *do* have many options

Pray, tell me then, what options *do* I have besides...

• whacking stuff normally
• whacking stuff in a different way (with Feats)
• shooting stuff
• toasting stuff with spells

Can't walk around too much or I'll get pounded with Attacks of Opportunity. Can't set up good formations because the henchman AI simply doesn't give a d@mn and the fighting "animation" causes my character to sidestep into doorways and in between enemies.

Basically, I have the same set of options Diablo II gave me. Didn't hear anyone complain about that being realtime.

Originally posted by Nygma
15 MB save files.

The game saves the whole module.

[Xyx]

*** possible minor Chapter 2 spoilers ***

Right. I complete this dumb druid circle / spirit of the wood quest, and the head honcho druid gets all high and mighty on me, saying he won't give me the promised reward. I'm like "No way!", he's like "Bite me!", so I rest, buff, save and start kicking his butt.

Nothing happens! He just stands there taking zero damage per hit. Doesn't even get angry and fight back. I stop attacking (it's obviously not working) and find out I can still talk to him, after which he thanks me for one of the rescues!

What is this? Diablo!? That's just lame for a supposedly "revolutionary" role-play-ing game.

Some time later, I mess up settling a dispute between the Port Last harbor master and a ship captain. The captain refuses to help poor, suffering Neverwinter and starts to walk out. I decide to run after him and "apply some pressure". I follow him out, but when I reemerge outside he's nowhere to be found. Vanished into thin air! Very funny, Bio!

[Mr Sleep]

My problems with NwN are as follows:

Needing someone to disarm traps totally limits my choices of Henchman. I wouldn't mind if there were just fewer traps.

I am currently playing through the game in multiplayer as a Barbarian, it is amusing enough but the most important thing for me is depriving my LAN colleague from getting the next plot item that will get me the most money...something i hate doing but i find it's the only incentive.

Killing hordes of enemies is very tiresome, and all for what exactly? I couldn't give a monkeys about the plot really, not one moment in this game have i felt anything for the characters [spoiler] i didn't care about Desthers betrayal, Fenthick(just put a p and an r in there somewhere ) was totally uninteresting, and Aribeth is pathetically incompetent...

My main concern at the moment is taking the game for as much cash as i can, which for a Neutral Good Half Elf Fighter/Cleric is somewhat of a contradiction.

One of the things i enjoyed about BG2 was the sheer amount of replayability, i played through that game time after time enjoying it over and over again.

I actually prefer the plot of BG and IWD over BG2 and this trend is continued through to NwN.

At the moment tinkering with the Toolset is the most fun, although i haven't got much of a handle on scripting yet. A few things bug me about the toolset like the tilesets not being interchangable and things like that...

[baudib]

I agree that the plot is not all that compelling. Of these types of games, I find the personal journeys are much, much more interesting. I found Icewind Dale somewhat of a bore it's just a dungeon crawl with no real interest. Tell me again, why do I care about this hapless town in the middle of nowhere?

The Planescape:Torment and BG series were much, much more interesting, because the game is all about YOU, your main character. P:T is a great mystery, you want to learn who you are, where you came from, why you must do what it is you're doing. In BG, you want to learn why everyone wants to kill you, you want to get your soul back and gain immortality/live a normal life. The NPC interaction in those games adds a great deal of depth that NWN and IWD lack.

[diablo1221]

NEVERWINTER NIGHTS IS A GOOD GAME. It is buggy in some parts and the merc AI certainly could use some work. but who needs mercs anyway. if you are using a pentium 2 300mhz or some crappy system like that expect serious problems. If you save as often as you should (which is like every 15min) who cares if the engine glitches and you elven char is stuck there for another 500yrs, just reload. Everyone raves about how good BG 2 was but in the expansion i could take out a dragon in a matter of minutes with my monk (which is the same thing people are talking about in this thread). All in all this game has a few problems but not enough to post a thread and have a cry about every little thing that is wrong with the game.

[koz-ivan]

i liked the game, minor things that i did not really like... (spoilers sprinkled througout)

the game is overtrapped, it seems that some of the biggest "reloaders" were traps. my monk could solo a dragon, but the damn chests would kill him. perhaps that means the monsters were not tough enough...

2nd biggest cause of reloading - a freezing bug, and respective reboot.
--
small party, i found myself creating / starting over a lot trying to find the "right" char. whereas iwd gave me enough char creation options to flesh out a whole party or the collection of mixed goods that bg1 & 2 had for pregenerated npcs.

i found it very hard to adjust strategy mid game, either you were a tank fighter or you were not. i missed the flexibility of the party in bg 1&2 where you could adjust your spell vs sword mix on the fly.
--
the only npc that seemed effective was grimjaw. granted i didn't give the others a lot of time to "prove" themselves, but my full speed ahead stlye left me porting back to the temple many times to ressurect the others. i played most of chapter 4 w/o henchmen, since they were more trouble then i felt they were worth. i had a city to save, and no time to waste...
--
all in all it was a lot of fun, i liked the story and it met my expectations, while falling short of bg1&2 it was a stronger story than iwd or the other "official" d&d games i've played, (all the old ssi games)

i would of liiked to see some of the familliar faces from chap 1 back again, one of the first things i tried to do upon my return was "what have the bastards done to my bar?" only to find that section off limits...

i also missed a neverwinter at peace, it would of been cool to see the city rebuild a bit. or even a pre plague nw that one could compare w/ the ruin it becomes.

[Mr Sleep]

Originally posted by koz-ivan
i liked the game, minor things that i did not really like... (spoilers sprinkled througout)

the game is overtrapped, it seems that some of the biggest "reloaders" were traps. my monk could solo a dragon, but the damn chests would kill him. perhaps that means the monsters were not tough enough...

If forgot to mention that i do indeed enjoy the game, i think most everyone in this thread does, nothing wrong with the examining of ideas on how they could have improved the game

[Xyx]

Originally posted by diablo1221
Everyone raves about how good BG 2 was

Is it too much to expect NWN to be an improvement? Besides the Toolset, this game offers only two things BG didn't: Thick Talk and the ability to see what's behind walls.

Simple story design flaws are inexcusable. I completed Mutamin's Dungeon, thereby earning half of Mutamin's fortune. He's supposedly a retired adventurer. I figured I'm an adventurer, I possess 60,000 gold pieces, and I'm not even retired! Whoohoo, this must be the big one! Mutamin then coughs up, what? 500 gold? Is this a joke or something? Even the loot I picked up in his dungeon exceeded that by far.

Tell me, is it really that hard to avoid such plot inconsistencies? I'd like to suspend my disbelief, but it's kinda hard if you get smacked in the face with Diabloism after Diabloism.

I still want to finish the game, but I don't play it as a roleplaying game anymore. I play it as the hack & slash game it turned out to be.

[free_fall]

I can't think of anything I really hated about the game.

It looked good, it played well, it had a sufficiently engrossing story - a very entertaining game, overall. Of cousre, it's no System Shock 2

Perhaps, a tad overpriced.

I was a little disappointed that, replacing my vid card mid-way through the game, I went with the Ti4200 over the 8500LE because of the 'shiny water' thing, only to find that, in the context of the game's graphics, the 'regular' water looked more natural.