NWN: A Newbies Review
Phaenar
I just recently got my copy of the game and have been playing for the
past day or so. My decision to plonk major $$ onto this game was
based in large part by the volume and content in
alt.games.neverwinter-nights, which I can read but not post to. Also,
to a lesser degree I read the zine reviews which rated NWN very high.
Much too high in my personal opinion.
Since I am unable to access alt.games.neverwinter-nights I thought I
would post my comments here.
Phaenar's NWN Review:
I have divided the game into some large categories and rank each one
on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 = poor, 2 = below average, 3 =
average, 4 = good, 5 = excellent.
Part 1. Installation/Configuration, Phaenar's Rank = 5.
Again, excellent. The install was smooth and easy, and the game
automatically configures itself to near-optimal settings for my
system. I did have to tweak my video settings because I run Windows
XP; however, the README file specifically warned me about the problems
I had and with that I was able to solve them. Also, unlike BG you can
reconfigure the game in play without having to restart, which is very
nice. I was able to experiment quite easily and efficiently with
several different graphic settings until I got the one that worked
best.
Another thing is the game update program is built right into the game
so there's no need to go looking for patches and install them
seperately. Just click "update" from the main menu and away it goes.
No hassles and it worked excellent, bringing me right up to date.
Also, the install had extensive notes about what was going on and what
effect different versions would have on multi-player games.
The hardest thing about the install was waiting for it to finish so I
could start playing.
Part 2. Multi-media (Sound & Graphics), Phaenar's Rank = 5.
Graphically NWN's 3d smooth scrolling graphics engine astounds. I had
some initial trouble tweaking the settings to work well -- I had a lot
of glitches graphically -- but after perusing the README file I tried
upgrading my ATI Radeon drivers and boosted my screen resolution to
1024xk768 with the max refresh rate of 200Hz. Now there is only one
minor glitch where you move the mouse cursor and you get a "trailing"
black square sometimes following the cursor around. Very minor. This
is by far the most beautiful game I've seen and I am still in chapter
1 slogging around in town.
Musically I must say the soundtrack/musical score doesn't really stand
out. Even so it is a nice ambience and I didn't want to turn it off
after many hours so perhaps that is a good thing.
The voice overs of NPC's and henchmen are excellent but IMHO not as
good as BG2. I am not faulting the multi-media and voice acting here,
the issue is gameplay which I will discuss elsewhere so I give voice
overs an excellent rating. Just they're not BG2. One comment I would
say for sound effects is that there could have been perhaps a few more
and varied sound effects for monsters, just as with PC's when they
battle they have several lines for a given situation.
But overall, they aced the multi-media aspects of the game.
Part 3. Game Manual, Phaenar's Rank = 5.
I was not disappointed by the game manual. The mini-box contained the
complete manual, quick reference card and a cloth map -- which I
haven't seen a cloth map since Ultima VII. The manual is
comprehensive, well organized and easy to read -- nice
fonts/production work. Excellent job.
Part 4. Single Player Story, Phaenar's Rank = 4.
The story reminds me a lot of Icewind Dale, i.e. it's much more action
oriented than Baldurs Gate and there is very little in the way of
character development since you don't have long term NPC's in your
group that "grow" as it were, through character development scripts
and storylines. That said, the story seems long and complex -- I am
only in chapter 1 (of 4 I think) and a lot has been going on. The
story isn't BG2 but it is a good story so I give it a 4 out of 5.
Part 5. Gameplay, Phaenar's Rank = 1
Gameplay is, in my quite angry opinion, is the achilles heel of NWN
and could seriously be it's undoing in the long run (i.e. players will
lose interest over time) unless some [of what I and many a.g.nwn
posters consider] serious deficiencies are corrected in future
patches.
(A) PATHFINDING absolutely blows chunks. Absolutely attrocious
Bioware!!! I must have got stuck dozens of times with my character
unable to walk around a simple crate, and having to manually click
waypoints at 90 degree angles to maneuver around obstacles. Or
getting hung up on a doorway, town square fountain, or any one of a
hundred other obstacles. My henchman fared even worse -- he picked
what seemed like hundreds of locks about 25% of the time he and I
could not maneuver out of each others way so he could access the
chest/door/crate/whatever to do his job. I had to manually move,
sometimes twice or thrice (!!!) to get him to a spot where he could
move to open the lock/remove trap/wahtever.
When pathfinding works it seems fine but WAY to often you get stuck
and have to peform a sadistic ritual clickfest to get unstuck. Wake
up developers!!!
(B) SCRIPTING for combat. (A.K.A. LACK THEREOF!!!) You developers
out there: hello??! This NWN is a real time game where you fight a
lot of combat, and that often involves melee or missile attacks on
fast moving enemies, many of which are tiny and quick! And your
DEFAULT action for the player character is to DO NOTHING?!! Yall have
GOT to be KIDDING ME! And even worse you have NO scripting
whatsoever, not even the simplest ability to tell your character to
switch from missiles to melee weapons when you get attacked in melee.
The number of times I died and reloaded because I could not adequately
control my character in battle and my character was doing insanely
STUPID things (like STANDING THERE with his bow doing nothing, taking
damage) well ... it was simply sad.
In a real time game even if you only intend for there to be one player
controlling one character YOU MUST HAVE SCRIPTS because the action
moves to fast to control given the kind of graphic interface design
you have. God forbid if I'd played a mage and try to target my meagre
arsenal of spells at enemies -- I'd be DOOMED.
The same goes for NPC's. How stupid can you developers be to have a
henchman stand there with his bow, toe to toe with an enemy warrior,
and continue to shoot his bow and take all those penalties, rather
than draw his sword? And the ONLY option you give me is to only use
the bow or only use the sword exclusively? All the time? YOU HAVE
GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!
FIX IT.
Add flexible scripting through some sort of dialog that allows me to
set preferences, at least similar to how BG2 handled it, and give all
characters half a brain in combat when it comes to their weapon choice
and their morale when being hacked to pieces by a 7 foot tall half orc
wielding a 9 foot long halberd. To have the character remain standing
there like Al Gore in a presidential debate with 1 hit point and armed
with a bow is simply unnacceptable. Also it's beneath you.
(C) INVENTORY management is the clickfest from hell. What were you
thinking? You cannot drop items in inventory over top of existing
items and have them change place? Your idea of a paperdoll inventory
is a bunch of icons I can barely see? And you followed Blizzard North
with the whole space management thing. What? Are you planning an
expansion pack with twice the stash size or something like that? The
fact that you realized you needed 5 pages of inventory for a character
should have told you something.
It's horrible and I hope you plan to improve it. You guys are capable
of far better. What is wrong with 1 slot for one item? And what is
wrong with being able to see my entire inventory on one screen?
Answer me that. And don't give me any "realism" b.s.; my character
was lugging around 4 pagefuls of junk including 4 suits of chain mail
armor, on my last trip back to the store to sell it all.
(D) MISCELLANEOUS issues. There are a few misc gameplay issues, so
far the worst I've seen is that my thief detected a trap in an
adjacent room not directly attached to our location so he started
jogging the country mile to open it. I could not stop him and he ran
smack into a bunch of monsters. Well I could go on and on but you
have simply got to rethink how you've handled henchmen. Regardless of
the multi-player aspect, henchmen are an important aspect of D&D and
their treatment deserves better. It's a joke and it makes you
developers look pretty sad when this is the best you can come up with
-- virtually no control over henchment (in battles it is IMPOSSIBLE)
and you have a single default AI script title "stupidity to the max".
It's hard for me to imagine how the NWN gameplay could be worse. It
is simply annoying to the point of frustration and I've only played
for a day! And you expect people will play for the long term? I
think you're wrong and if you want long term customers you'd better
seriously rethink these issues.
Summary:
Install/Config 5
Multi-media 5
Docos 5
Story 4
Gameplay 1
Tilt 1
Now, to be fair, I have to rank gameplay much higher than the other
issues because it's what I bought the game for. Everything else is
secondary. So I given a reviewers tilt of 1 because the gameplay is
totally unnacceptable for what we've come to expect. That gives the
game 21/30, or 70%, in my opinion, which is good but not great in my
opinion and it is far lower than any other review I've read.
The possible upside to this is that the game engine is solid but as
anyone who played Ultima VIII knows that game had a solid engine too.
And it sucked. Most of the gameplay issues are things that can be
probably be resolved through patches. I bet you could even add a
dialog box that allows combat scripting for PC's and their henchmen so
that most of combat does not end up being a dumb clickfest with stupid
deaths and frustrating reloads.
Phaenar.
Devast8or
Phaenar <phe...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3d303834...@66.185.95.104...
> Greetings,
>
(snip)
>
> Part 2. Multi-media (Sound & Graphics), Phaenar's Rank = 5.
>
> Graphically NWN's 3d smooth scrolling graphics engine astounds. I had
> some initial trouble tweaking the settings to work well -- I had a lot
> of glitches graphically -- but after perusing the README file I tried
> upgrading my ATI Radeon drivers and boosted my screen resolution to
> 1024xk768 with the max refresh rate of 200Hz. Now there is only one
> minor glitch where you move the mouse cursor and you get a "trailing"
> black square sometimes following the cursor around. Very minor. This
> is by far the most beautiful game I've seen and I am still in chapter
> 1 slogging around in town.
Yes, the graphics are unbelievable. I hear the shiny water should be
especially good, but, alas, I only have a GF2 and thus cannot see it.
Have you turned on the option that makes shadows according to the
lightources around you? (can't remember the exact name). It's amazing :)
(snip)
>
> Part 3. Game Manual, Phaenar's Rank = 5.
>
> I was not disappointed by the game manual. The mini-box contained the
> complete manual, quick reference card and a cloth map -- which I
> haven't seen a cloth map since Ultima VII. The manual is
> comprehensive, well organized and easy to read -- nice
> fonts/production work. Excellent job.
You got a cloth map? Blasphemy, mine is only paper.
Heh, you only played a day or so you say? I take it you have your PC,
henchman, and maybe a summoned animal/familiar, right? Three isn't so bad,
four is. They all want to stand right next to me, so my creatures (a
summoned dire badger and an aniamal companion dire wolf) _always_ block the
henchman's way to the chest. I'm giving up on chests soon and will just
start bashing them open with my bow.
> (B) SCRIPTING for combat. (A.K.A. LACK THEREOF!!!) You developers
> out there: hello??! This NWN is a real time game where you fight a
> lot of combat, and that often involves melee or missile attacks on
> fast moving enemies, many of which are tiny and quick! And your
> DEFAULT action for the player character is to DO NOTHING?!! Yall have
> GOT to be KIDDING ME! And even worse you have NO scripting
> whatsoever, not even the simplest ability to tell your character to
> switch from missiles to melee weapons when you get attacked in melee.
> The number of times I died and reloaded because I could not adequately
> control my character in battle and my character was doing insanely
> STUPID things (like STANDING THERE with his bow doing nothing, taking
> damage) well ... it was simply sad.
Um, were you expecting him to autoattack? What would you do then, except for
watching the battle? You're the one supposed to control your PC (hence the
name PC).
> In a real time game even if you only intend for there to be one player
> controlling one character YOU MUST HAVE SCRIPTS because the action
> moves to fast to control given the kind of graphic interface design
> you have. God forbid if I'd played a mage and try to target my meagre
> arsenal of spells at enemies -- I'd be DOOMED.
As in BG, the space bar is your friend ;)
> The same goes for NPC's. How stupid can you developers be to have a
> henchman stand there with his bow, toe to toe with an enemy warrior,
> and continue to shoot his bow and take all those penalties, rather
> than draw his sword? And the ONLY option you give me is to only use
> the bow or only use the sword exclusively? All the time? YOU HAVE
> GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!
>
> FIX IT.
Agreed, the henchmen could use some better scripting. Or better yet, allow
you to control him.
> Add flexible scripting through some sort of dialog that allows me to
> set preferences, at least similar to how BG2 handled it, and give all
> characters half a brain in combat when it comes to their weapon choice
> and their morale when being hacked to pieces by a 7 foot tall half orc
> wielding a 9 foot long halberd. To have the character remain standing
> there like Al Gore in a presidential debate with 1 hit point and armed
> with a bow is simply unnacceptable. Also it's beneath you.
>
> (C) INVENTORY management is the clickfest from hell. What were you
> thinking? You cannot drop items in inventory over top of existing
> items and have them change place? Your idea of a paperdoll inventory
> is a bunch of icons I can barely see? And you followed Blizzard North
> with the whole space management thing. What? Are you planning an
> expansion pack with twice the stash size or something like that? The
> fact that you realized you needed 5 pages of inventory for a character
> should have told you something.
I don't mind the part about the items taking up more or less space according
to what they are (then again, I've been a hardcore Diablo 2 gamer since day
one :). After all, seven daggers do not take up the same space as seven
halberds (as they do in the BG system).
The 5 pages can be a bit annoying, but I can live with it this way, though
I'd prefer they had made things smaller than are now (both the items, and
the little squares that make up you inventory), so you would only need maybe
2 pages.
The worst thing about it is, as you say, the fact that you can't drop an
item on top of another and hve them switch places. That is horrible and
something that needs fixing. Now!
> It's horrible and I hope you plan to improve it. You guys are capable
> of far better. What is wrong with 1 slot for one item? And what is
> wrong with being able to see my entire inventory on one screen?
> Answer me that. And don't give me any "realism" b.s.; my character
> was lugging around 4 pagefuls of junk including 4 suits of chain mail
> armor, on my last trip back to the store to sell it all.
>
> (D) MISCELLANEOUS issues. There are a few misc gameplay issues, so
> far the worst I've seen is that my thief detected a trap in an
> adjacent room not directly attached to our location so he started
> jogging the country mile to open it. I could not stop him and he ran
> smack into a bunch of monsters. Well I could go on and on but you
> have simply got to rethink how you've handled henchmen. Regardless of
> the multi-player aspect, henchmen are an important aspect of D&D and
> their treatment deserves better. It's a joke and it makes you
> developers look pretty sad when this is the best you can come up with
> -- virtually no control over henchment (in battles it is IMPOSSIBLE)
> and you have a single default AI script title "stupidity to the max".
It's worse if he sees a trap through a wall. Then he just stands there
staring at the wall. I almost killed him myself when he did that.
> It's hard for me to imagine how the NWN gameplay could be worse. It
> is simply annoying to the point of frustration and I've only played
> for a day! And you expect people will play for the long term? I
> think you're wrong and if you want long term customers you'd better
> seriously rethink these issues.
>
> Summary:
> Install/Config 5
> Multi-media 5
> Docos 5
> Story 4
> Gameplay 1
> Tilt 1
>
> Now, to be fair, I have to rank gameplay much higher than the other
> issues because it's what I bought the game for. Everything else is
> secondary. So I given a reviewers tilt of 1 because the gameplay is
> totally unnacceptable for what we've come to expect. That gives the
> game 21/30, or 70%, in my opinion, which is good but not great in my
> opinion and it is far lower than any other review I've read.
While the pathfinding and the inventory could be improved (especially
pathfinding), I think the rest of the game is absolutely great, and I
haven't played anything else since i got it last week. I would probably give
a score in the late 80'ies, maybe even a straight 90. But maybe I'm too
tolerant :)
> The possible upside to this is that the game engine is solid but as
> anyone who played Ultima VIII knows that game had a solid engine too.
> And it sucked. Most of the gameplay issues are things that can be
> probably be resolved through patches. I bet you could even add a
> dialog box that allows combat scripting for PC's and their henchmen so
> that most of combat does not end up being a dumb clickfest with stupid
> deaths and frustrating reloads.
>
> Phaenar.
>
One other thing i would like to see fixed is the windows. I would like to
move them around as I see fit, especially the dialogue box. It's placed way
too high up, the middle would be much easier to read (at least on my setup,
I find that after reading a lot of dialogue, the back of my neck hurts a
bit).
Devast8or
--
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To reach me via e-mail: ask me for an adress :)
Daniel Hinz
news:3d303834...@66.185.95.104...
> Part 5. Gameplay, Phaenar's Rank = 1
> (A) PATHFINDING absolutely blows chunks.
Very true. This is really annoying - although 3D PathFinding is a very
difficult problem to solve it is definitely solvable.
> (B) SCRIPTING for combat. (A.K.A. LACK THEREOF!!!) You developers
> out there: hello??! This NWN is a real time game where you fight a
> lot of combat, and that often involves melee or missile attacks on
> fast moving enemies, many of which are tiny and quick! And your
> DEFAULT action for the player character is to DO NOTHING?!!
I don't understand. My character always does what he should do. Sometimes to
a point where i thought it a little boring to play - because there was
nothing i had to do to overcome an encounter.
Especially for Online Sessions i'd like to switch to a turn-based game where
everybody gets to act when it's his turn. Like the good old pen and paper
variant. This could resolve many timing issues ;-)
> The same goes for NPC's.
Oh goodness. How many times have you battled the boss monster and your
henchman just stood there and watched? How very frustrating. I discovered
that if you make a little sidestep the henchman suddenly finds his way to
the enemy.
> (C) INVENTORY management is the clickfest from hell.
Yes. Where is the "clear-up-the-inventory-neatly-button" which arranges
everything by item type (and merges Arrows) and puts the heavy stuff
automatically into the bags of holding?
I think NWN has a great concept and much potential - not only since it sids
atop a rocksolid rulebase. I can imagine many people getting a chance to
roleplay online where it isn't possible to set up a regular pen and paper
session (aka the Outback). However the technical issues make this not all
that enjoyable. Also i consider this stripped down and modified Dungeons &
Dragons variant not very feasible, since it is not possible to convert
regular Character to online Versions and vice versa. Not only do the feats
vary, the skills do too, and what's worse: There are no Prestige Classes.
Daniel