Yes folks, NWN2 finally hit the shelves a few weeks back. Yeah I was busy playing it. After spending about 75 hours or so (as measured by Xfire) I beat the Official Campaign.
I’m now on my 2nd playthrough, this time with an evil character. So far, I find that I can’t really play an evil guy – in all my dialog responses, I tend to want to choose the “right” answer. Given a choice between “No money is necessary sir. Your thanks is reward enough” and “Come on man, 200 gold is all you got? Hey I risked my life for you man… you should have more for me!”, I usually choose the first one on instinct. This time around I have to conciously remind myself that I’m a selfish ***** and I only look out for numero uno, the rest of the world can go to hell for all I care.
If you’re a NWN1 veteran (like 90% of the people who play NWN2 are), you’d notice many things have changed, and not for the better too. In fact, some design decisions seem like a step backward to me. For example, back in NWN1 you can drag practically ANYTHING to the hotbar. Emotes, create macros, even drag generic commands like “ATTACK” to the hotbar. The thing I missed sorely on the hotbar was the ability to drag 2 weapons, or a weapon and a shield, onto one slot and have the character equip it when you use that button. Click/press that button again, and the character unequips it. We used to do this to hot-swap between ranged and melee weapons, or even for “weaponsets” to fight specialised encounters such as an gleaming sword +5 vs Outsiders, but otherwise unremarkable and I’d be using a different sword for other normal encounters.
In between NWN1 and now, naturally I got used to various MMORPGs out there. I would like it if we could have more than just 1 hotbar up on the screen just like in MMOs. But hey, they didn’t have that back in NWN1, so can’t complain here.
Also, I could see no way to split the message/info window just above your hotbar, into 2 windows like we could with NWN1. Back then, I have 1 window purely for conversations and quest info, and the 2nd window purely server messages (“so-and-so has come online”) and battlespams. Now, I can’t figure out how to split it up. Guess I will find out when I ask around online.
Story-wise, it’s excellent. Shades better than NWN1 naturally. In fact, there’s an NPC in there that seems to be loved universally by everyone who plays NWN2 – Sand, the arrogant wizard. He has so many great spoken lines that you really HAVE to hear it for yourself. The voice actor that voiced Sand is fantastic! You can even hear the tinge of worry, or sarcasm, or whatever emotion in the voice itself.
As an example (*SPOILER ALERT!*) at a later part of the game, you come face to face with a dragon. You have a choice to fight it or to make a deal with it. If you picked the option to make a deal, and after the dragon has proposed its conditions, suddenly the camera zooms in on Sand, and he says “Quick! Say yes so we can run!!” with just the right tinge of emotion it was totally hilarious!
The Official Campaign itself is littered with tons of funny dialogue. In fact, the developers themselves have a sense of humour too. If you use the console and turn on the comments they put into the dialogues and cutscenes, you can actually laugh at what they write to each other. One that comes to mind is “Elanee casts a spell of mega-coolness” as a comment when you meet the NPC Elanee for the first time in a cutscene, and she casts ENTANGLE on the enemies.
All in all, the main quest has enough intrigues and twists to keep me happy 🙂 The only nitpick I have is that sometimes, the cutscenes just happen as soon as you trigger a condition, and then when the cutscene finishes, you are thrown into the middle of a raging battle. You have no chance to find a safe spot to rest and recharge your spells and rebuff your party, and also to SAVEGAME in case you die, which will happen alot if your party is at half-health and unbuffed, and your wizards run outta spells in the previous encounter (you know, the one that triggered that cutscene that threw you into THIS battle?). Times like these, playing a Warlock seems to be the best option – they don’t need to rest to “recharge” their spells.. they ALWAYS have them on. Like little energizer bunnies…
