Neverwinter Nights 2 - Retrospective Review
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.ค. 2024
- Talking about some of my experiences with interesting title that is Neverwinter Nights 2!
Steam Deck Guide: / neverwinter_nights_2_o...
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:26 Multiplayer & Modules
03:30 General Systems
05:17 Character Creation
07:38 Campaigns
07:57 Main Campaign
11:33 Mask of the Betrayer
13:08 Storms of Zehir
14:15 Mysteries of Westgate
15:10 Steam Deck Compatability
16:25 Positives/Negatives
19:00 Conclusion
Intro Music By Juan Andrés Matos, www.juanmatosmusic.com/
Merch Shop: mortismal-gaming.creator-spri...
GreenManGaming Affiliate Link: greenmangaming.sjv.io/9WQN60
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Support The Channel By Becoming A Member!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Become A Member!: / @mortismalgaming
------------------------------------------------------------------
Follow Me On Various Social Media
------------------------------------------------------------------
Steam Profile: steamcommunity.com/id/Mortism...
My Facebook: / mortismalgaming
My Twitter: / jessebabcock18
#gaming #gamereviews #neverwinternights #neverwinternights2 #neverwinter #crpg - เกม
Never realised Obsidian were the sequel kings. Kotor 2, NWN 2, New Vegas.
Kinda weird that they do their jobs almost better than the original devs
@@xy-te9db in less time too
and shamefully majority of gamers dont like those games because they are "buggy", missing the fact these are miles better written than their prequels
@@Edwardlloyd1opposite for KOTOR II. Was less buggy but story was worse than the first.
@@kumanaz2765 low quality bait
NWN2 main campaign's companion banter is on another level. So many memorable moments.
Khelgar, Neeshka, Qara always bickering. 😂
"Ah, this must be the impending part of our impending doom"
Right? For what it lacks in main story, it makes up for the D&D experience.
Better than DA Origin
For some of the characters. The paladin guy had so little going on that I can't even remember his name.
Glad you liked it. I believe Storms of Zehir ended up being a prototype for the game which many of us know, Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire.
I was thinking the same thing! The map system really similar to Storms of Zehir.
Bobby Null was lead designer on both, actually!
I'd also say that while there's a lot of Storm of Zehir influence on Deadfire, what surprises me the most is how little people look at Fallout 2 as an inspiration for Deadfire's overall structure, as it too is essentially an open-world wild goose chase across a land filled with peripheral factions vying for control over the territory and so on - basically where the "plot" of the thing you're after (Eothas/the GECK) is a catalyst for the story which is best represented by the conflict between factions in this part of the world and so on.
I loved the OC as a kid to be honest. And the MoTB expansion is arguably the best written campaign in Western RPG history alongside Torment.
Mask of the Betrayer is too wondrous, mysterious, and evocative for words.
I'm gonna have to check it out. PS: Torment is timeless
For anyone looking to play NWN2, beside the main campaign and MotB, I would recommend trying out BG1 and BG2 modules. Some modder team implemented those games in NWN2 engine.
Another team did a similar one for Icewind Dale as well.
Daaaaamn are you telling me that I can play BG1-2 and Icewind Dale 1-2 with just a mod of this????? Is it the full game?
@@alessandromassi3659 I've played BG1 and Icewind Dale 1 mods and they work quite well. BG2 mod was released a couple of years ago I haven't tried it yet. I don't think there is an Icewind Dale 2 mod though.
Baldur's gate 2 reloaded has already been released?@@dreunik6356
Is this true? All I was able to find was a BG1 mod, not BG2.
Great review, Mort. NwN2 is one of my all-time favorites and I'm glad to see it reviewed in a way that does it justice.
Same here. I love NWN 2. It's the game that really drew me into high fantasy. The game will always have a special place for me. It was really good to see a review with someone who understood what the game was going for instead of critiquing it for being light hearted at times and not completely grimdark like a lot of other games. I really appreciate Mort for being fair to the main campaign and showing it some love.
NWN2 was my first D&D rpg and I still love it today :). Wish more games today would have systems and companions like old neverwinter 2.
Great review as usual. You didn't mention it, but Storm of Zehir's story was meant to lead into the events that brought about D&D 4e in the Forgotten Realms - and we know how well those were received.
NWN2 was my first CRPG. So even if it's janky I still love it, as it got me into the genre.
Mine too. My first isometric was Tyranny.
Same here :) Warlock was my favorite class
As CRPG's go, it's only slightly more janky than most of them from that era to be honest. Great game.
Same! I was terrible and cheated my way through it because I didn't understand any of the game mechanics... But I loved it, and it got me into the genre
@@rando6836 The main campaign is more average than bad.
I used to just replay the opening of SoZ for days at a time. I love character creation in games, and having a system where you can make a whole coterie, advance them through levels and equip them as you go before even playing the game was my autistic heaven. 🤣
I liked how they brought back Deekin in this game. He was one of the funnier NPC's in the NWN1 expansions.
Deekin's the fuckin Top G of the Forgotten Realms, hands down.
Indeed, the lengendary scalesinger himself.
I love Deekin’s interaction with Grobnar😂
I think it is still underrated, I fire it up and play it every now and then. You hit the nail on the head with the wasted potential the platform and system has. A really good game that could have been great!
One of the most memorable Crpg's I've played despite its flaws. The end of the main campaign, while disappointing, has a redeeming quality, which is that you can choose to betray your party and side with the main antagonist and even betray him after that, in which case he has a little surprise in store for you. ^^
You literally can't betray the King after killing your party.
@@Daioblis You're right, after checking, I mixed up the ending where you say you won't share power with the King of Shadows and kill him and the one where you betray your companions and join him, but maybe some of my companions betrayed me by joining the King of Shadows, I killed them then I betrayed my remaining companions. It's been more than 10 years I don't remember anymore. 😅
@@Celadonis-the-Lore-Seeker Some companions may betray you before you fight the King, yes.
Wow, very thorough and detailed review, thanks! I just finished NWN 100% on Steam, and learned everything I wanted to know about NWN2 from this video. You're a gem!
Mask of the Betrayer does some good work to fix the bad ending of the base game. However, what is sad, it doesn' give any justice to the base game companions. We barely get a hint what happened to them after the final battle. Well maybe with the exception of Bishop, that is.
Yeah, MoB is a great story. But I never felt it fixed the OC's horrific ending. What they did to the party in that game punished the player for caring about them.
and Amon Jerro.
@@shawngillogly6873 Yeah, that's the main issue with the ending. If you cared about your companions, you basically get to learn most of them died. None but Khelgar and Ammon Jerro get a decent ending. It's just sad because the OC had fantastic companions and they didn't deserve such a horrific ending.
MoTB felt like it could have been an entirely different game considering how tangentially related it is to NWN2's base game. Part of me disliked how little it had to do with it, but part of me liked it, as I wish MoTB had been a stand alone game...
@@planescaped It should have been a stand alone game. I remember how excited I was to continue my character's story and find out what happened to him and Neverwinter...only to realize I'm on the other side of the continent with nothing to do with the original story and a completely different tone in the story. While I enjoy MOTB, I HATED the tonal shift and direction the story took. It should have been it's own game while SOZ should have concluded the Knight-Captain's story having more to do with Neverwinter.
I remember walking through a village where apparently some "war crimes" happened, with an evil ranger in my party. It triggered a question towards him with a skill check involved. I think it was a persuasion or diplomacy skill check. I had no points invested into that skill, but had a +1 cha bonus, so I rolled a 1, +1, vs a dc of 3.
The Ranger replied: "I am not spilling my secrets that easily" or something like that, lol.
The atmosphere! I was totally immersed!
Awesome review and production as usual 🤙🏻
Great review as always. Hope you get your 100k subs soon! Your channel is my go to for all RPG related content.
We definitely need that NwN2 full story video....
I second this
And Mask of the Betrayer Video!
Oh man, I still remember how big of an improvment it was over fist one.
NN2 truly felt like a HUGE adventure, not as good as BG2 (but tbh - There is no game as good as BG2), but still quite epic. I still remember defending your stronghold and the buildup leading to this as fantastic "gaming moment".
Overall - Another really strong title in Obsidian's portfolio.
Really happy to hear you liked the game :) And a very nice and honest review, great work!
Thanks for the review and for the notes re: steam deck - much appreciated!!
I remember playing this game on Mac back in the day. Janky controls but felt much more like a classic TTRPG with the larger party as compared to Neverwinter Nights 1 (base game as least). Might have to revisit this one at some point…
Glad I own it on Steam, I had no idea it was taken down.
Thanks for doing the Steam deck compatibility reviews
Great review, loved both of neverwinter night games and i agree if you play NW2 consider the main campaign and mask of the betrayer as one story and you will love it! Its a classic.
Been subbed for a while, cant wait to see you reach 100k subs!
The ending of the main campaign was the reason why I never replayed it despite absolutely loving the other 99% of it.
Back in the day the letdown was even worse because I went in blind and was just baffled.
My biggest problem was to not be able to start froma specific chapter
I legit forgot how horrible it was because MoTB was so damn good it wiped it away.
I could not imagine playing the game and getting that ending before the expansions came out though.
That ending destroyed 15 year old me.
Whats bad about it? that you and your party die to save the world? I mean sure its a little unsatisfying but bad? I dunno guys. Also a hot take. I liked the mask of the betrayer ending more but the other 99% is better in the original campaign.
@@hjalmar8986 well i
My main problem with the original campaign is that its drawn out and unfocused the last boss is a bit of a let down . crossroad keep is awesome. I want more of those mechanics
Thanks for reminding me about NWN2. Icompleted NWN1 many years ago. Great time. I just bought NWN2 on GOG and beginning my adventure :)
Great review. Makes me want to play it again!
Going back to NWN2, experiencing Obsidian Entertainment writing a standard RPG hero plotline has to be one of the most subversive experienced I've had in gaming since KOTOR2.
D&D with its size of content always intimidated me as a kid. NWN 1 and 2 broke that and left such an impact that it made me a huge story/lore driven RPG fan ever since (bizarre side effect, it made me like math too lol) . Deekin the kobold is still my fav char years later haha.
I loved that you can take Deekin to Crossroad Keep
Fun fact : Mysteries of Westgate was one of the 1st paying DLC at the time (to my knowledge at least), and a fan-made one at that. So I never played it, and I don't think you can get it legally nowadays without rebuying the whole package on GOG.
There are a lot of great custom campaigns though, including one evil campaign that is insanely expansive (lvl1 to epic IIRC, across all of Faerun).
Neverwinter Nights 2 Complete on GOG comes with Mysteries of Westgate!!
Great review. Youre one of my fave content creaters. Wish you woukd record you playing games
Great review, based on what i remember from playing NWN2 and MotB , you were spot on. Could've mentioned the base building "minigame", as bare-bones as it is, as well as a few things about the sound and music design.
I can give feedback on this (multiplayer & modules section) - I built PWs and DM'd them for NWN1 for maybe fifteen years. When NWN2 came out, I played through a fair bit of the campaign until I was hard locked and save corrupted, at which point I started looking at the existing servers (at that time it was a reboot of the Star Wars NWN1 server, some Dragonlance stuff, one LotR server and some RP PWs trying to be Arelith (if I remember correctly)). The toolset for NWN2 is significantly less user friendly than NWN1s, there were sigificantly less options for placement, the sound effects were not as strong and as such it was difficult to build ambience. A lot of the tilsets were very neat, particularly the cityscapes, and there were a lot of new opportunities there, but NWN2s multiplayer community was consistently about a fifth the size of NWN1s and there wasn't a lot of interest at that time in themed action PWs or action leaning RP servers.
Thanks for reviewing NWN2 (And NWN1, my favorite game of all time!), looking forward to one day seeing a third game.
NWN 2 was imho soooo much better than 1. This is gonna be a good watch
Checked out WotR after i stumbled across your channel, and bought it day 1 when it launched. Honestly glad I did. The Pathfinder games are such a throwback to classic cRPGs with modern sensibilities, albeit buggy affairs. WotR is truly the most EPIC of epic campaign cRPGs and stands among the legends; Infinity Engine greats, NWN1 & 2; DoS:2
As for NWN2, its an obsidian game. Always good stuff, but but a bit messy technically, but superlative, thanks to the amazing writing they do.
I still remember MotB for it's eerie atmosphere and amazing plot line. Absolute diamond in the rough, and everyone who loves great RPGs should play it.
Great review man. Truly unique channel here.
This and Kotor 1\2 and Dawn of war compose the greatest hits of my early childhood
Its too bad no one has ever tried to recreate The Temple of Elemental Evil with one of the Neverwinter Nights engines
Someone did actually make a beta build of ToEE for NWN2, but I don't know if they ever finished.
my first introduction to dnd back in 2010, four years after it released. Tried it with pirated version then bought it when GoG released it. I completed it many times and always my benchmark comparison to any newer RPG.
You're an excellent reviewer for covering OLD CRPGs with modern lens.
Please cover more retro games
I created a online world for this game, 15 years ago.
I had to leave it because I was moving. And then I didn't play again, I don't know why. I've been waiting for something similar to this game with such simple creation tools.
Very easy to use.
This game is so awesome. I couldn't get into Neverwinter 1 because of bland story, but the second one was a blast. I also have to say I played it in 2018 so quite a while after premiere. Great companions, story and system. I think I will play it again on my steam deck.
I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Nwn2 OC and MotB are 2 of my favourite rpgs
I wuold have loved so much for this to release on PS4 same way they did NWN1 and BG. This was truly one of my favorites, really miss playing it.
SoZ isn't for everyone, but it's still my favorite outside of the base campaign. Not a knock on MotB. MotB is good. I just prefer the light hearted adventures. I'm one of those people that prefer the Hobbit to LotR, or LotR's opening in the Shire.
Thank you for the review of one of my all time favorite games! It does show its age in some respects, but for me I don’t mind one bit.
Aaand I will mention it again, NWN2 was the first RPG game that allowed you to build your own fortress, build buildings in it, and you were able to play as trader as well. Such a great and underestimated game.Later they made the Legends of the Sword coast game which was amazing, but the story was not that interesting.
I agree, do main OC and then MOTB, great story and interesting companions!
Bought this game the day it was released back in 2006 and played the hell out of it. It was everything I wanted out of the first NWN. There was a BG2 skin mod that I used with it for nostalgia.
I really enjoyed playing through the main campaign recently and Khelgar was my favourite companion. Looking forward to playing through the expansions.
Prepare yourself because MOTB takes a wildly different turn and if you loved the OC then you might find MOTB jarring.
Mask of the Betrayer is where all the gold is. Best NWN ever and one of the best stories ever made. It is true Torment spiritual successor.
Which one would you play first?
i played this like hell when it came out. i loved Qara
She burned Khelgar in insults
Overall I prefer Neverwinter Nights 1 for 3 reasons: 1) Story. 2) the Arcane Archer animations are great compared to NWN2. 3) You can play a shifter only in NWN1
Love your reviews and content. Please keep up the great work and hopefully one day we can have you as a guest on our podcast. NWN2 game is heralded as a classic and is my second favorite DnD PC Game. Hint: Troika made it
This game never gets old for replay! Still got 2 dvds, nwn2 main and motb. Good job there. 👍
What I enjoyed the most about Zehir was building the trading company and the ability to engage in random battles by choice. I never played Mask.... I said I'd play it after beating the main campaign again (only remember bits and pieces), but I lose focus before getting to the Luskan duel 😅
Enjoyed the review! Have a great day!
Excellent video of a game series close to my heart as the former curator of the Neverwinter Vault ;-) I will point out one thing though, the dearth of NwN2 content was not so much that the tools were more complicated (they were) as Bioware licensed the Gamebyro engine, which required a proprietary plugin for character modelling and animation. We literally could not edit or create new creatures or characters, which is a serious blow to porting up our thousands of NwN1 projects, and the reason NwN1 is still the goto platform for the classic persistent worlds
That makes sense, what a shame..
This game's on my to play list after NWN1, always good to see a positive review.
love the Neverwinter Nights serie so much nostalgie
This game is basically D&D kotor and I love it. One of the best RPGs from the BioWare golden age
I still run a fan made server, and there are a handful of active ones that really expand the experience. Been waiting for successors to NWN/NWN2s community support for a long time.
One of my favorite games of all time
I remember playing the Icewind Dale mod, pretty much a game within a game brought into the 3.5 edition which was real fun
I still have it on steam luckily with all the DLC. I re downloaded the game and began playing it again.
Same here, runs really well on the steam deck with a control scheme somebody in the community created for the steam version.
Coming back to this game after playing Baldur’s Gate 3 is like revisiting an old friend. I love this game so much.❤
NWN 2 failed because when it was released it was using granny proprietary animations(save the company on time making their own system) so content maker could not even make a chest variant. As a CC for both nwn(s) this was a real killer for many of us. The community eventually got a work around now, but most everyone had moved on by that point. The toolset was not complex to work with, but poorly designed UI and it does take more time to get your finished product. It my favorite edition of D&D also and you statement of lost potential hit the nail on the head and really saddens me. :( . I wish and would love a enhanced edition! I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but WOTC is probably the big jerk blocking this though as to make their 5th editions stuff to shine above all others. They have even put a stop to DLC/expansion(s) in NWN1 EE that customers still want.
This biggest issue was the camera system. At one stage Feargus Urquhart said, "The camera system will be like WoW."
The camera system was nothing like WoW - it sucked.
Dragon Age Origins has to date made the best camera system of any TTRP-cRPG and that includes the BG3 camera whish is laborious af.
I love this game think I still have my original disks around. I come back to this game from time to time, as I still have it in Steam.
The last few times I replayed I used the toolset to modify all the enemies in the whole main campaign.
Giving them a bump in stats or even a proper class instead of "commoner" class, things like a group of enemies were all LVL 4 fighter but I made them 1 Healer, 2 Archer's, 2 Fighter's and all where from LVL 5 to LVL 8 for the caster.
Other scenarios I turned enemies into summoner's or nukers.
Loved crossroad keep
One of my favourite games of all times!
You should definitely do a let’s play or something like that of the baldurs gate reload mod!
Loved this game. I still remember tanking my FPS on a regular basis when I discovered how OP Warlocks can be - can't remember the name of the spell, but there is an area of effect spell which summons tentacles that do damage every second they persist. As a warlock, you can spam the spell endlessly. AND IT STACKS. Joyous times.
I remember getting my nickname from NW2 MoTB when I was a kid. Since we had the spirit eating thing, I changed it to "souleater". I've been asked if I was a fan of the anime ever since (even though I didn't even know that anime existed lmao). Great game and memories.
I personally never understood why this game got so much hate from people, as I quite liked it, sure it wasn't anything amazing (expansion on the otherhand was) but it was a solidly decent-good game still.. I assumed most of the backlash was coming from fans of the first unhappy a different dev made the sequel. Although I did forget how awful the ending was, probably because Mask of the Betrayer was so freaking great.
MoTB easily could've been its own stand alone game, and I kinda wish it had been. You get more out of it if you play the main campaign first, but it really feels like its own story that is only tangentially related to the base game. It was a lot shorter than the main campaign, but that's more because the main campaign was absurdly big than MoTB bveing particularly short. I remember it being much longer than 8-10 hours. There's a lot of optional content that you can miss in it, like I never did Gannayev's sidequest, as I forgot about it/missed it due to there being a fairly narrow window of opportunity to go back to an earlier level and do it.
I dunno, maybe I'm misremembering, it's been awhile. MoTB is on my list of games I want to replay that I'm never going to get around to after all. :P
And Kaelyn the Dove is probably my favorite companion character from any game I have ever played.
NWN2 was really a diamond in the rough. As much as it's praised in the comments here, I remember how the NWN1 community hated it, or was at least heavily divided. Sadly, some of the most notorious "haters" were the mod builders, be it for NWN2's bugginess (only after MotB it was really playable), hardware requirements (back then the "Crysis of RPGs") or the learning curve of the toolset. The game had a lot more potential for modding and general greatness, but was abandoned by most way to soon. The NWN1 community has never really stopped to create and making some awesome mods, including "real mods" as in new animations, tilesets etc., while NWN2 quickly starved out. I wish a few more would've sticked to NWN2 as well. Also, this game really deserves an Enhanced Edition, but again there seems to be no real interest - Beamdog are all die-hard NWN1 fans as well. :)
I hope we will get some spoiler talk after this review :) kinda want to replay nwn
Crossroad Keep is really cool.
Grobnar: The Wendersnaven they're several hundred Khelgars high -
Khelgar: What did I tell you about using me as a unit of measurement?
Grobnar: - several Neeshkas high.
I should be sleeping but then I saw Mortym just uploaded so I thought: eh sleep can wait
You might also be interested in the Skywing Client Extender, it fixes a bunch of crashes/etc. You can also play online Persistent Worlds then, like Baldur's Gate: The Sword Coast Chronicles (BGTSCC for short) or Sigil: City of Doors (if Planescape is your thing) they have even more custom classes/races/features but are more Roleplay persistent worlds where other players sort of act out the NPCs in the town/wilderness.
Amazing game, a hundred percent recommend!
Just watched the new movie, and it totally wants to make me go back and play this again!
Somehow never knew there was a 2nd, I played the first one on my Xbox one ages ago and it was so fun.
who hasnt touched this game yet , now is the ttime too have a great chrismas
I love playing this on my Steam Deck... it was pretty quick and easy for me to set up and get going but I am already very familiar with Linux gaming. It took a while to get my controls set up so I could quickly hit everything I wanted to, and occasionally the controls stop working correctly (Steam Deck bug?) and I have to go into controls a few times back and forth and they start working again... but its still fun.
I wish they would make an edition of this for consoles like they did with the first game. I would love to play it
This game forced me to install linux on my PC because I had to choose between getting my degree and playing NWN2. It was not an easy choice.
Needless to say, one of my favourites (main campaign + MotB).
My all-time favourite game!🧐
Fitting review considering I just downloaded this. Played it when it was new but I don't think I ever finished it and I remember just about nothing of the game.
If you still love this old game you should check out my Facelift mods on the nexus and the vault. NWN2 Facelift Pack is a mod I made in the early 2010s and Character Facelift 2022 is my latest mod, ongoing, with a goal to improve the character heads in the game to more modern graphical standards. For some reason I keep coming back to this game, the ease of modding, the vast quantity of community created assets and content, it's a modders dream, only eclipsed by NWN1 IMO. I guess the Elder Scrolls games have bigger communities but I never really vibed with the Elder Scrolls world and lore. DnD is more my flavor of choice.
Great review, you hit a lot of the issues the game has experienced right on the head. The biggest problems with NWN2 were bugs and NWN1. Despite being a graphically and gameplay superior title, NWN2 just couldn't compete with the already booming NWN1 community adoption. I personally prefer NWN2, more modding possibilities and in depth editor/tools but I can see the appeal in the first game too. Communities keep these games alive and are in and of themselves, their own reward.
Im not sure why but Neverwinter Nights 2 seems like it aged so much more than Neverwinter Nights 1. I love hopping in and playing through NWN1 modules and the expansion campaigns to this day but NWN2 always feels like Im struggling with the controls and camera
It takes a littler less than an hour to get use to the camera but once you do you won't regret it.
@@andrewvincent7299 I played hundreds of hours of it back in the day, but nowadays when I get that NWN urge I prefer 1 over 2
Looks like it's time to reinstall NWN2. I think it's been long enough since I played the main campaigns. Also, there's a couple of player made modules that I want to play again, like Dark Waters.
I like how the idea of owning and managing a stronghold would later go onto Pillars of Eternity.
The Harvest Fair is an awesome tutorial, and is fun enough to play.
One of my first RPGs, glad to see you taking a look at this classic
Great game, made even better by the appearance of Deekin.
If someone polished up the toolset and released it I'd spend full days on that making my own campaign
Mask of the Betrayer set the bar for me crpg wise. I loved it greatly and I was quite sad that almost no one ever did games like this anymore. I was ecstatic to discover Kingmaker and then Wrath of the righteous, which has become new favorites of mine.
Honestly there still inferior to nwn 2 but there close.
@@malaficus I would agree on many points, but not all. Story wise I would argue WOTR is ahead of NW2.
length and replayability is also a factor in with WOTR is better objectively.
But even when considering its old age, NW2 still has an advantage that is clear as day when you play and it is its budget. It is a crpg with a triple A coat and a good one at that.
The full voice acting on your companions is a thing of beauty and the graphis isnt even that bad nowadays (at least in my eyes)
I definitely understand if you rate NW2 higher. I would say Mask of the Betrayer as a standalone expansion rates higher for me then WOTR.
The reason im not naming kingmaker is that while I like Kingmaker, it is very obvious that it was their first try and it shows in quality at times.