NWN Analysis

[Andhaira]

You know, many people bash NWN, and I myself am not a fan even though I liked BG1, LOVED BG2, KOTOR and Jade Empire, and look forward to Dragon Age. If I get a powerful pc or an xbox360 I will certainly try out Mass Effect.

However, NWN was flawed; and a letdown. Here is my analysis on why:

1)No party members (henchman system sucks

2)Focus was on the Toolset, not the campaign, which is why it sucked.

3)Maps were uninspiring, especially when coming off the rich goodness of the handdrawn backgrounds of BG2.

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NWNW did make some amazing innovations:

1)Characters actually parried, blcoked in dodged. First time ever this has been implemented in a 3D rpg.

2)Animations were amazing.

3)Good spell effects, lighting effects.

4)Great toolset; actually resulted in a online pnp community that can provide a better experiance than any other MMORPG, since stories can be tailored to each grou.

5)One of the few 3d games of its time that did not look ugly at all.

6)NWN 2 shows what could have and SHOULD have been done with the OC. Party should, at least, have been implemented.

Thoughts? And has anyone here played in a pnp style NWN campaign using the client? If so how did you find it? ANd now that there are a ton of mods for it, do you think NWN has increased in value and playability?

 

[Jasede]

NWN is the best online experience I ever had, thanks to really good persistent worlds with experienced D&D pen&paper DMs and [moslty] very good player. The interface is genius.

The engine and rules however are a tad butchered - knockdown, for example, is highly overpowered. But who cares.

 

[Slylandro]

NWNW did make some amazing innovations:

1)Characters actually parried, blcoked in dodged. First time ever this has been implemented in a 3D rpg.

??? I'm pretty sure this is not true.. Off the top of my head, Gothic (not that it was the first time either) as a counterexample?

P.S. the animations were alright, same with the spell effects and so on but I wouldn't say they were innovative.

 

[Section8]

1)No party members (henchman system sucks

No party members is six of one/half-a-dozen of the other - except if you're playing something like D&D, which is specifically designed for party play.

2)Focus was on the Toolset, not the campaign, which is why it sucked.

Yep. Didn't stop it getting ridiculous reviews, universal "critical" acclaim and comments like "A singleplayer campaign on par with Baldur's Gate 2". That sort of horseshit. It might have been a different story if Bioware had admitted the campaign was just a hastily thrown together piece of shit to give people a feel for what the toolset was capable of.

3)Maps were uninspiring, especially when coming off the rich goodness of the handdrawn backgrounds of BG2.

BG2 didn't have "handdrawn" backgrounds as such, but the tiles in NWN were fucking horrible. Among the worst looking tile-based games I've seen.

1)Characters actually parried, blcoked in dodged. First time ever this has been implemented in a 3D rpg.

Who gives a fuck? Give me gameplay substance over filler content any day. We got the same horseshit with KOTOR - "o luk yr char dances rnd with a litesaber!" Who gives a fuck? Stop using the same simplistic, piece of shit combat system and dressing it up with pointless animation.

2)Animations were amazing.

They never really did anything for me, and there's nothing "innovative" about them.

3)Good spell effects, lighting effects.

Again, who gives a fuck?

4)Great toolset; actually resulted in a online pnp community that can provide a better experiance than any other MMORPG, since stories can be tailored to each grou.

My biggest problem with the toolset was the disparity between the map editing and the scripting. The map editing was way too simplistic and lacking some crucial features, and with the scripting, you may as well have taken a better featured engine and developed from scratch.

5)One of the few 3d games of its time that did not look ugly at all.

What. The. FUCK? Next you'll be telling us Quake wasn't brown - and again, not an innovation.

6)NWN 2 shows what could have and SHOULD have been done with the OC. Party should, at least, have been implemented.

Haven't bothered with it yet, though I may get MotB one day.

Thoughts? And has anyone here played in a pnp style NWN campaign using the client? If so how did you find it? ANd now that there are a ton of mods for it, do you think NWN has increased in value and playability?

I found it offered nothing the P&P D&D couldn't do better, and lost interest in the shitty underlying mechanics of the game long before any worthwhile mods came out.

 

[Volourn]

Gothic parried and dodged; but it was all user skilled based. NWN dodges and parries are all character skill.

NWN is awesome thoguh admittedly it's OC is nothing to call home about. It's underrated; but definitely not at the level of other high end games. Nor is it the 'worst RPG ever' like some claim.


"Stop using the same simplistic, piece of shit combat system and dressing it up with pointless animation."

NWN's combat system is second to none with only TOEE competting with it. Nice try, sonny boy.



"knockdown, for example, is highly overpowered."

Nah, it isn't. If you ahd high discipline, you'd laugh at knockdown and if you had low disicipline perhaps you should avoid melee. R00fles! It's called common sense. It sure beats the hell out of the lame trip it's based of off.. L0LLIGAGZ


"I found it offered nothing the P&P D&D couldn't do better, and lost interest in the shitty underlying mechanics of the game long before any worthwhile mods came out."

I found FO offered nothing that pnp D&D couldn't do better, and lost interest after a couple or so play throughs (about 30 hours of gameplay) long before I get bored of pnp (which I ahve played unlimited hours of).

HAHAHAHA!

 

[Jasede]

No, it's still slightly overpowered since it's very easy for an assassin to drink an invis and sneak next to you, cast truestrike while invisible, and then use knockdown. If you're anything but someone with discipline you're dead and there's nothing you can do, unless you keep detect invis on always or invest in spot. I mean, it's not INCREDIBLY overpowered, but it can still be real tricky to deal with, especially when you're new and get assassins hired on your ass and they pop out of nowhere with true-strike'd knockdowns that are impossible to dodge. And resist, if you don't have discipline.

 

[Volourn]

A mage should have detect invisibility/true seeing spell on unless they don't have access to them since those spells last a long time. Sure, knockdown is powerful, and under certain situations it cna be over powered; but that';s true in any pretty every game sysetm.

I've had characetrs who basically laughed at knockdown. And, I've had mages basically set there and chucle at the wannabe knockdown warriors. Any warrior who gets knocked down by an assassin in NWN1 should be ashamed of themselves. Sorry. There's no excuse for it.

 

[burrie]

Playing NWN online with the DM Client is what made the game for me.

That, and Hordes of the Underdark was an entertaining romp.

 

[fastpunk]

5)One of the few 3d games of its time that did not look ugly at all.

Here's where I disagree. Sure, some dungeons looked interesting but exteriors were no short of horrible (except the forest tileset, which looked decent). Plus, the repetitive use of environments only accentuated the feeling of blandness.

But on the positive side, the game had a pretty good interface and the menus looked good. I especially like the radial menu and the inventory system, they worked very well. NWN2, for example, was a step down in this regard.

Overall it's still one of the most overrated games in RPG history but I guess it's a decent dungeon crawler. There, I finished on a positive note. :D

 

[Cthulhugoat]

Playing NWN online with the DM Client is what made the game for me.

That, and Hordes of the Underdark was an entertaining romp.

Sounds a bit like NWN2. Shit original campaign, rather decent expansion. And how was the other expansion, Shadows of Whatever? Any good?

 

[Slylandro]

Gothic parried and dodged; but it was all user skilled based. NWN dodges and parries are all character skill.

Fair enough, but was it the first to have parries and dodges in that context either?

 

[Lesifoere]

Playing NWN online with the DM Client is what made the game for me.

That, and Hordes of the Underdark was an entertaining romp.

Sounds a bit like NWN2. Shit original campaign, rather decent expansion. And how was the other expansion, Shadows of Whatever? Any good?

SoU is better than the OC, but not great. Still bland writing, bland NPCs, and mediocre story. I never did finish it.

 

[Keldorn]

Bore-Aura engine.

*YAWN*.

 

[Keldorn]

NWN1 SUCKS.


Oh yeah, that felt *good*.

 

[burrie]

Sounds a bit like NWN2. Shit original campaign, rather decent expansion. And how was the other expansion, Shadows of Whatever? Any good?

Shadows of Undrentide... eh, it's an okay campaign. At the very least, it showed me that they *could* construct a fun adventure with the engine. I only bought it back then, because I had to keep up due to the DMed campaigns. Same with HotU, I only tried its campaign months after purchasing it.

 

[DemonKing]

I think your opinion of NWN will probably depend on what you were looking for when you bought it.

If you wanted an incredibly long, detailed and fun SP campaign ala the BG series, you would have been disappointed.

If you were more interested in the potential of the toolset, user mods and/or multiplayer you would probably have been pretty happy.

Personally I don't really have time for the later stuff, so it didn't do much for me. However, I felt NWN2 was a step back towards what I was looking for.

 

[Müg]

You know, many people bash NWN, and I myself am not a fan even though I liked BG1, LOVED BG2, KOTOR and Jade Empire, and look forward to Dragon Age. If I get a powerful pc or an xbox360 I will certainly try out Mass Effect.

Oh dear does he not know?

 

[flabbyjack]

Anything NWN can do NWN2 can do better. Except run on old PCs.

 

[bezimek]

Anything NWN can do NWN2 can do better. Except run on old PCs.

Yes

 

[Volourn]

"SoU is better than the OC, but not great."

Wrong. OC > SOU.



"Anything NWN can do NWN2 can do better."

Simply not true. Completely, and utterly falsified.

 

[LittleJoe]

This will sound stupid, but I'd describe BG2 as "solid", and NWN as "wishy washy"

 

[flabbyjack]

This will sound stupid, but I'd describe BG2 as "solid", and NWN as "wishy washy"

Not as stupid as Volourn sounds. Not by a long shot.
New slogan - "NWN, where's the beef?'

 

[bozia2012]

Gothic parried and dodged; but it was all user skilled based. NWN dodges and parries are all character skill.

Fair enough, but was it the first to have parries and dodges in that context either?

I think they were thinking about the battle-dance (which was further enhanced in KOTOR) - showing nice combat animations without player input (both games had auto-attack). I can't think about any other game that had this before NWN. Though this is fun, I don't think you can consider it as something that adds much to the game. I wish they would actually make the combat sytem more complex (footwork, swordplay) not just two guys hitting each other in the shields and rolling for crits.

...but regarding combat animations - I long for the really brutal ones (*cough*witcher*cough*) - NWNs and KOTORs are too disneyish in this department (yeah I know - make violence a "fantasy violence" to lower the pegi and esrb)

 

[afewhours]

Oooh. The Aurora Engine put a blade into my heart. I know things move on and all that jazz, but I loved Infinity. I've warmed to Aurora a little more over the years, but that's got more to do with spamming Meteor Swarm and laughing like a child, methinks.

The NWN OC was the stuff nightmares were made of. I forced my way through it in the end, but only after I'd finished SoU and HotU. It picked up in the 2nd Chapter, where the game felt a little less like a treadmill, but then fell over again towards the endgame. Like, what the hell was going on with those lizard things? I've seen some pathetic antagonists before, but...

I feel the need to give SoU some love though. I felt it was a very solid low level campaign that everyone forgot after the crazed histrionics of HotU. Brought back memories of playing the original BG.

But don't get me wrong, I honestly enjoy HotU's epic craziness the same way I enjoy eating an entire bag of caster sugar and running around in circles. Give into the rush, and the silliness becomes an asset! Woohoooo!! +7 DROPZ 3VRY 30 S3CONDZ! I iZ t3h UB3r 1337 H4xx0rz! Bleugh!

Er... Sorry about that. I'd best go drink some herbal tea.

 

[Andhaira]

The 'battle-dance' is very sweet and never done before NWN. KOTOR was even better;

as for implementing complex stuff, they DID. Power attack, rapid strike, double attack, etc etc etc.

What else do you want, without making it a ealtime action rpg??