Review Gamebanshee reviews Mask of the Betrayer

[Monolith]

Tags: Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer; Obsidian Entertainment

<a href=http://www.gamebanshee.com>Gamebanshee</a> has posted a <a href=http://www.gamebanshee.com/reviews/software/nwn2motb1.php>review</a> of <a href=http://www.atari.com/nwn2/motb/US/index.html>Mask of the Betrayer</a>, giving it an overall score of 8.2. They called the campaign nice, the companions stodgy although unusual and dialogues solid. The renowned choices and consequences get hardly a mention.
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<blockquote>The campaign itself is nice -- with all of the connotations, both good and bad, that the word “nice” engenders. Since you’re trying to heal yourself, rather than hunting down and ending the reign of an evil wizard or something, the focus of the campaign is skewed a little, and so it plays differently than the other official Neverwinter Nights campaigns. Unfortunately, the companions you pick up during your travels are a little bit on the stodgy and boring side (imagine traveling with three Elanees in the original campaign), but at least they’re also unusual, with a spirit bear and a dreamwalker among the possibilities. Companions don’t really have side quests this time, but if you gain enough influence with them, then you receive special feats that give you bonuses.</blockquote>
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Can't comment on it as I've yet to give it a try.
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Discuss!
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[Volourn]

Meh. Elanee was awesome.

Some of the MOTB are VERY good. Others are not so good.

Hey, it's like any other RPG with companions I've ever played!

HAHAHA!

 

[roshan]

The author has a point - Safiya wasn't an interesting companion at all. She was a red wizard that wasn't evil, who didn't like being stereotyped - and that was about it. Kaelyn on the other hand sucked, simply because her voiceacting was crap. Someone as devoted to a cause as her should have sounded zealous and inspired, filled with emotion. But instead she has a bland, completely generic ethereal sounding voice, and all her lines are intoned in the same emotionless way. Boring.

Of the three companions I travelled with, only Gann was somewhat interesting.

 

[vrok]

Someone as devoted to a cause as her should have sounded zealous and inspired, filled with emotion.

Zealous and inspired? Uh, no. Her faith is weak (switching gods, failing in an earlier crusade attempt), she even admits it herself after Myrkul's speech. Besides Ilmater is the god of emo, and she does sound extremely emo. Fuck-me-now emo even, which only served as an ultimate let down because she wasn't a romance option! Safiya was appropriately colored brown like the boring piece of shit she is though. One-of-Many was my absolute favorite however.

 

[ricolikesrice]

<a>Gamebanshee</a> has posted a <a>review</a> of <a>Mask of the Betrayer</a>, giving it an overall score of 8.3. They called the campaign nice, the companions stodgy although unusual and dialogues solid. The renowned choices and consequences get hardly a mention.

<blockquote>The campaign itself is nice -- with all of the connotations, both good and bad, that the word “nice” engenders. Since you’re trying to heal yourself, rather than hunting down and ending the reign of an evil wizard or something, the focus of the campaign is skewed a little, and so it plays differently than the other official Neverwinter Nights campaigns. Unfortunately, the companions you pick up during your travels are a little bit on the stodgy and boring side (imagine traveling with three Elanees in the original campaign), but at least they’re also unusual, with a spirit bear and a dreamwalker among the possibilities. Companions don’t really have side quests this time, but if you gain enough influence with them, then you receive special feats that give you bonuses.</blockquote>

Can't comment on it as I've yet to give it a try.

Discuss!

the review makes it sound like the expansion is NWN2 OC minus childish humour (apparently a problem for the author which most around here see actually as a benefit ) and nothing special.

no word about the brilliant dialogue, PS:T-like writing, choices and consequences ... i.e. nothing of the things that made codex posters who hated NWN2 love MOTB.

of course he s right about the too easy combat (but then again i have the feeling this is the same tool who gave HOTU 8.8 ...) and nitpicking on the companions makes some sense as well.

what i found hilarious was calling the dialogue "solid". i mean if anything MOTB has the best dialogue in any roleplaying game so far.

oh well, thats what you get when your average oblivion fanboy gets a true cRPG in his hands and is not capable to understand it.

this (and really a shame considering its from GB who usually have better ones) is the worst MOTB review i seen by far, at least at the tools who removed 10-20% from the score for spirit eater and bad camera mechanics mentioned that MOTB has a great story while this guy finds everything mediocre and rants on the lack of secret doors.

a serious low for gamebanshee.

 

[Balor]

Someone as devoted to a cause as her should have sounded zealous and inspired, filled with emotion.

Zealous and inspired? Uh, no. Her faith is weak (switching gods, failing in an earlier crusade attempt), she even admits it herself after Myrkul's speech. Besides Ilmater is the god of emo, and she does sound extremely emo. Fuck-me-now emo even, which only served as an ultimate let down because she wasn't a romance option! Safiya was appropriately colored brown like the boring piece of shit she is though. One-of-Many was my absolute favorite however.

Eh, not to mention that she is Neutral Good, not Lawful Good.
As for Safia... not far into the game, but she does feel a solid character allright, but yea, nothing brialliant. The concept of MaO (Mao, lol) is indeed much more interesting.

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

The best thing about Kaelyn are her completely black eyes. She literally sees the world in black and white. This little touch is brilliant!

 

[made]

Kaelyn [...] has a bland, completely generic ethereal sounding voice, and all her lines are intoned in the same emotionless way. Boring.

On the contrary, I found her cold, emotionless voice very fitting to both her appearance and her character. Totally overdrawing a character to make him appear zealous is something Bioware would do. We've seen enough of that in the past.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Kaelyn was my favourite character in the whole game.

 

[Balor]

The best thing about Kaelyn are her completely black eyes. She literally sees the world in black and white. This little touch is brilliant!

Yea, I noted that too. Indeed it is.

 

[Brother None]

(but then again i have the feeling this is the same tool who gave HOTU 8.8 ...)

Not, not the same reviewer.

Steven Carter's also reviewed, for instance, NWN 2 (8.7) or The Bard's Tale (7.2) or Jade Empire SE (8.2), for examples of his reviews

oh well, thats what you get when your average oblivion fanboy gets a true cRPG in his hands and is not capable to understand it.

That's is not really the case here, disagree as you might.

 

[ricolikesrice]

...

dunno, stating the NWN2 is better than MOTB is very, very low (btw i enjoyed the NWN2 OC.....) .... what makes it even worse is that 1 week earlier there was this nice interview with kevin saunders hosted at Gamebanshee.
in that interview undeserved mediocre reviews were a topic.... and then gamebanshee comes and gives the worst mediocre review of them all , even topping the morons at eurogamer (which should hardly be possible ).

i heard a lot of idiotic things about MOTB, from camera issues to spirit meter woes.... but at least noone was as retarded to claim NWN2 OC was better... till now.

that especially gamebanshee had to pull this off..... and more so even after that good interview of yours....... i dunno, feels like kevin fucked the guys girlfriend, sister and mother after the interview.... at once......else i cant explain such shitty a review .

 

[Monolith]

You can always go there and ask the guy in the comments thread. I haven't played MotB so actually criticising what he says would be bullshit.

 

[Brother None]

Re: ...

what makes it even worse is that 1 week earlier there was this nice interview with kevin saunders hosted at Gamebanshee.
in that interview undeserved mediocre reviews were a topic.... and then gamebanshee comes and gives the worst mediocre review of them all , even topping the morons at eurogamer (which should hardly be possible ).

The interview was mine, the review is Steven's. To each editor his own, we don't exactly have all noses forced in the same direction on GameBanshee (Buck liked BioShock better than I did, for instance).

Perhaps if it were my review it'd be different. I dunno.

Anyway, your complaint is duly noted. However, Steven is a pretty good reviewer, even if I too was surprised by his opinion here. Dunno where he's coming from exactly. Ask him.

 

[ricolikesrice]

...

just looked at the comments, not gonna bother registering to argue with him though, he makes his point pretty clear:

"I liked the OC better. It was longer, more creative, and gave you way more options for how to play it."

looks like we are living in two entirely different worlds. like i said, unlike lots of people on the codex i liked NWN2 OC, despite all its faults. but claiming that its more creative and gave you more options on how to play it then MOTB is just total, complete horseshit. not just bad tastes ..... plain idiocy.

obviously cant blame a whole site for having one idiot on board, but still feels pretty bad to read such a POS on a site you usually like . oh well, at least the witcher is getting its (deserved) praise, just feeling really bad for kevin, george and everyone else at obsidian working their ass off making a great cRPG where no doubt the HOTU-clone i expected before actually playing it would have sold just as good if not better.

i recommend the guy playing hellgate london. sure, when you first read up on that game you might expect a post-apocalyptic vibe with humanity fighting for survival, i.e. a dark, serious, mature and...what was his word.... "dreary" ? setting.... but luckily for guys like stephen it turns out all the NPCs in the game are comedians and there s not a single line of text in the game that wont make your 12y old brother giggle, so full of great humour is the game.

 

[aweigh]

Brother None, do you think he actually complete the whole game? Second question, if so, do you think he completed it multiple times to have seen the plethora of choices available? Should a reviewer with his hands on a game like MotB be required to only complete the game once?

@sheek

Yeah, whatever. I'm weak.

 

[Monolith]

I played a mostly good character who tried to suppress his affliction when I made my way through the campaign, and I’m looking forward to trying it again with an opposing type of character and different companions to see how it goes.

Looks like he played it just once.

 

[vrok]

VD played it twice! *garblegarblegarble*

 

[fastpunk]

It's obvious he didn't like the "dreary" mood of the game so I can't blame him too much for not being ecstatic. Some people like it, some don't. What I didn't like is how he kept saying MotB is "nice", makes it sound like just another average game... which it really isn't, it's not generic high-fantasy.

 

[Brother None]

Brother None, do you think he actually complete the whole game? Second question, if so, do you think he completed it multiple times to have seen the plethora of choices available? Should a reviewer with his hands on a game like MotB be required to only complete the game once?

'course he completed the whole game

As for your second question, perhaps. But it's not like I hold any editorial control on GB, and as such I can only say it's up to the reviewer & Buck. If Steven felt he got enough information from playing it through only once (I don't know if he did or did not play it through more than once, note), then that's his call.

Do you think, considering his critiques of the game, that a second playthrough would have significantly changed his opinion?

 

[Volourn]

"which it really isn't, it's not generic high-fantasy."

Yeah, yeah it is. And, that's a GOOD thing.

 

[Lyric Suite]

lol @ volourn spouting his lame, non-committing relativistic bullshit for the billionth time to cover up for the fact he doesn't really have a clue about... well, just about anything, like, ever.

Much like this reviewer here, to think of it.

 

[Volourn]

lol @ lyric suite spouting his lame, non-committing relativistic bullshit for the billionth time to cover up for the fact he doesn't really have a clue about... well, just about anything, like, ever.

 

[aweigh]

[Do you think, considering his critiques of the game, that a second playthrough would have significantly changed his opinion?

Absolutely. At the very least it would have made him highlight the enjoyment MotB's choices and replayability provide. (Or perhaps simply made him aware of these things in the first place.)

 

[Jasede]

lol @ lyric suite spouting his lame, non-committing relativistic bullshit for the billionth time to cover up for the fact he doesn't really have a clue about... well, just about anything, like, ever.

LOLOLOL VOLLY! You totally burned him!
Take that Lyric Suite! ICE BURN!!!