NWN2 advice

fastpunk · Aug 14, 2007

OK, so I want to play Obsidian's latest creation but my PC is not very powerful. The thing is, I have some extra money which I could use to buy a new graphics card (a Radeon X1550), because I'm currently using a damned GeForce FX5200.

Here are the specs I'd have AFTER the upgrade: Athlon XP 2100+ CPU, 512 DDR RAM, ATI Radeon X1550 256MB graphics card etc. etc.

And here's my question: will the game run decently with the above specs? Should I bother upgrading or not?

cutterjohn · Aug 14, 2007

This: 512 DDR RAM, is likely to still be a little low, and your CPU won't help much, but I'd suspect that upgrading RAM would allow it run on lower settings maybe.

Really need to have someone with this title and lower specs comment though...

fastpunk · Aug 14, 2007

cutterjohn said:
This: 512 DDR RAM, is likely to still be a little low, and your CPU won't help much, but I'd suspect that upgrading RAM would allow it run on lower settings maybe.

If I upgrade the RAM then I can't upgrade the graphics card (not willing to invest too much it this PC) and I certainly can't play NWN2 with a GeForce FX5200...

cutterjohn · Aug 14, 2007

Well, it sounds like you're already thinking about upgrading, in which case I'd just say skip NWN2 for now until you've upgraded. If you're lucky, by that point they might have a gold or some sort of release that would contain both NWN2 and the expansion in one package.

If nothing else the price on them will likely have come down some.

flabbyjack · Aug 14, 2007

Blow the extra ~$60 on a gig of RAM around 400 MHz, I'm guessing your current 512 MB of RAM is running at a low frequency(perhaps as low as 166MHz) www.newegg.com for much better pricing than your local FRY'S

aboyd · Aug 14, 2007

I have an AMD Athlon 64 4000, which actually runs at about 1.6 Ghz. I have an ATI X600. It shares memory with RAM, so I've divided my 1 GB into 256 MB for VRAM, and the remaining 768 MB goes to RAM.

With that setup, I can play it comfortably at 800x600 with most graphic options disabled. I turn on 1 or 2 that really help it to look nice (I think I picked medium textures instead of low-end, and something like bump-mapping or lighting or something to give it a bit of life, but almost all other settings are off -- no reflections, basic water, etcetera). Playing it unpatched is nightmarish, but playing it patched up is pretty nice. I usually get about 25 FPS, unless I drop the camera so that I can see waaaay out in front of me.

Personally, I might wait until MotB comes out. They supposedly have a lot of optimizations for that expansion. I don't know if they'll all roll back into the original NWN 2 client, but I assume they will since some already have.

Anyway, that's my low-end experience.

fastpunk · Aug 14, 2007

Thanks for the reply everyone! I guess I should wait for some Platinum or Diamond edition of NWN2, it could be quite the bargain later. I might as well play Syberia now, I've been wanting to do that for a long time.

fastpunk · Aug 14, 2007

aboyd said:
I usually get about 25 FPS, unless I drop the camera so that I can see waaaay out in front of me.

Btw, doesn't the game have a "view distance" setting? You can get some serious fps increases by lowering view distance in most games that use this setting. It might help in this one too...

: :!:

tardtastic · Aug 14, 2007

My NWN2 advice for you is:
don't play it.

Take the money that you would use to upgrade your computer, and use it instead to buy a relatively nice pair of shoes. This recommended purchase will be far more availing to you than chasing the NWN2age. Video games will rot your brain.

In three or four years, when you've a better computer anyway, and NWN2 has been patched and modded into playability - then give it a shot.

I played Wizardry 8 the first time a few days ago, and it was far more enjoyable than either Morrowind, Oblivion, or NWN2.

ban me

Aditya · Aug 14, 2007

My Advice: DO GET IT! I am currently re-playing it.

Its the only decent RPG released in recent times. Has some good writing, intersting quests (like Trial), skill-based dialouge choices. Story is ok and Act I tends to drag, but once you reach NeverWinter, things get interesting.

My PC Specs are:

AMD Athlon 2400+ (@2.0GHZ)
nVIDIA 6600GT 128 MB
1 GB RAM

With these I can comfortably play the game at 1152 x 864 resolution, Gfx settings medium-to-high, shadows off. You MUST patch the game to v1.06 tho. Also make sure you system receives adequate cooling. Higher amount of RAM really helps to make it playable, as some members already suggested above.

Btw, doesn't the game have a "view distance" setting? You can get some serious fps increases by lowering view distance in most games that use this setting. It might help in this one too...

Ofcourse. You can adjust the view-distance slider towards the lower end to gain FPS.

Oarfish · Aug 14, 2007

Has some good writing, intersting quests (like Trial),

Yes, but they are buried in a swamp of god awful combat against hordes of cookie cutter kamikaze enemies. I'm sure I must have killed at least 300 thugs just to get into castle neverwinter. It would be greatly improved if they improved the AI enough to be able to use the full rules (it's blatantly balanced for wanton fire balling into melee) and cut the number of combats down by about 90%.

Oh, and a talker path that's actually implemented and had an effect on the gameworld would be good too. I refuse to believe my buffed to the hilt bard failed that many diplomacy checks.

fastpunk · Aug 14, 2007

Well I made the order for the graphics card. I found it on an online store for 60 euro and apparently it has 256MB of memory with 128 bit bus... which is great because low-end cards usually have 64 bit bus. So maybe I'll torrent the game and see if it works.

BTW, I did some research and found <a href="http://www.tweakguides.com/NWN2_1.html">this</a> article about tweaking the game to get better fps, so if anyone is playing it now, you might want to check it out. There are some advanced tweaks in there that could make your experience more enjoyable and less buggy.

fastpunk · Aug 14, 2007

tardtastic said:
Take the money that you would use to upgrade your computer, and use it instead to buy a relatively nice pair of shoes.

I already bought a nice pair of shoes last week... and they are more than relatively nice! They're like Will Smith's shoes from I Robot! :wink:

tardtastic said:
Video games will rot your brain.

Yeah but then again so do cigarettes, alcohol and drugs, in a much larger proportion actually...

tardtastic said:
I played Wizardry 8 the first time a few days ago, and it was far more enjoyable than either Morrowind, Oblivion, or NWN2.

Far more enjoyable than Oblivion and Morrowind doesn't say too much mate.

Texas Red · Aug 19, 2007

Wow! I played without my torrent downloading program(Azureus) and the game run 10 times more smoothly. Funny because other games arent affected by it. Anyway, turn off all other programs before running NWN 2.

fastpunk · Aug 19, 2007

TWD, you're right. Torrent clients are resource hogs. I always keep it off when playing something.

So I got the graphics card, installed it and then installed the game. It took half-an-hour to update it to the latest version but hey, whatever keeps the bugs away right. To my surprise, the game runs fine at 1024x768 with medium textures, low shadows and bloom enabled. I get a steady 30 fps (with unneeded background programs shut down of course) so it's playable. Looks pretty good so far; that Harvest Fair was a good opportunity to get to know the interface and such, nice touch. But I do miss NWN1's interface. You gotta give that to NWN1, it had an excellent interface. I miss the right-click menu the most.

Starwars · Aug 19, 2007

I also disliked the NWN2 interface at first, but I must say that after spending some time with, I had a really hard time going back and playing with the NWN1 interface.
Still, I like the idea of a radial menu. I think ToEE had a really great radial menu.

The Harvest Fair is a pretty good introduction to the game. It's great that you can skip it, and it serves as a nice way to getting used to how the game works. It's also 'silly' enough to not bore you out of your skull I think.

As far as performance, one of the patches made it better I think. And there will be more optimizations for the expansion (I would guess that you won't need to buy the expansion for that, rather it will probably be included in a patch as well).
For me personally, as soon as I turned off shadows I could pretty much max all the other options (I run it at 1024x768). I don't really care that much for shadows in my game, so I don't think it was a big deal.
The only time I get some slowdowns is in certain parts of Neverwinter city, and if there's a really heavy spellbattle going. Runs excellent otherwise

Rogue Daos Purgatorio mod will also be released soon (September or October) so keep your eye on that. It looks excellent.

Ratty · Aug 19, 2007

I'll join tardastic's sentiments and advise you against playing NWN2. While the game may be worth a look if you crave an RPG without regard to quality, it certainly doesn't warrant upgrading your system for it. Contrary to what Obsidian-enthusiasts might claim, it is in all respects a very mediocre game that manages to stand out only due to severe drought of mainstream competition.

To make matters worse for you, the worst aspect of NWN2 is its hopelessly inefficient renderer, which poses ludicrous hardware requirements while delivering poor performance and outdated visuals. Before you can even think about playing the game on your system, you will need to get more RAM and a new video card. Once you have that, you can probably expect to get somewhat acceptable performance at lowest settings (which ironically make the game look worse than original NWN).

My advice to you is - don't bother. It simply isn't worth squandering hard-earned funds and contending with graphics-related adversities for such a sub-par roleplaying experience. You would be better off investing your extra money into an indie CRPG or an older mainstream offering you might have missed.

Cronstadt · Aug 19, 2007

tardtastic said:
My NWN2 advice for you is:
don't play it.

I'll second that (or third it). Goddamn awful. I was bored to tears. Cookie cutter enemies aside, the game feels like going through a long, straight tunnel with some monsters here and there. Heck, at least NWN didn't force charachters into your party like a shitty JRPG.

Jasede · Aug 19, 2007

So it's like PS:T but with characters you can't kick out? [Not that kicking them out in T was a good idea since you'd miss, uh, half the story]. Sounds good for me.

Edward_R_Murrow · Aug 19, 2007

Jasede said:
So it's like PS:T but with characters you can't kick out? [Not that kicking them out in T was a good idea since you'd miss, uh, half the story]. Sounds good for me.

From the small bit I've played, and descriptions....I'd equate it more to Torment without the great dialogue, without the interesting characters, without the amount of diplomatic options, and there are tons of Curst Prison-likes.

Cronstadt · Aug 19, 2007

Jasede said:
So it's like PS:T but with characters you can't kick out? [Not that kicking them out in T was a good idea since you'd miss, uh, half the story]. Sounds good for me.

Right. You'll love it.

Jasede · Aug 19, 2007

Edward_R_Murrow said:
Jasede said:

So it's like PS:T but with characters you can't kick out? [Not that kicking them out in T was a good idea since you'd miss, uh, half the story]. Sounds good for me.

Click to expand...

From the small bit I've played, and descriptions....I'd equate it more to Torment without the great dialogue, without the interesting characters, without the amount of diplomatic options, and there are tons of Curst Prison-likes.

Hmm, no good dialogue? But didn't Avellone write it? He was still good in Kotor 2. I'd like some more opinions on the writing of NWN 2.

Also, does it have containers? *shudder* Plasteel cylinders in the dark?

Hümmelgümpf · Aug 19, 2007

Jasede said:
Hmm, no good dialogue? But didn't Avellone write it? He was still good in Kotor 2. I'd like some more opinions on the writing of NWN 2.

Chris Avellone said:
Judge: And you, Sand? Anything more you wish to add that you did not say in the first three hours?
Sand: Only that the dress the ambassador is wearing is clearly out of fashion, a blatant attempt to distract the court from the matter at hand, and is more appropriate for a Docks prostitute than a diplomatic envoy. Thank you.

That should answer your question.

Also, does it have containers? *shudder* Plasteel cylinders in the dark?

NWN 2 has it's share of chests, but since the loot menu opens immediately they are less annoying.

Starwars · Aug 19, 2007

The dialogue doesn't come close to that of Ps:T. And to make matters worse, much of it is voiceacted, so if you don't happen to fancy a particular voiceactor, chances are that character will be ruined for you.

*some spoilers for those who haven't played though the game*

That said, there are a few characters that I really enjoyed. Ammon Jerro in particular I really liked. The githzerai girl has some interesting background lore to offer about the planes but the voiceactress is rather annoying. Neeshka borders on untolerable and crosses the line a few to many times, but she has also has some rather amusing things to say now and then. Khelgar is your standard dwarf, but is pretty likeable.
I know there are many people who like Bishop, but I can't stand having him around due to his really "bratty evil" sounding voiceactor.

I don't know, I think the trouble with NWN2 is that it's just so damn uneven. There are places in the story that I genuinely very much enjoyed, even though choices&consequences are often non-existant or very small. I loved going through Jerros Haven and dealing with the demons there, I thought managing Crossroad Keep was a lot of fun etc, the trial scene was excellent. But it's "sprinkled" with braindead dungeon passages, and that especially goes for the first Act.
While the rest of the game is not close to the best I've seen, I think it was definetely decent enough to warrant a purchase.

And yes, Avellone did write parts of it (the trial scene I mentioned before). I don't know how much though.

*end spoilers*

To make matters worse for you, the worst aspect of NWN2 is its hopelessly inefficient renderer, which poses ludicrous hardware requirements while delivering poor performance and outdated visuals. Before you can even think about playing the game on your system, you will need to get more RAM and a new video card. Once you have that, you can probably expect to get somewhat acceptable performance at lowest settings (which ironically make the game look worse than original NWN).

Worse than NWN1? Hahahahaha, that's pretty funny. No game looks worse than NWN1. What's funny though is that my performance in NWN1 is almost identical to what I get in NWN2. I still get slowdowns in NWN1 in areas that have many NPCs in them, and when lots of spells go off etc. In NWN2 I have the same problem, but overall the game looks about a million times better.

Helton · Aug 19, 2007

I just finished NWN2, actually. About three hours ago.

It was a very mixed bag. The story was fairly mediocre. Typical "ancient evil" plot but there were several extra angles in there. I liked that I, the podunk swamp villager, wasn't the only person in all the planes with the knowledge and ability to fight it.

The companions all came up short for me. There were just too damn many of them. Torment being the model we had [Morte, Dak'kon, Annah, Ignus, FFG, Nordom, Vhalor, am I missing anyone?] 7 NPCs. All of them were stunning and deep. I don't even want to count in NWN2. No one got much development. The "deep" characters were introduced late in the game and were, in fact, one-dimensional because all they were was "deep" (I'm looking at a certain Warlock).

Khelgar got a lot of air time, and I liked him, but I don't see any real difference between Act I Khelgar and Act III Khelgar. Neeshka didn't have shit once you first started ducking out of Neverwinter.

My favorite NPCs were Sand and Grobnar. I loved having them in the party. But Grobnar didn't get any development that I saw. His entire quest revolved around another NPC. Sand fizzled out after the Trial (which is where he was just properly introduced).

And they all go like this. Either they were quirky and interesting to have around, or they were mysterious with a history to uncover... Or they saturated their screen time for half an act and then contributed nothing. Morte was fun to have around, witty and quirky, and he had history. Dak'kon was OMG AWESOME! and an endless well of philosophy and torment. Nordom, too. Annah, too. V and Ignus and... too! I have no end of trouble picking my party in that game and I only have to leave two people behind.

The dungeon crawls just get old.

The Keep was a good idea and fun. But it felt like a beta-test Keep and not very fleshed out. The best strategy is to leave it be until Act III so you can recruit all the help, that's the only way to get a return on your investment. Shouldn't be like that.

But overall I'd say it's worth playing. Not upgrading your system for, but playing when you get a better computer anyways.

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