Neverwinter Nights Review

By Gestalt Published 31 July, 2002

Review - we dig through the hype to find out if Bioware's latest effort is worth your hard earned Euros

Version tested: PC

All Good Things...

'Neverwinter Nights' Screenshot 01b

More bloody zombies. Did I pick up a copy of Resident Evil by mistake?

Neverwinter Nights has been under construction for what seems like an eternity, but after countless delays and a deluge of hype, it's finally arrived. Obviously it was never going to be able to live up to gamers' high expectations (nothing short of the Second Coming could have done), so the key questions are just how disappointing is it, and is it still worth buying? And the answers are fairly, and absolutely.

At the heart of the game is an epic single player campaign. Bioware say that it offers over sixty hours of gameplay, and given that we've been slogging our way through it for the last few weeks and have only just finished the first of its four chapters, it seems that if anything that might be a conservative estimate. As the game begins the city of Neverwinter is quarantined thanks to a mysterious plague, and things soon go from bad to worse. Four dangerous magical creatures have been brought to the city in the search for a cure, but an attack by unknown assailants sees them released to run wild in the city streets. By the time you are ordered to track them down they are already raising mischief in the city's various districts. Undead are running around the Beggar's quarter, violent criminals have taken over the city prison, the docks are overrun by thieves and pirates, and a secretive wizard is under suspicion in the posh end of town.

It's a bewildering opening to the game, and leaves you free to head out from the city centre and complete the quests in any order you want to. The bad news is that the pacing is glacially slow, and it takes forever to actually progress through the storyline and develop your character. Bioware seem to have fallen for the old fallacy that bigger is better, and as such most of your first week or two is spent running around Neverwinter slaughtering vast numbers of zombies and plague-ridden thugs. It's a bit dull and repetitive at times, and more reminiscent of Icewind Dale than Baldur's Gate. There is a plot under there, but you spend more time killing things, picking locks and disarming traps than actually role-playing or adventuring.

What Are You Doing?!?

'Neverwinter Nights' Screenshot 02b

Life is tough for a hero - everybody wants your help, and most of them can't even afford to pay for the privilege

This would be fine if the game had an interesting and varied combat system, and the use of the more flexible character development system introduced by the AD&D 3rd Edition rules should provide just this. You can now multi-class more easily, and skills and feats aren't limited to a particular career choice; you can, for example, create a wizard who can wear armour and pick locks.

The problem is that Neverwinter Nights has no party dynamic - you are limited to your main character and one follower, which may be a hired henchman, a magical familiar or a creature companion. This may come as something of a shock to fans of Bioware's previous games, and it was certainly a huge disappointment for me. In the Baldur's Gate series you have a party of half a dozen varied characters at your disposal, usually including a thief, a mage and a priest as well as warriors, giving you a wide range of spells and abilities to take advantage of. In Neverwinter Nights you only have two characters at a time, one of which really needs to be a dedicated close-range fighter to stop the hordes of evil doers from overwhelming you, and one of which needs to be proficient at picking locks and disarming the many traps you'll stumble across. Even with the increased freedom you have in developing your character, this doesn't leave players with much room for manoeuvre, especially in the early stages of the game. And given the incredible length and plodding pace of the main campaign, there's little encouragement to come back and play your way through the whole thing again with a different character type.

To make matters worse, you have absolutely no direct control over your sidekick. All you can do is give a few general orders like "follow me" and "stand your ground", and set basic behaviour such as how close they stay to you, options which your henchman often seems to completely ignore anyway. There's no way of exchanging items between your inventories, which means that your lead character has to be pretty burly if you plan to lug much loot around, further limiting your choices. The one exception is that you can give your sidekick a potion, but they always quaff it immediately, whether they need to or not. Elsewhere the AI varies from reasonable to pitiful. For example, rogues will sometimes run through a gaggle of enemies to disarm a trap at the other end of the room, blissfully ignorant of the battle going on right behind them. Other bizarre behaviour is down to scripting rather than AI, like the way rescued NPCs merrily walk past enemies on their way out of an area without either side batting an eyelid, or your sidekick's habit of instantly teleporting back to your side if you get too far ahead of them (although annoyingly they won't do this if they get stuck on a piece of scenery, thankfully a fairly rare occurence). And don't get me started on the voice acting, which is monumentally repetitive. If I hear the words "oh, I can pick that open easy" one more time I'm going to have to cleave someone's head in twain.

Anarchy In The UK

'Neverwinter Nights' Screenshot 03b

One of the stricter role-playing servers I've come across.

Of course, the single player campaign is really just an entrée - the main course is the online community. In multiplayer you can actually group together into parties of more than two characters with other players, sharing experience between you as you work your way through the campaign or one of the many third party add-on modules already available.

Multiplayer is, as you would expect, a varied experience. Servers range from serious role-playing zones, where speaking out of character or using the shout command is frowned upon, to lawless hack and slash action. The first server I joined was in total anarchy - as I spawned into the game a group of players were busy assaulting Aribeth, one of the key campaign characters, and a quick trip out into the streets beyond revealed that they had already massacred the entire town guard, corpses littering the cobble stones for miles around. It's also a little worrying that one of the most popular servers in the world is titled "Free XP / Gold / Items". By contrast though, on another server you might find yourself chatting with fellow adventurers in a pub, playing games in a working casino, or taking part in an epic quest.

If you can't find a server to your tastes and you have a few like-minded friends who can be convinced to buy the game, you can always run your own. One or more players can even act as the Dungeon Master, moderating the game and adding a little extra atmosphere to spice things up. Obviously you need a broadband connection to make the most of multiplayer, especially if you want to play custom modules (which are auto-downloaded from the server where appropriate), but with the right hardware and enough bandwidth you can host anything up to 64 players on a single machine.

Paint By Numbers

'Neverwinter Nights' Screenshot 04b

My magnus opus - the city of Northbridge - under construction in the NWN editor

I say "on a single machine", because it is theoretically possible to link multiple servers together, allowing players to hop from one area to another in a more-or-less seamless fashion. Not many people have attempted this yet, but it does work, and no doubt it won't be long before large scale persistent worlds start to spring up.

This kind of customisation is supported by the easy-to-use editing suite which comes with the game. Although the more arcane arts of scripting take some getting used to, almost anybody should be able to throw together a basic dungeon crawl, with plenty of point-and-click "wizards" to help automate common activies like creating new areas, adding monsters and so forth. If you find yourself out of your depth, a reasonably helpful tutorial module is available from the game's website, and the official forums are a gold mine of information, suggestions and sample scripts. Your mileage may vary, but I've actually had more fun messing around with the toolkit than playing the game itself.

Modules are fairly compact and tend to compress well, making them easy to distribute, but it's not all good news. The main problem is that the way the game is structured is very much built around serving the default campaign rather than allowing maximum flexibility for mod makers. For example, each area may only use a single preset theme (city exterior, forest, dungeon etc) with its own unique buildings and terrain features, and there's no way to mix and match these in a single zone. So if you want to place a big park in the middle of your town, you're out of luck. You can combine or replace the default tilesets, and even add entirely new monsters and items with a little modelling know-how and some artistic talent, but this is fairly complex and involves the use of "hak packs". These are currently not auto-downloaded, so they're no use for most multiplayer modules. You can only use one pack with each module at the moment as well, so if you want to include multiple new monsters, items and terrain tile sets you'll have to combine them by hand into one big hak pack which everyone will need to download for your module to work, even if they already have all the modifications you're using as seperate files. It's a clumsy system that shows little foresight, and all we can say is that we hope it will be fixed at some point.

Conclusion

Out of the box, Neverwinter Nights is something of a mixed bag. The single player campaign is, if anything, too long, and focuses more on continuous combat than actual role-playing. The lack of any support for parties in the single player mode is also disappointing, and makes the game far less involving than it should be. Multiplayer is a more entertaining experience, but you may have to explore several servers before you find one that feels like home.

What really lifts the game above the crowd though is the mod support, which literally opens up a whole new world. Persistent online realms, linked servers, new quests, monsters and equipment are all possible, although the way the game handles these could have been better thought out. Already the internet is awash with add-ons, some of which are very good, and the future looks bright.

If you're a role-playing fan and don't mind downloading additional content, Neverwinter Nights is something of a no-brainer. It might not be the best role-playing game ever (not by a long shot), but it is arguably the most promising.

7 / 10

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Comments (52) Latest comment 8 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • skalmanxl #1 10 years ago

    Rating - 7/10 (out of the box)

    Do I smell NWN fanboys coming?

  • Viktor #2 10 years ago


    Brilliant review: it's a great editor, packed with a lackluster single player campaign. I'm looking forward to seeing what the community cooks up - just the same as with NWN.

    By the way, Skal, you going to work in Tradition?

  • skalmanxl #3 10 years ago

    Brilliant review: it's a great editor, packed with a lackluster single player campaign.

    Gestalt? (j/k)

    By the way, Skal, you going to work in Tradition?

    Yup, off to Gothenburg to get schooled tomorrow.

  • otto #4 10 years ago

    Gestalt, is that you in the top right? Nice jugs!

  • Super Stu #5 10 years ago

    Nice jugs!

    LOL. I was going to ask if that picture denotes your character... I usually go for the buxom female elf too ;)

  • Whizzo #6 10 years ago

    Do I smell NWN fanboys coming?
    I really like NWN but this review is pretty much spot on. The SP campaign does have too much of a reliance on combat and little solving of things through other means.

    Having said that I think one of the best bits of the game, Charwood, is how more of the game should have been. No spoilers but it has some good detective work, some not too taxing puzzles, combat, roleplaying and a bit of a twist, pity there wasn't more like it in the game.

    When NWN was announced the campaign was supposed to be a collection of individual modules that could be played seperately but collectively formed a coherent plot (a gestalt as it were ;-)) however that got dumped in favour of a more linear experience which is a shame.

    One tip for anyone playing anything other than a rogue is to buy an amulet of the master put a couple of skill points into traps skill and do them yourself. Don't bother with lock picking as if you're a fighter or wizard you can either bash them or use knock. Then use a henchman like Sharwyn to help you out with spells and stuff and leave that annoying halfling (with his fixation on disarming traps as a horde of badguys descend) back in the pub!
    Edited by 1 at 31/07/02 @ 11:25

  • skalmanxl #7 10 years ago

    It's things like this that can ruin a day. I just got my SaGa Frontier in a trade over the internet. Found out it was a jewelcase... everything is genuine and in order, so it isn't a pirate version, but still...ban jewelcases!

  • UncleLou #8 10 years ago

    Already spending your money to-be then, huh? ;-)

  • otto #9 10 years ago

    leave that annoying halfling

    Halflings. I hate halflings. Minging little hairy buggers. Seriously, faced with a choice between recruiting a buxom level two elven bardette and a level six stunted halfling überthief, you'd still choose the Elf Vixen, wouldn't you?

  • Whizzo #10 10 years ago

    you'd still choose the Elf Vixen
    Do you really need to ask otto? :-D

  • skalmanxl #11 10 years ago

    Already spending your money to-be then, huh? ;-)

    Traded off F1 2002 for the Xbox, it was collecting dust anyway.

  • Slim #12 10 years ago

    The reviews kind of on the ball, but I think you missed why the single player sucks a bit. It sucks because the editor is weak. It has to be weak to make it easy to use. Now, if the designers of the game were constrained enough by it to make the single player game suck, what hope is there for the community?

    There's a limit to what you can do with square tiles. NWN is a huge dissapointment.

    And I can't believe you said mixed bag once again, Gestalt, are you taking the piss?

  • Gestalt #13 10 years ago

    I honestly didn't have any problems with the tile system in the single player campaign - the world doesn't feel as square and blocky as something like, for example, Arcanum, which was just horrific. In the editor it can be a bit of a pain at times, because it does limit what you can do, and the editor seems to have been dumbed down for Joe Newbie to some extent rather than for someone who knows what they're doing. So there are things like the randomisation of tiles, with no way to manually control which version of the tile you get short of clicking erase on it over and over again until you get the one you want. Bit annoying.

    Oh, and I haven't used the phrase "mixed bag" since my news story about America's Army on July 4th. :p
    Edited by 1 at 31/07/02 @ 12:26

  • Whizzo #14 10 years ago

    So is Northbridge where the possible Eurogamer server is going to be set?

  • Gestalt #15 10 years ago

    Yeah, I've got the town, the sewers beneath it, the keep and a pub done so far. Still need to do the general store and the temple at least before it's ready to test, and also the town looks like the set of The Omega Man at the moment because I haven't got any NPCs wandering around yet. ;)

  • Whizzo #16 10 years ago

    the town looks like the set of The Omega Man at the moment
    As long as you don't pack it full of vampires for the full effect!

    Not having done very much with the editor at the moment, what is the performance like of the town? It seems to be a pretty open area with a fair amount of buildings about, would this cause problems on slower pcs/connection speeds perhaps?

  • Slim #17 10 years ago

    http:/ /www.google.com/search?q=%22mixed+bag%22+site%3Aeurogamer.ne t&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&as_qdr=all

    27 instances of 'mixed bag' on eurogamer.

    I think its very blocky, especially the outdoor regions. Especially when compared to the likes of BG:DA on the ps2, which has windy passages and nice curvey stuff. The repetitiveness that comes with the editors inflexability might strike you if you play it more. Every campagn follows the same structure...Lets go north. Nothing there, try east. Oh, lets go south. The real evil must be west then, lets go! Blocky, even on the top level. Such a shame compared to the companies fine history of non-linier rpg loverlyness.
    Edited by 1 at 31/07/02 @ 12:44

  • Slim #18 10 years ago

    Wideboy, baldurs gate 1&2, Icewind Dale and planescape were based on ad&d rules yet worked very well in real time. NWN just feels dumbed down though, I think thats mainly becuase of the teleporting and the lack of a party. The game also seems to be very low on unique items compared to previous games, and there's virtually no interaction with the backgrounds compared to others from Bioware. Odd, you'd think a 3d game would allow more background interaction.

  • Gestalt #19 10 years ago

    "27 instances of 'mixed bag' on eurogamer"

    The top two hits are both quotes from interviews, and the first page of results include a couple from Tom, one from Martin, and one from a former freelancer. :p And 27 uses over the space of three years ain't that bad.

  • rauper Verified Managing Director, Eurogamer Network #20 10 years ago

    http:/ /www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&as_qdr=al l&q=%22fired+-ed%22+site%3Aeurogamer.net

    Heheh

  • Whizzo #21 10 years ago

    also seems to be very low on unique items compared to previous games
    Can't say I had a problem with unique items, I found loads of different named unique items. It's a pity that my favourite unique item I actually bought in a shop, "The Dagger Of Chaos", a truely marvellous great sword, bloody expensive but my fighter's weapon of choice until the end of the game.

    It's just as well the inventory system was weight based though, having 3 long swords, 2 maces, a very good longbow, 2 great swords and half a dozen magic bags/bags of holding my character was a walking branch of "Fighters 'R' Us"!

  • skalmanxl #22 10 years ago

    Blame rauper.

  • mike_sot #23 10 years ago

    Well... NeverWinter Nights IS a fairly good game... i bought it before reading any reviews, and i haven't regretted it, mainly because i am a RPG freak.
    But i agree with all you guys that the biggest dissapointment was the total lack of a party and the lack of any customization for your henchman.
    BG2 rules big time!!!

    PS. In the night when all is quite i can still hear "Oh! i can pick that open easy." - shudders-

  • Whizzo #24 10 years ago

    "Oh! i can pick that open easy."
    Sharwyn's "Let me try" wasn't too annoying but when she would say "Done and done" got on my nerves a bit when she picked a lock. Especially when I had already bashed the chest/door that she was picking the lock on. I still don't know why I didn't tell her not to bother picking locks though...

  • Slim #25 10 years ago

    Of course, if eurogamers search box worked, we wouldn't have to use google :-)

    Picking locks: mostly pointless, easier & quicker to just bash/fireball things.

  • otto #26 10 years ago

    lol @ the google searches :D

    especially the one that threw up Cyndi Rauper

  • otto #27 10 years ago

    Most frequent spelling mistake ;)

  • otto #28 10 years ago

    I ain't finished with this by a long chalk. One for skal: pants

    *chuckles*

  • brokenkey #29 10 years ago

    Is NW the first non MS simulator type PC game to be sold in GAME stores for £40?

  • Mr_Sleep #30 10 years ago

    @otto, LOL :D

  • Whizzo #31 10 years ago

    Most frequent spelling mistake
    The trouble with the word separate it just looks more correct when you spell it wrong!

  • otto #32 10 years ago

    One for Tom: baited still outweighs bated. ;)

    OK I'll stop now, you can take your finger off the zap button... :)

  • AOFanboi #33 10 years ago

    Actually, you can have one henchman, one familiar and one summoned creature, for a party of four. "Real" parties are for multiplayer anyway.

    Everyone owe it to themselves to go through the game with a 8 Int half-breed, though. :-)

  • Sucram #34 10 years ago

    As I said in my review Neverwinter
    could be great but out of the box it just isn't that exciting and is filled with
    design flaws.

  • Gestalt #35 10 years ago

    Subtle plug. ;)

  • dinx #36 10 years ago

    well while we r all being so pedantic... sucram u could try using a few well placed full stops in ur review it mite just make the first para readable :p

  • Nobby #37 10 years ago

    "Review - we dig through the hype to find out if Bioware's latest effort is worth your hard earned Euros"

    Ah, but is it worth my hard earnt pounds?

    And why hasn't this review been posted on every NWN fansite resulting in a huge outcry from every bearded D&D fan in the world?*

    Somethingawful did a spoof review of this and got about 100 flame mails. But eurogamer has comments!

    Anyway, I shan't be buying it. I bought Baldurs Gate and tried to convince myself that I love RPG games, but if they aren't online (thus not really being RPGs) or Japanese, they're not for me, as I'll get bored within a day. Although this is, I suppose, online. But it's got not Massively Multiplayer enough for me. And the DM will probably have a fetish for gnomes or khobolds or whatever.*

    *I apologise for my generalisations to everyone bearded and/or a D&D fan.
    Edited by 1 at 31/07/02 @ 20:27

  • otto #38 10 years ago

    So someone tell me, is it worth my getting for my P600 TNT2? Or will it chug?

  • Whizzo #39 10 years ago

    Or will it chug?
    As long as you have the RAM (96Mb for 9X, 128Mb for 2K/XP) you slightly exceed the minimum spec. However as we all know minimum specs are crap I would say it'd probably be on the sluggish side on your PC otto.

  • otto #40 10 years ago

    Well, I have the RAM. Must get around to upgrading my video card one day soon too. I'll get NWN if I feel I'm being left out when you lot get stuck into Gestalt's dungeon. :)

  • [Alt][F4] #41 10 years ago

    *sharpens his blade and drools at Otto* :)
    (good review btw, how DO you escape the hype ? hehe)

  • Slim #42 10 years ago

    Still, nowhere near as good as Baldurs 2.

  • Sucram #43 10 years ago

    Full stops are for wimps.

  • hulahoops #44 10 years ago

    u could try using a few well placed full stops

    I actually thought the punctuation was pretty OK, but there you go.

  • mentat #45 10 years ago

    Otto:
    You should be alright with that spec. I'm running on a p2 450 with 384 Mb ram and running Win 2k.
    It's fairly smooth - chugs occasionally, the only time you'll notice it is when the game unpacks modules, it took a while on mine last night on the EG server, whereas Whizzo fair whizzed along.
    Put it this way, the game's perfectly playable on my machine.

  • otto #46 10 years ago

    Cheers mentat. Got to resist temptation - can't afford it - nnggg

  • UncleLou #47 10 years ago

    mentat, what kind of graphics card have you got? Maybe I could get it running on my gf's comp. I should tell her it's like Diablo II, she might even buy it herself then :-)

  • Whizzo #48 10 years ago

    whereas Whizzo fair whizzed along.
    The unpacking of the module on mine was the same speed as it is in SP but then my PC is rather quicker than Mentat's.

  • Koedellan #49 10 years ago

    otto - I can report NWN running well on 'low' graphics setting on a TNT2 (leaving two settings, 'fast' and 'fastest' to slip down to at need, should RAM/processor prove insufficient). In XP, though, the Detonator drivers are a must - the default XP drivers for the TNT2 are quite awful.

  • otto #50 10 years ago

    Thanks Koedellan - if Whizzo & co keep having all that fun in Northbridge I may be forced to join in... :p

  • mentat #51 10 years ago

    @ UncleLou,

    That's running on a Geforce 2 MX (32Mb) card.

  • Rankin #52 8 years ago

    heh, retard