Neverwinter Nights 2 massive expansion Storm of Zehir takes us back to the good old days of Baldurs Gate.
Admittedly, there is no “Boo”, and the funny NPC characters like Minsc (and Boo!) do not make a re-appearance, but the game and story is still very rich and very playable.
My first thoughts about NWN2 when it first came out we’re very disappointing, and so I purchased SoZ with some trepidation. It was only because of my good friend Arcane, who promised me that the expansions seemed to fix a lot of the graphic engine bugs and nightmare playability issues - that I decided to get my grubby hands on a copy from my local Game store.
I was immidiately impressed - they really have improved the game overall. A lot of the annoying issues and interface issues we’re gone, and I was immidiately thrusted into a rich story line.
Another boon was the return of the Party! I was able to create upto 4 players from scratch and launch into the game within about 20 minutes. What I learned from some reading was that my main character needed to be treated carefully during creation to take full advantage of the game’s new Overland Map system. Picking a rogue so I could get as many skill points as possible to put into the appropriate overland map skills (like Survival, Spot and the like) I decided to make my main character a ranged attacker. I followed him up with a Barbarian meat shield and a Dwarven fighter to make up my front melee line. I chose a Drow Wizard for my caster to back up my rogue-bowman.
The story is indeed rich - and a lot of fun. The voice acting and editing has been much improved. Gone are the awkwardly spaced lines from the original game. The character dialogues we’re smooth and realistic, and done very well. There’s still some work needed on the text dialogue options - a lot of it is very cheesy (we Aussies do hate our cheese) and squarely aimed at the younger audience. Another new thing I liked is that each of your party core members can also engage in the dialogue. When a better response line is available (due to skills and attributes) then a icon shows you should switch speaker which is handled fairly elegantly through the interface - making the whole dialogue experience all the more richer.
The real differences are in the Overland Map system however. When you leave the starting area and town, you are placed on a large map area. You move your party in real time through across the map, the speed at which you can travel depends again on your skills, characters and the type of surface. Road travel is fast and safe, moving through a dense jungle however leaves you prone to being surprised. This is where your survival and other skills come in handy - allowing you to avoid combat with almost certain death spawns, while sneaking up on others.
I wouldnt say that it’s perfect - and I still prefer the REAL travel enjoyed from well build NWN 1 Persistant Worlds - but it’s a big improvement on the “insta-travel” we we’re given in the original campaign of NWN2. My main complaint though is that the overland map itself is not that huge - it only took me roughly 20 minutes to go to the four corners and then start working my inside of it. There’s lots of hidden areas you can discover (again, skill related) which means lots of side adventures.
These adveture spots though tend to be very small. Most of the areas I found are single map areas - usually a small cave full of Batiri (jungle goblins) or the odd sqaure tomb. They are very well constructed, the game builders have pulled all stops in the details, but most of these adventure spots are easily completed in 5 minutes or so.
I remember Baldur’s Gate adventure areas being much larger - some of them spanning many gaming sessions. Again, it’s better than what we had in the original storyline though.
All in all I have been having fun with NWN2 SoZ. There’s a few new classes of course, and some races, but the big improvements are to the game mechanics, interface and the new overland map system.
Okay, so I started this by saying that it’s a return to Baldur’s Gate - I don’t actually think that’s exactly true. Those of you who played BG and the expansions through many times will agree with me that it was one of the finest RPG single player games ever made. NWN2 comes a moderate 2nd place, and it’s well worth a look in if you’re hankering for some good RPG action and need a break from your current MMO.
