Neverwinter Nights 2 = Piece of crap

quarryman

so I finally got around to installing this last night.

After a long install process I had to sit through the patch update. I think there were about 7 patches applied. One after the other. No single patch to get it up to date. I actually went online to get them downloaded while the game installed but no, you have to use the in-game installer. You can actually download the patches but you need to get 6 or 7 and then apply them in the correct order etc.

So I'm thinking with this number of fixes it must be pretty stable (I had heard complaints of performance issues). Plus the fact it is a 2 year old game.

Loaded it up and it really was so poor. The selected resolution was 1024x768, i actually couldn't raise it higher without getting a big drop in framerate. With everything set to medium I was seeing about 15fps. (I'm playing on 2.2 core duo 8600gt 2GB).

Then there was the camera. No matter how much i tried to get into a comfortable viewing angle, as soon as i moved the character around i was blocked my some piece of scenery. A constant battle to keep the everything in view.

Even after all that the game plays like a toolset mod. Everything is generic and has the feeling of objects placed on suitably selected terrain. "Insert crate here" etc.

Anyway, its crap. Was actually considering getting the expansion "Mask of the betrayer" while I was buying this so i could go from one to other but not worth it now.

Gilgamesh

wow, has it really been two years since the game came out? seems like last week

have to say I haven't had problems with it whatsoever, okay it is a resource hog, bigtime.
but I was running it with comfortable 32fps at a 2560 res and everything turned on to max.

have a 8800GTX Quad core Proc and 4 GB of RAM, was also running it on Vista

quarryman

actually i just checked there, more like a year and a half old.

Kiith

I actually enjoyed NWN2. The game was horribly optimised, and its nowhere near as good as the baldur gate series for character interaction and story, but it was still quite good. The main campaign is a fairly standard story, but the Mask of the Betrayer is supposed to be a very good story.

quarryman

i might see if i can find a tweak guide and give another try.

quarryman

wow, this game has a HUGE amount of options for tweaking. To be honest, if I can get it running to the quality it is supposed to look I might not bother at all. some of the screenshots of before and after certain effects are turned on/off just show how good the game can actually look: http://www.tweakguides.com/NWN2_1.html


this is interesting. probably the nail in the coffin for this game with me.

Neverwinter Nights 2's engine is not optimized ('multithreaded') for dual core CPUs. As such the game only uses the equivalent of one CPU at any time, and can't be forced to fully utilize both for better performance. Worse still, the developers have stated that the game may experience issues or reduced performance on dual core CPUs (See the game's Readme.rtf file).

Attol

OP, I have identical specs to you.

*Looks mournfully at unopened Chaotic Evil edition NWN2 that was bought yesterday*

Now I'm worried. Should I return it or not before I open it....

Canis Lupus

Have to agree with the OP apart from the system requirements as I never had that much trouble myself however the camera was completely and utterly crap and the UI was also horrendous. I just kept getting annoyed by switching characters etc to try and line up a queue of actions in a fight.

NWN2 got uninstalled after about 2 days if I remember correctly. However temper my comments with the fact that I still love the BGII engine for RPGs and think 3d was actually a step back for the genre.

(except for KOTOR which managed to be great altho still had flaws)

Branoic

Yeah, I too uninstalled this after 2 or 3 brief play sessions. It ran fine for me, but God the camera infuriated me. I had much better things to spend my time doing than wrestling with a god-awful ingame camera.

Maximilian

Yeah the camera was crap. I played this for a while after it came out, got bored and/or frustrated and wandered off.

Jilm

I've just played through NWN2 and MOTB expansion for the 2nd time.

Despite the camera and various minor bugs, it's worth sticking with if you're a fan of the genre. I haven't enjoyed a fantasy RPG as much since Baldurs Gate 2 which remains one of my favourite games.

DingChavez

I don't remember any problem with the camera. Although I tweaked the camera system the moment I started the game.

TheDoc

if your a fan of the series youd know the REAL fun in this game is when serious people make really great worlds...it was the original and free mmo when nwn1 came out...


get yourself a great online server and the fun will come, ive being enjoying it immesnly, it was dire at first but some serious patching fixed it slightly.

Pugsley

Much prefared NWN2 to the first one, had great fun with it despite my age old rig at the time chugging along like a dead goat being beaten with a stick, and about a half second mouse lag, I still found the game immensely enjoyable. Have been planning to reinstall it on my new rig.

Zillah

Oh God, I had forgotten this travesty.

Pros:
- The camera actually worked ok for me, I don't remember that being a problem.
- Performance was fine on my single core 3.2

Cons:
- Game breaking bug completely ruined everything twice. For example, the final boss refused to spawn for me no matter what I did.
- Sickeningly dull storyline.
- All but one or two of the NPCs made me want to rip my brain out they were so annoying.
- Bug bug buggy shite bugs everywhere freakin everywhere.