Venture
3362
For those who picked up NWN, multiplayer (as mentioned here) is where it really shines. If you want an old school D&D-style DM’d game with a small party, there is still a decent group of folks scheduling and playing DM’d adventures over at neverwinterconnections.com. I was a regular there some time ago (DM’d a two year campaign, actually), and now pop in to say hi from time to time. It seems like they still have some legs, and are probably eager for some new players and DM’s.
Quitch
3363
I’m playing through the NWN official campaign, against all warnings, because I must complete all Bioware properties.
Dear God this campaign is bland. Cleared my first district but it’s like a wave of NPCs with repeating dialogue trees, a tiny party offering no meaningful combat options, no party interjections, and not one character I give a damn about. I was also going to give someone hell for dropping twist spoilers in this thread, my blindness to such things has always increased my enjoyment of these types of games, but damn this game is dropping heavy-handed hints all over the place.
The base campaign for NWN really was quite terrible.
kerzain
3365
It gets better (but not much) about halfway through the campaign, once you get out of the cities a bit more.
So.
When IWD and IWD2 came out, I think I played both about a third to a half of the way through without finishing. Now’s my chance to play through both and finish.
Question: any particular reason to play both of them in order–in other words, any reason to play IWD and finish it before taking on IWD2?
kerzain
3367
None I can think of. I played both of them all the way through, don’t recall any particular connections that ruin either game without the other.
The second one is a bit faster paced.
kerzain’s right; there is no mechanical or story-based reason to play 1 before 2.
You may or may not find 1 harder to go back to if you play 2 first, on account of going 3e -> 2e. But that’s partly a matter of taste.
draxen
3369
I’ve never played either of the Icewind Dale games and think I’ll give them a whirl. Are there any must have mods that I should use apart from the high resolution mod?
Thanks.
peterb
3370
I enjoyed IWD much more than IWD2, by which I mean I didn’t even bother to finish IWD2. That’s the best reason I can think of.
IWD2 did have some excellent “set piece” huge battles. But there’s no compelling “you’ll ruin it!” reason to do one before the other - you can pick whichever you want.
Don’t forget all the chests with nothing of note in them.
Ha ha. I did forget about those. Man, that was irritating. The whole campaign was irritating. Long and talky, a forest of dialog trees.
The user created content for NWN far outshined the base campaign, and there’s a ton of it out there. The add-ons Bioware released later also were much more entertaining than the base content. I’m pretty sure that’s what Bioware intended, as they always talked about how great the build tools and DM functions in NWN were and how enterprising groups of players could use it as a virtual D&D game. I played like that with some friends for several months and it was great.
NWN2 has a MUCH more solid and interesting campaign, and the expansions for it are fantastic.
That reminded me of a moment from an old, old D&D gaming session.
“You open the chest and find … a ball of lint.”
“I cast detect magic.”
Much conversation ensued, hearts were broken, dice were rolled, friendships ended and renewed, and there wasn’t a dry eye left in the house (well, to be clear: a 2-liter exploded right after that last sentence).
The Magical Ball 'o Lint became a staple in our games forever more.
Quitch
3375
I don’t know which campaign you played but it surely can’t be the official one. Talky? I wish. There’s repeat dialogue coming out the game’s ass, the “trees” almost always lead you down one path, and most of the time it’s a linear corridor fight or choosing which door to open to start which fight first.
I wish there was more talky.
And the one companion limit is bloody annoying. There is so much locked stuff that not bringing someone who handles locks makes for a very irritating experience, or tedious waits while we bash stuff down. I don’t understand, and this is why I didn’t buy it back in the day after BG2, why they put such a limit on companions.
At least I can see now why you were able to swap companions at will in KOTOR. If you lose a fight you have but two choices:
- Use more potions
- Use another companion
2 is very tedious due to the trek involved, but 1 is less likely to help than the act of reloading and hoping this time they don’t get that lucky critical which gives you no reaction space. Low level combat in BG wasn’t quite so annoying, possibly because I had far more flexibility in positioning, more companions to swap around while others healed, more summons to act as a meat shield and bows were more powerful. In NWN you’re a bad die roll away from death so you end up using the Stone of Recall to jump back and forth from fights midway through if they’re too much.
It is partly my fault though for letting improved henchmen use its default install which gives monsters the chance to create and use healing potions.
3e D&D was not meant to be played as a 1 or possibly 2 player game. The campaign in Neverwinter Nights is especially rough because of this, IMO.
D&D of any edition is designed with a group experience in mind, making NWN1’s decision to give you one controllable character and maybe an AI NPC or two appalling. It’s easily the worst thing about the game because it hurts every bit of content ever made for the engine. I grant you that it may hearken back to the multiplayer intent for the game, but it fucks singleplayer up something fierce.
Which was a good thing that the expansions both did, added better control for the characters. Extra party members in the latter expansion, right…?
Nope (well, the 2nd expansion, shadows of urinetide, might have. I honestly don’t recall). There were mods that added more party members and there were scenarios built around that. By that I mean, single player scenarios giving you control of a larger party. Of course there were multi scenarios as well.
One of the reasons I stopped in IWD was that I killed a monster that was part of a quest before getting the quest, and then when I went back an area to get that quest I couldn’t. Here’s hoping they fixed that.
I don’t remember for sure, but I believe in the second expansion, you could indeed get two companions instead of the one from the OC and the first expansion.
