Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition

Forget about playing the game the way you want- either you know the 'correct' builds or suffer.

Умели же раньше делать хорошие игры, от которых получаешь эйфорию и детский восторг.

Hey kiddo, Handsome Jack here... and I just played Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, and apparently somebody decided that the best way to enjoy fantasy adventuring is to give you an enormous rulebook, a character sheet, several hundred spells, and then send you into a world where everyone apparently needs you to solve their problems. Fantastic. I've found my people. You create your character, pick your class, choose your abilities, and spend an absolutely unreasonable amount of time deciding how intelligent you want to be. Obviously, I maxed Charisma. I'm handsome. I don't need evidence. Then you arrive in Neverwinter and immediately discover that the city is having approximately every problem imaginable. Plague, monsters, cultists, assassins, political nonsense, magical disasters... And somehow everyone's first thought is: “Get that new adventurer.” That's right. Me. Apparently I'm the city's emergency response department. The gameplay is a fascinating combination of adventure, combat, exploration, and paperwork disguised as character management. You've got weapons, armor, spells, feats, skills, companions, inventory, quests, dialogue choices... At some point I stopped playing an RPG and started operating a small medieval corporation. And I love it. The character building is probably the best part. There are so many ways to build your character that you can make almost any ridiculous combination work. Warrior? Sure. Wizard? Absolutely. Rogue? Fine. A heavily armored psychopath who can cast spells and talk his way through everything? Now you're thinking like a CEO. The world is packed with quests too. You can help people, investigate mysteries, fight monsters, explore dungeons, or simply wander around until you accidentally become involved in some enormous conspiracy. Which happens approximately every fifteen minutes. And the companions are great. Of course, every adventuring party needs at least one person who makes questionable decisions, one person who talks too much, and one person who is clearly going to cause a catastrophic incident before the end of the week. Basically: Management. The Enhanced Edition also makes a big difference if you're coming to it today. It's an old game, and you can absolutely feel that in the interface, visuals, and combat. But the underlying systems are still incredibly deep, and the sheer amount of content is ridiculous. And then you discover the community content. Oh, kiddo. There are campaigns. Modules. Custom adventures. Multiplayer servers. Entire new experiences people have built around the game. You could spend more time playing other people's adventures than the actual game. That's not content. That's an unpaid workforce. And I approve. The biggest problem is that it can be intimidating. There is a LOT to learn, and if you aren't familiar with D&D rules, the game occasionally looks at you like: “Here are seventeen numbers. Figure it out.” Buddy. I'm busy. But once you understand it, there's something incredibly satisfying about watching your character become more powerful, finding better equipment, unlocking new abilities, and gradually turning into the ridiculous fantasy hero you wanted to create. 9/10, kiddo. Deep RPG systems, tons of freedom, great adventures, and enough community content to keep you occupied until the heat death of the universe. I'd give it a 10, but apparently I have to read a D&D rulebook before I can understand why my attack missed an enemy standing directly in front of me. That's unacceptable. At Hyperion, when an employee misses a target, we simply increase the size of the target. Problem solved.

Literally unplayable. I have tried multiple version of proton, I have tried modifying launch options. Either the game doesn't launch, or it crashes while waiting to load. I tried to get a refund from steam support but I spent so long troubleshooting it that they denied me a refund. GOG's Linux version works fine, it's just Steam. Do not buy here, buy from GOG.

It's NWN everything that needs to be said has been said

A wonderful little engine for playing seemingly endless amounts of community campaigns. However, I only played the original campaign which has it's issues, especially the extremely slow first chapter. If you get through it, you get a pretty cozy fantasy story, and if you love the Forgotten Realms, you won't be disappointed, but I reckon I could have beaten a game with a lot less hours if I didn't have to practically force myself to play it during the first two chapters of the game. It most certainly feels like a step back from the lively city of Baldur's Gate 2 or the untamed and dangerous wilderness of BG1, but I still had my fun in this little "proof of concept" campaign. Expansions are better from what I hear and so are many custom campaigns, so if you get filtered by the first chapter's MMORPG-like tedium, maybe give those a chance before giving up on the game. Still, I had fun and at the end of the day I'm just happy to have more pre-5E forgotten realms games when D&D still had a cozy feel.

Played this at launch in 2002, played with randoms online, friends, family, and it has a consistently great story. The mechanics for classic DnD are wonderful, world building was way ahead of its time, no microtransactions to play any part of this little corner of the Faerun universe. Just a bunch of folks working on an excellent game, story, and immersive atmosphere with whatever they had at the time.