Ironworks Gaming Forum - Someone reviews NWN2....

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(Hmmmmmm)

Found this review on the NWN2 forums.

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Before i rant to much i must defend obsidian abit and say that i am a picky player! There are not too many games i enjoy, but NWN1 was one of them, and i played it down to the bone. (Ofcourse BG, BG2 too hehe). But when i finds a game simply not playable at all, with all the pre-hype, one has to say something. And, excuse my english, i am a non-english speaker, so bear with me.

Ok here goes:

BETATESTERS:

What were you doing all the time, you cant have played this game much, got bored so fast you just forgot to mention any of the stuff to devteam? Or were you told the core engine was already finished so you couldnt rant about it? Or there maybe were no betatesters at all?

1. GAME INTERFACE

Well, what can i say. Honestly, this game isnt playable at all unless youre below 10 years old and just like watching a computer screen. Youll nessle up with the odd commandings again and again, its like learning MAC for the first time as an noobish pc user.
I havent played a game that has so unlogical, lack of, and problematic in-game interface ever, and i have played alot of games in many many years. Trust me.

Example 1: Your party is about to fight, and you find a container with 3 clubs. You ACUALLY HAVE TO SELECT EACH partymember, and manually pick up every club, then open up inventory and then manually equip the char with it. lool. Pick up a club 3 times instead of handing one over.
Amazing.

Example 2: Run around in circles with your A or D key, you can in full speed principally run around a quarter coin, so IF youre a WASD player, get used to run in oppositing halfcircles alot..

Example 3: You move about in the world in a kinda stressed slow-motion. Suddenly combat starts, and the enemies rushes against you so fast that if you dont press pause within a nano-second, youre dead. From slowmotion to superman-speed just to fast. Ive experienced this with no lag at all, so i can just confirm this is not a graphic issue.

There so much more... only a scrap on the surface my friends and i cant go on too much, would bore your eyes too much.

2. VOICE ACTING

Sorry dudes, its been removed. Yes true, you can never anymore in a multiplayer game say Greetings or Goodbye etc to a fellow player. The V voice submenus in nwn1 is thereas no more. To me this was a major part of nwn1. Hehe, incredible!

3. GRAPHICS

NWN1 is, acually alot better. My dwarf i made in NWN2 looks like a little baby boy, apparently game-designers read alot of comic books, since this is very close to that, just uglier.

CAMERA:

Acually, i can live with it, nuff said on the forum about it, but whats bother me is this in combo with the utterly bad gameinterface makes the game unplayable, unless you like spending time on doing things you wanted to do in 1 sec (and surely did in nwn1 in 1 sec), now takes 10 sec if you learn everything beforehand.

MULTIPLAYER:

I play alot of games online, acually i practically never play solo, so i know my internetconnection rocks in that part, since i have no problems with it.

In NWN2, be surprised if you will be online for more than 1 minute, i didnt manage that, and i tried for about 2 hours. Disconnections all the time.

No voiceacting as i said, oh yeah you can scream "attack" and "heal me" still, but its simply not enough.

C O N C L U S I O N

*Closes the dvd box and stuffs it on the shelf*.

Well, this one is gonna suck dust until things improve. And as another guy said here on forum, the patches cant fix these things its in the CORE ENGINE. No scripter in the world can makes these things go away.

I am afraid nwn2 made nwn die.. The community will shrink so much theyre gonna ask what the hell happened..

Good luck you still filled with optimism.

If there are going to be a NWN3, i hope bioware leads it, then ill get it blindly, but no obsidian games for me, sorry.

I feel very bad in telling all this cause i know some people at obsidian has worked soo hard soo long with this, but they have worked too hard in developing and just way too little in playing it, thus we have the finished product as it is..

I am truly sorry Obsidian. Had to tell.
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Seems lacking in many areas... I'll have my copy in a few days. It's shipping.

Let us know Mems how you like it.

Well I just got mine so i'll see if it's true or not.

So a few minor engine troubles(wussies) and we do get, finally, a decent RPG with dialog and choices and all that shizzle.

We haven't had that since BG.

And the GUI is XML, so I can gut the current GUI and replace it with a better one. Hell, I can make it look like NWN1's GUI, but instead of gold outlining, I'll change it a bit for NWN2.

That's not quite making me worry. Seems it's mainly forgiveable/irrelevant stuff, far as I'm concerned.

However:

Quote:

And as another guy said here on forum, the patches cant fix these things its in the CORE ENGINE.

Quote:

And the GUI is XML, so I can gut the current GUI and replace it with a better one. Hell, I can make it look like NWN1's GUI, but instead of gold outlining, I'll change it a bit for NWN2.

No! Core engine! No one can do anything!

[ 11-02-2006, 07:52 PM: Message edited by: Gnarf ]

Here's another review, from Gamespot. They gave it 8.6. Let's try and keep all the reviews here for easy access.

Quote:

To say that the expectations are high for Neverwinter Nights 2 would be a massive understatement. Not only is it the sequel to one of the best role-playing games ever to bear the Dungeons & Dragons license, but it's also been developed by some of the creative talent behind such other revered role-playing games as Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. The good news is that Neverwinter Nights 2 lives up to its pedigree by delivering a captivating story full of exciting twists and characters who you'll grow attached to out of fondness or, perhaps even better, complete loathing. It's not without a few frustrating technical shortcomings, but overall Neverwinter Nights 2 is a great role-playing adventure that just about anyone can enjoy.
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As great as the story is in Neverwinter Nights 2, it's difficult to convey without spoiling the plot; but suffice it to say that it will keep your interest throughout the entire campaign--which, at around 50 hours long, is no small feat. You begin the game by creating a character. You can choose a race, subrace, appearance, class, moral alignment, and even a voice for your hero. After you create your character, you are taken on a journey that will see you rise from your beginnings as a humble peasant to become one of the most respected and elite heroes of Neverwinter. It's a long journey that involves the awakening of an arcane and unstable evil power that only a chosen savior (guess who?) can banish. As cliché as it sounds, the story reaches far beyond the usual good-versus-evil plot. You'll get a heavy dose of political treachery; shattered, shifting, and solidified alliances; ethereal mysticism; dark secrets; and much, much more. In addition to the main story, the world is full of side stories that you can explore or ignore as you see fit. It all adds up to make this feel like a real world with real history and very real inhabitants, but beyond even that, the game does a great job of making you feel like an integral part of that world, rather than some insular hero who comes out of nowhere to save the day and then disappears.
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A large part of what makes the story so interesting is that you play an active role in the way it unfolds. As you talk to all of the characters in the world, you're given several choices in how to respond, and your responses often have a very apparent effect on the progression of the story. When speaking to someone, you might be given the choice to lie, intimidate, or simply ask questions to get the information or response you're looking for. The choices aren't black-and-white, though, and you'll often come across some difficult moral dilemmas that make your part in the conversation much more interesting. Your responses have both immediate and delayed effects. If you tell a goblin chieftain that you're sick of hearing him talk and would rather paint the walls with his blood, you can expect that you'll have an immediate fight on your hands. But sometimes the effects are more subtle. If you are forced to make a decision and one of your party members tries to convince you to take a certain course of action, you can comply or simply tell her to keep quiet. Either way, your influence over that person will be affected. It isn't much of an issue at first, but repeatedly going against an ally's wishes can eventually turn him or her against you. The interactive dialogue is well written and so engaging that you'll probably want to save your game often, so you can reload and repeat conversations just to see what will happen if you choose your words differently.
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Even though you create a character who serves as the central hero for the tale, there's a great and varied cast of supporting characters who will join you along the way. You can have up to three supporting characters in your party, in addition to the occasional non-player or special character who will tag along with you. With a quick click you can take direct control over any of your party members at any time (as long as they're conscious), which adds some welcome variety to the single-player experience because you aren't pigeonholed into playing a single class for the entire game. By creating a well-rounded party of casters, fighters, rogues, and rangers, you'll have access to a huge array of skills and abilities.
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For the most part you'll use those skills and abilities to combat all kinds of monsters, people, spirits, and animals that always seem to get in your way. The combat takes place in real time, but you have the option to pause the game and assign up to five successive actions to each of your characters. Then it's just a matter of hitting the space bar to unpause the game and watching your characters go to work. The most frequent battles don't usually require that level of management, though, because you'll almost always come out on top by just rushing into a mob of enemies and letting the artificial intelligence do the work. If you do happen to lose all your health you'll be temporarily knocked out (despite the cobwebbed corpse icon that replaces your character portrait). As long as one of your characters survives the battle your party will revive, and then you can use the rest function to fully replenish your health in just a few seconds.
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Unfortunately, the AI in Neverwinter Nights 2 isn't always reliable. If you're in an open area you can usually count on your companions to stick by you and back you up in a fight, but when you're exploring the narrow hallways and labyrinthine corridors of the games' numerous, sprawling dungeons, your characters will sometimes get lost or stuck, or will just freeze up for no apparent reason. Needless to say, it's extremely frustrating when you're in the middle of a heated battle and your supporting characters are just standing there watching you get trounced. At least if that happens you can pause the game and assign actions to spur your lifeless cohorts to action, but when you have to struggle just to get your characters to follow you, you'll find your patience wearing thin.
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Don't worry, though--all that work fighting mob after mob of nefarious foes does pay off. Primarily you'll be vanquishing evil for the sake of completing quests. There are a ton of quests in the game, most of which you aren't actually required to complete in order to beat the game. The quest design is interesting and usually fits well within the context of the story. There are some quests that just require you to find or deliver a certain item, but the required quests are usually much more involved than that. You'll be asked to do everything from saving damsels in distress to answering riddles and even acting as a trial attorney. By completing quests you earn experience points, and when you have enough experience points your characters will gain a level. By gaining levels you develop basic skills like strength, dexterity, and intelligence, and you also learn new feats and spells. You also gain experience points for defeating enemies, but the vast majority of your experience comes from finishing quests, and all of your characters earn experience simultaneously, whether they're actively in your party or not.
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In addition to experience points, you'll collect copious amounts of treasure that you can use or sell for gold. Since your weapons and armor greatly affect your stats and performance in battle, you'll always be on the lookout for new and exotic treasures that will help you squeeze a little bit more damage out of each blow you land on your enemies. There's also an item synthesis system in Neverwinter Nights 2 that lets you collect ingredients and recipes and use them to create new, useful items, as long as your character is at the required skill level to do so. Still, you'll probably end up selling the vast majority of the loot you collect, rather than actually using it.
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The joy of looting is slightly diminished by the unnecessarily cumbersome interface. There's no way to sort your items by type, so you'll end up having to sift through four pages of cluttered, often barely distinguishable icons representing all of your items. To examine your items you have to right-click and select the option from a menu, which makes checking the stats on the new bastard sword you just picked up a bit more of a hassle than it should be. Interface issues like these have been addressed in numerous other role-playing games, so it feels a bit dated here.
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Neverwinter Nights 2 bears the official Dungeons & Dragons license, which is apparent right from the beginning of the game when you start reading about things like saving throws, will saves, modifiers, armor class, and die rolls. Everything from creatures and items to character classes and abilities are all taken from version 3.5 of Dungeons & Dragons. If you've never rolled a 20-sided die in your life then you might be a bit confused by all the stats and jargon in this game, but if you give it a bit of time you shouldn't have a problem getting a general idea of how everything works. After all, the same principle of "bigger numbers are better" that works in just about every role-playing game still applies here. If you're a D&D veteran, though, you'll feel right at home here, and you aren't likely to find a more accurate and faithful adaptation of the Dungeons & Dragons rule set in any other video game.
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Like Dungeons & Dragons, Neverwinter Nights 2 emphasizes multiplayer interaction and creative development. You can play the game online or on a local network with up to three other players. The single-player campaign is available to play cooperatively, although you'll need to start from the beginning because you can't add new players into an existing single-player game. You can set options such as a level cap, item restrictions, and whether or not to allow players to damage each other. The in-game server browser makes it easy to find or set up a game, and although you need a BioWare Community account to log in, it's free and easy to set up, and it just requires an e-mail address. We did notice some slight lag when playing multiplayer on a local network, but not enough to cause any real problems.
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If you've had enough of the main story campaign, you can create your own and share them online. Included with Neverwinter Nights 2 is an editor program so robust that it's seemingly limited only by your own imagination. It will take a good deal of time and effort to start building your dream campaign, but the possibilities are there if you're determined and moderately savvy with similar software. Given the large and active community of module creators for the original Neverwinter Nights game, the opportunity is there for the sequel to be just as interminable as its predecessor.
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Most of the shortcomings of Neverwinter Nights 2 are technical in nature. First off, the game has some fairly steep system requirements, but that horsepower won't get you much. Even on a system that exceeds the recommended specs, with all of the options maxed out, there are some rough spots that make this game look dated. In some of the dialogue sequences the view switches to a zoomed-in, letterbox perspective. It's a nice effect that makes the cutscenes a bit more dramatic than small text windows, but getting in that close also reveals some blurry, low-resolution textures, jerky character animations, and frequent clipping. The game doesn't look bad by any means, and some of the level designs are genuinely interesting and fun to explore, but at the same time it's reasonable to expect the game to be a bit more pleasing on the eyes given its system requirements. When a character's beard is clipping right through his chest, or when he floats across the floor without moving his legs, the game just looks a little sloppy. That said, some of the spell effects are pretty spectacular, and when you're in a large battle with several casters it's like watching a pyrotechnics show.
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The most frustrating part of the presentation in Neverwinter Nights 2 is the camera. There are four different camera modes to choose from, but they all require almost constant adjustment to see what's going on. The camera will get stuck on a building or object or will just start tweaking out for no reason, which is incredibly annoying. The best option is to zoom the camera all the way out for a bird's-eye view. Even then you'll feel like you've found a barely workable solution rather than an ideal viewing angle. You'll eventually come to terms with the camera, but it's unnecessarily awkward.
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This game sounds much better than it looks. There's a ton of voiced dialogue in the game, and although some of the voices are annoying, all of the main characters sound great, and their respective voices lend each one a lot of personality. From the sinister-sounding evil wizard to the feisty young demon girl, the voices all sound appropriate and fitting. The music is excellent, with dramatic orchestrated tracks that sound as if they could be taken right from a big-budget Hollywood film. The music does a great job of setting an appropriately grandiose and bombastic backdrop for your adventure, without being overwhelming.
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If you're willing to look past a few relatively minor technical issues, you'll have a great time exploring the world of Neverwinter Nights 2. The excellent story, characters, and quests will appeal to your sense of adventure without getting overly convoluted. The many paths you can take through the lengthy single-player campaign are enough to make this game worth your money, but when you factor in the multiplayer and the editing tools you'll find that Neverwinter Nights 2 is a fantastic value and a thoroughly enjoyable game.
By Greg Mueller
Posted Nov 2, 2006 3:19 am GMT
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Click here for Gamespot review

[ 11-02-2006, 11:39 PM: Message edited by: Memnoch ]

Please tell me those screenshots from the gamespot review are from an early beta phase...

[ 11-03-2006, 12:43 AM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

Quote:

Originally posted by Ziroc:

Let us know Mems how you like it.

I haven't played it all that much yet, I've been browsing the net trying to find ways to improve my performance. It's very slow for me unless I dumb down virtually all the eye candy. Then it looks like something out of Ultima 5.

Going back to play a bit more now.

EVERYONE almost is saying even with a dual core MAXED overclocked system with the best video card and 2 gig of ram its choppy and slow as hell.

It's just BAD programming and design. There must be a memory leak too.

And I can run Battlefield 2142 with all setting MAXXED, and that game has higher requirements than Oblivion!

This is one big reason PC Games are dying. Dev's release unfinished crap.... :(

Quote:

Originally posted by Gnarf:
That's not quite making me worry. Seems it's mainly forgiveable/irrelevant stuff, far as I'm concerned.

However:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />And as another guy said here on forum, the patches cant fix these things its in the CORE ENGINE.

Yeah, that's right. Turning speeds can no longer be adjusted by any means, because that guy wrote 'core engine' in caps. Does anyone know if this based on anything other than random forumer's statements? I'm pretty certain it isn't common practice to refuse to touch certain pieces of the code when fixing things, and it's the stuff that's really far from the 'core engine' that surprise me if addressed in patches...

Edit: Just noticed that last post by Z, so:

Quote:

And the GUI is XML, so I can gut the current GUI and replace it with a better one. Hell, I can make it look like NWN1's GUI, but instead of gold outlining, I'll change it a bit for NWN2.

No! Core engine! No one can do anything! [/QUOTE]I have the toolset, and the 'demo' was basically the full game minus the game exe's. I looked at all the files, and you can indeed edit the GUI. I even messed with the xml. I would simply override the graphics--is anything is hardcoded, its the filenames... No biggie. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I can't work out how to use the bloody toolset. I can create an exterior area, but not an interior one. It just comes up black on the area screen.

Quote:

Originally posted by Ziroc:
EVERYONE almost is saying even with a dual core MAXED overclocked system with the best video card and 2 gig of ram its choppy and slow as hell.

It's just BAD programming and design. There must be a memory leak too.

And I can run Battlefield 2142 with all setting MAXXED, and that game has higher requirements than Oblivion!

This is one big reason PC Games are dying. Dev's release unfinished crap.... :(

No, it's because Obsidian keeps making crappy sequels to games we loved. First KOTOR2 and now NWN2 >_>

Oh well. I've decided to post one cool thing and one uncool thing I find each day, to provide some balance.

COOL THING: The NPC depth in this game totally ROCKS. Very KOTOR - the voiceacting really gives you an image of the NPC. And I love the interactions - Korgan and Neetha are a crackup.

UNCOOL THING: Some of the behaviour scripting for random characters is very poor. In one example I was waylaid by some shadies in the middle of a busy Neverwinter street, right as I was passing some civilians having a conversation - the battle erupted right next to these people, there were fireballs exploding everywhere and hostiles being turned into shishkebab (yes, they revived the exploding blood enemy in NWN2) but these hardarse civilians just kept on chatting like nothing was happening! Now that is not cool.

Khelgar and Neeshka.

Sheesh.

After a visit here and to NWN official forums it sounds like Obsidian missed one really important thing:
Play Neverwinter Nights.

If they had, they might have thought about some simple things that game two in a series should be better then the first and include all the things from the first that people are expecting from a series of games.

Dual wield in the quickbar anyone? Nice to have or vital to have before you smash your keyboard?

Be able to see what the heck is going on? Good camera control: Nice to have or need to have.

Geez, I think I will keep the plastic wrap on my edition on for awhile longer. I am not glad to see so many suspicions comming true. Obsidian is following the Troika road, great ideas very bad implementation. I really hope they will get this game corrected with somee serious patching.

Ha, and yet, Troika delivered on of the best RPG's ever.

Which one was that? ToEE? ???

Did this game ever get a fair chance or was it doomed from the start?

It's a shame too many people look at the glass as being half empty, and condemn the game for what it's not.

Quote:

Originally posted by Zebodog:
Did this game ever get a fair chance or was it doomed from the start?

It's a shame too many people look at the glass as being half empty, and condemn the game for what it's not.

I for one gave it a fair chance. I was expecting outdated graphics, but speed and stability. I love the story and I plan to keep playing, but the engine suck soo much.

Quote:

I think ToEE was doomed for two reasons:

1. Troika's horrible quality control.

2. Atari's insistance on pushing this game out with more bugs than the Amazon jungle.

Of the two I put most of the blame on Atari.

Quote:

Originally posted by robertthebard:
Which one was that? ToEE? ???

Arcanum. Vampire was really good as well, but ToEE was bad for bug-related reasons. The combat engine in that game, however, was the best (turn-based) combat ever in a game before. I wonder why games like NWN didn't stick so close to the rules as ToEE did, because it works. Also, if you'd like to try that game without all the bugs, install the Circle of Eight modpack.

Quote:

Originally posted by JrKASperov:
Khelgar and Neeshka.

Sheesh.

Sorry mate. I'm not as religious about spelling as you. You get the drift.

Quote:

I have yet to really bash this game. The main problems that I have had with it, or the main problem, is that my system can't run it, and while that is aggravating, it's not wholly the games fault, and I am fully aware of that. I own it, after all. "But you have posted negative things about it", yes, but those things are related to me by somebody that I've been gaming with for four years, and I trust his opinions. He bought a computer specifically to run this game, and he still has issues. It scares me when this system:

er, can't remember the processor, but it's the Dual Core tech
4 gigs of ram
NVidia 7800(can't recall the rest of the designations)

can't run a game smoothly. I believe that this represents problems with the game, and these problems have been admitted by the developers. At any rate, his machine is closer to the max specs than the min specs, and he still has issues both in the toolset, and in the world he's trying to create. Where does the blame for that lie? I would have to say it's a developer's problem, and that problem is that the game was rushed to the shelves, and it wasn't ready. Bad coding has been tossed around a lot, and I have no doubt that that's the truth. When you're running at, or near, the top of the recommended requirements for a game, and still have to turn off all the stuff that caused the requirements to be needed, what's the point?

Note that at the time of this writing, his game has been fully patched, and all his drivers are up to date as well. As I said, he's been at this a while, and knows what's needed to maintain his machine to run games. After all, he's had a server online for 4 years, with very few hitches.

Quote:

I would suggest you stop over-relying on the negative nabobs in gaming forums so much. Every game that gets released will have its crowd of idiots who'll lie and pontificate and trash the game because it doesn't meet their personal gaming-wackoff fantasy. Somethem regardless of not having actually played it, but because a "friend of a friend" said so.

I have the game (US DVD version). According to Systems Requirement Lab I meet both the miminum and recommended settings. http://www.srtest.com/referrer/srtest

I'm running a GeForce 6800 with 512MB of video memory and 1.5GB of system memory. I've run it at the higher resolutions, but I can't read the tiny fonts since I won't wear bi-focals to play a computer game so I dropped back to 1024*768. I don't have problems with frame rate and I run most of the video options "on" or set to "high" or whatever the "most eye candy" setting happens to be.

As for the memory leak rumor you glad-handled: there is no evidence of memory leaks. I've played the game for 10+ hours straight and have had no slow downs or performance issues that could give me a reasonable indication that I have a memory leak. I even left the game on over-night (the first night) after playing most of the day and took right-up again in the morning without a problem.

I've also got about 30-hours of play. Not one bug. No crash. No bugs. Nothing.

The biggest complaint I have is that it takes forever for the game to initially load. Once it gets up there, it's not too bad. But that first start-up. Arrrggggggghhhhhhh!!!!! Me want to play NOW!!! Not two minutes from NOW!!!

My experience is that people with these problems usually have crappy (cheap) equiment, too much crap going on in their system, or equipment that's in a marginal failure state.

Guys, I think (or at least, I hope [img]graemlins/showoff.gif[/img] ) that some of you are being too dramatic about the bugs and choppiness. Neverwinter Nights I sure as hell didn't start off on the right foot either, but it grew far better than it had initially been. Hopefully after some patches, perhaps an expansion, the game could become substantially better.

I haven't had a chance to play the game, but the first review in this topic seems little more than boycotting demagogy-infused rubbish.. makes me a bit angry really. For example, he claims for the game's interface to be the worst ever, whereas the examples are rather insubstantial. And are the graphics really better in NWN I? Because I'm having a hard time believing that. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Quote:

Originally posted by DraconisRex:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Ziroc:
EVERYONE almost is saying even with a dual core MAXED overclocked system with the best video card and 2 gig of ram its choppy and slow as hell.

It's just BAD programming and design. There must be a memory leak too.

And I can run Battlefield 2142 with all setting MAXXED, and that game has higher requirements than Oblivion!

This is one big reason PC Games are dying. Dev's release unfinished crap.... :(

I would suggest you stop over-relying on the negative nabobs in gaming forums so much. Every game that gets released will have its crowd of idiots who'll lie and pontificate and trash the game because it doesn't meet their personal gaming-wackoff fantasy. Somethem regardless of not having actually played it, but because a "friend of a friend" said so.

<snip>

My experience is that people with these problems usually have crappy (cheap) equiment, too much crap going on in their system, or equipment that's in a marginal failure state. [/QUOTE]Nicely said on BOTH counts DraconisRex. I'm running NWN2 on max settings with a Falcon Mach V, 3.2 Ghz P4, 1 GIG ram and a nVidea GeForce 7800 GT 256 MB PCIE at 1200 x 1084 with all settings on MAX. So far the game has run like a champ for me.

I've been following the frame rate slowdown issue at the NWN2 forums and DR is right; most people who have reported the problem have unsupported video cards, or cards at the very low end of the supported list. Issues around xFire (and apparently Vista as well) have been solved. There are some folks who SHOULD have been able to play the game that couldn't and the latest nVidea drivers have worked miracles in solving most of those slowdown problems.

I won't presume to debate whether NWN2 is a true sequel to NWN1. But issues around the toolset and dmclient NOTWITHSTANDING, NWN2 is an AWESOME game. Yes the camera view is a bit twitchy, but its more than functional - it just takes a little getting used to. And I actually prefer the new UI, including the quickcast spell bar, as opposed to that circle (jerk) radial wheel nonsense of NWN1. Spellcasting in NWN2 is MUCH easier. Yes, there are still some issues around the quickslot menus, but those are minor and they are being fixed. My only BIG complaint is that the NPC AI is still substandard - but it is WAY better than the NPC AI in NWN1 by a LONG shot.

This game has a very, VERY well done single player campaign. It's very detailed, offers tons of NPC interactions including some very detailed dialogue strings, quests (at least so far) actually seem to advance the plot (instead of the old FedEx quests - although there ARE a couple of those). Again it's a great game. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Just my two cents. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I better go install those new drivers then ;) .

I run a 6800GT 256mb. I'd LOVE to get that 7950! *drools*

The new nVidia drivers are working wonders for people with lower end cards; but even the new drivers won't help everyone - some cards are just too old and too slow to work with NWN2. [img]smile.gif[/img]

nVidias 6800GT's are not old.

Quote:

Originally posted by Ziroc:
nVidias 6800GT's are not old.

Wasn't referring to your card, Z. [img]smile.gif[/img]

This was posted on the NWN2 Tech forums. If you are thinking of buying the game, pay CLOSE attention to this list as it spells out which cards will probably actually work with the game and which ones won't. The list is NO guarantee that the game will actually function with THAT card on YOUR system as there are other variables that make a difference.

BTW, if you are running an AMD chipset, you known that there is a specific executable for those chipsets. Make sure you launch the game using the specific NWNmain_amd.exe (or something like that) - it makes a HUGE difference.

The link for the following is here:

http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums...forum=116&sp=0

This was originally from Obsidian, found at Bioware's NWN-2 Forum (I had to add a couple of cards that they skipped right over, and I reordered them to suit NWN-2, at least, IMO on shader 2.0 speed), sorting order "in flux", still, and I've removed the several cards that the Prerelease Toolset named as no longer supported (although they failed to remove the Nforce6100 and FX 5500 for some reason).

Supported Video Cards: (Fastest)
+ Radeon X1950
- ATI Radeon X1900 series
+ Geforce 7950
- ATI Radeon X1800 series
- NVIDIA GeForce 7900 series
- ATI Radeon X850 series
- NVIDIA GeForce 7800 series
- ATI Radeon X800 series
- NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
- NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
- NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS
- NVIDIA GeForce 6800
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Recommended Video Level (or better, upward)

- ATI Radeon 9800 XT
- ATI Radeon X1650 XT
- NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS
- ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
- ATI Radeon X1600 Pro
+ ATI Radeon X1300 XT
- ATI Radeon X700 series
- NVIDIA GeForce 6800 XT
- NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT
- ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
- ATI Radeon 9700
- ATI Radeon 9800 SE
- ATI Radeon 9500 Pro
- ATI Radeon 9600 XT
- NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra
- NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra
- ATI Radeon X600 Pro
- NVIDIA GeForce 6600
- NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900
=========================== Low Quality & on downward from here

- NVIDIA GeForce 6500 series
- ATI Radeon X600
- NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra
- NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 LE, XT
- ATI Radeon 9500
- ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
- ATI Radeon 9600
- NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Current FX Minimum
- NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 LE (Probably should've been removed -- very slow)
- ATI Radeon X550
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = I just can't believe that any of these next EVER belonged on any "supported" list

- ATI Radeon 9600 SE
- NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500 (Probably should've been removed -- very slow, and the 5600 was removed)
- ATI Radeon 9550 (Probably should've been removed -- very, VERY slow, and its twin, the X300, is now gone)
- NVIDIA GeForce 6100 series ** ( Slowest ) **

Suffixes, from Good to Awful

ATI Suffixes: XTX > XT > XL > Pro > GTO > Vanilla > GT > SE > Hyper Anything
nVidia: Ultra > GTX > GT > GS > Vanilla > LE = XT > VE > TC (Turbocache, any variety)

[ 11-10-2006, 01:59 PM: Message edited by: Micah Foehammer ]

[img]smile.gif[/img] , I do wonder sometimes when someone with an old FX card or (yes, I have seen this) -- a TNT Riva card, and complaining why they can't run Oblivion! [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

TNT?!?!?!? lol! ;)

Quote:

Originally posted by Ziroc:
[img]smile.gif[/img] , I do wonder sometimes when someone with an old FX card or (yes, I have seen this) -- a TNT Riva card, and complaining why they can't run Oblivion! [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

TNT?!?!?!? lol! ;)

They're hiding from reality? [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

See the updates to previous post. Your 6800 SHOULD be able to run the game fine - might need to tweak the video settings a bit and install the driver update though.

Cool, yeah I'll try it. Once they fix the camera and the AI and optimize the game a bit, I'm sure it'll be much smoother.

BTW, someone already created some new UI mods -- mini inventory box, and such. It's awesome they made the GUI XML.

Quote:

Originally posted by Ziroc:
Cool, yeah I'll try it. Once they fix the camera and the AI and optimize the game a bit, I'm sure it'll be much smoother.

BTW, someone already created some new UI mods -- mini inventory box, and such. It's awesome they made the GUI XML.

The camera isn't all THAT bad - it just seems to be a little less stable than the NWN 1 camera view was. If you stick with the overhead view it's actually VERY playable. The chase camera - well, not so much ..... lol

I've heard that there are some fixes in the work for the UI, the quick slots and a couple of other pulldown menus. They probably SHOULD have done all this before release BUT at least they recognize the issue and are fixing it. Unlike ToEE where the designers just said, "F... it, the game worked for US. Deal with it."

I went out an bought a new 22" Widescreen LCD, thinking that I would need to update my GFX from my 6800GS to run NWN2 at 1680 X 1050.

I was wrong. Running between 20-30fps (depending on camera angle etc...) with all settings on high, water reflections/textures off, and shadows on low.

After a little play time I find the camera to be fine: it just took some getting used to much the same as the original NWN did. The AI is still questionable at times, but still better than the BG/BG2 AI. Sure you have to issue the "follow me" command every once in a while, but did you expect for your companions to follow you around like puppy dogs? People need direction.

The chase camera is more like the elusive camera. It never seems to settle down. Agreed about the smoothness overall, NWN 1 was far smoother and less picky. A few adjustments and it was fixed. Driving mode is what I use and it isn't perfect but the rotation in any other mode coupled with objects getting in the way (even with Object Fade on) drives me nuts.

I've ran the game on both a 6800 gt and a 7600 gt and it still has major slowdown for no valid reason in certain places/situations. The 6800 is a good card and yet it sometime gets slowed to a crawl with practically settings on low - even though it appears on the "recommended" cards section. I hate to think how the 98 pro or any card showing up in the middle runs the game. As for the bottom section with the 6200 and fx 5550 cards i'd wager it would be nightmare.

Quote:

Yeah, saw these a few days ago and it's about time. I was wondering where all the UI moddders were for the first week. They also modified the OC so as to make it tolerable in multiplayer. I am kind of waiting for this one too.

Well, I'm happy I can run the game at 8-12fps - it's tolerable, and only slows down indoors.