| andrewas |
09-15-2003 02:57 PM |
Icewind is similar to BG2, but take away all the interesting NPCs (all of your party are generated and do not have any banters, never mind romances and the like) and the plot is much more linear. The combat is much the same as BG2, but there is more of it. If you get IWD2 you get to play with the superior (arguably) 3rd edition ruleset which allows for some interesting flexibility in the character development. IWD1 uses the same 2nd ed as BG2 does.
Planescape goes the other direction - the NPCs personalities are more interesting that any game Ive played. They make better companions than most humans. And they are all unusual characters as well, none of your stereotypicaly elven mage, dwarven fighter etc. The plot of PS:T is everything, and it is genuinely interesting to find out more about whats going on. Combat is much less important, though there are some very nice spell effects. THe only drawback with PS:T is that it has a lower replayability - all the characters including your own is predetermined, and since the attraction of the game lies in solving the plot and finding out who the hell you are and what is going on, once you've done it a couple of times there isnt as much to interest you.
And after writing that about Planescape, I see you were asking about Neverwinter. Sigh.
Out of the box, Neverwinter is closest to IWD, combat is the main focus of the game. It uses the same 3rd ed ruleset as IWD2 does. One of the most annoying things about NWN is that you only control one character - any summons or henchmen (there is no true party in single player) have decent enough AI but you cant order them about properly, so they can do the most stupid things at times. There are hakpaks to improve matters though.
Also the campaign from the original neverwinter is pretty lame. Shadows of Undrentide, the expansion, is better. But the real point of NWN is online play and the 3rd party content. Said 3rd party content ranges from substandard crap that would have be at by a 13 year old DM running his first campaign, to some of the finest gaming out there. There are combat heavy modules, storyline based modules, pretty much any kind of module you can think of.
Online play can be pretty poor, a lot of players believe that the point of the game is to be as powerful as possible, but if you can find a good server (IWs is pretty good for a start) where roleplayng is encouraged it can be a lot of fun.
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