by Jody - January 27, 2004

Neverwinter Nights is undoubtedly one of the most highly anticipated games of this year. After five years in development, the game is finally done, and to the happiness of RPGers around the world, Bioware hasn't left us disappointed. If the shear size of this review scares you, then you'll be happy to know that Neverwinter Nights is good, very good, and even brilliant in some aspects. Neverwinter Nights is a lot of things, but unlike everything else, it's not perfect.

There is just so much to NWN.

I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons in my basement for quite some time. (We eventually moved and we no longer had a basement. I then moved it out to the forest.) Only thing is, aside from playing Baldur's Gate 2, I haven't really kept up with the progression of D&D into the 3rd Edition rules. If you've been keeping up with Neverwinter Nights, you know it's set within the confines of the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition universe. Luckily, they're not difficult to pick-up, even for those of you who have never played D&D. But playing Dungeons and Dragons does add onto your first hand experience once starting out on Neverwinter Nights.

The 3rd Edition rules are actually much more open-ended than before, and your character isn't nearly as limited in his or her choices or abilities. With the exception of only a handful of class-specific skills, now any class can pretty much do anything. Wizards can wear armor, clerics can make bombs, and rangers can identify magic items. It doesn't mean you're going to be as good at it as some of the other classes, but you can do it -- it will just cost a fighter more to learn to pick a lock than it would a rogue. And a wizard wearing armor will not only experience more spell failures, but he better have enough strength to heft 80 pounds of metal around.

This kind of system also makes multi-classing much easier, and rewarding, than in a D&D. Instead of dividing experience equally among your classes, now you can opt to choose to train in any of the 11 classes whenever you earn enough experience points to gain a level. And if you do change classes, you don't loose any of the abilities you learned in your former class. So what happens if you start your career as a fighter and learn down the road that it would be beneficial to learn a few rogue skills? Simply choose rogue as your next class when you level up, distribute some points to pick locks and disarm traps, and go back to your fighter progression next level. I really like this system, and the 3rd Edition rules lend themselves well to a computer RPG. Picking classes and races will become more enjoyable later in the game because you will know each of their strengths and weaknesses. My first character was an elven ranger - I still use him. (This came from first hand experience while playing Dungeons and Dragons and Baldur's Gate.)

I think the dialogue system could have been a little better. There are a limited number of options and the choices are always the same no matter what happens. So, if you met someone who was important to a quest you have yet to receive, they would still react as if you had the quest. Also, there is no assurance in persuading computer-controlled characters to give up secret information. If you keep selecting the persuasion dialogue, you will eventually get your way (I wish dating would be that easy; Heh). There should have been consequences for failing to persuade. After a while the dialogue system can be an annoyance, but it is nowhere near a game killer.

The AI is decent, but nothing to write home about. Enemies seem to have scripted AI most of the time. During one battle the bad guys were just hanging out doing nothing until they saw me. At first I wondered if I had stumbled into some kind of evil Starbucks. In reality those poor saps had nothing better to do then wait for the computer to tell them I was nearby. I would have expected the AI to at least be searching for more puny humans to fight. Once in a while an enemy out of range would run over and assist his comrades. The computer also controls any associates you hire or creatures you summon. You can give simple commands to these helpers but you will never find them getting creative either. Unfortunately your buddies will sometimes do more harm than good and leave you hanging. That's why it is good to find friends that you can trust.

Then there's the DM client. Up to this point, NWN was a really enjoyable RPG experience that took the promise of the ruleset and the Baldur's Gate familiarity and made it great. The DM client changes all of that - it's not until you run around in that interface that you understand just how revolutionary what you're experiencing is. What NWN gives you is promise and potential of possibly the most groundbreaking RPG experience you will ever enjoy.

We loaded up our pitiful castle module in the DM client and entered as the Dungeon Master. From there, quite literally, the world is your oyster - everything is controllable, alterable, and changeable. Presuming your module is well designed, there's little you may have to do, but on the fly, you can alter scenery, add creatures, add NPCs, take control of any living thing in the arena and control them directly, add triggers, traps, music, anything. On a whim, we spawned a dragon, which sat there looking a bit cross, and ate the three beetles we'd supplied with the room. That seemed a bit lame, so we added about 15 dwarves, of various classes, who naturally began a pitched battle with the scaled fiend. To even the odds, we spawned some half-orc mercenaries to take advantage of the situation, resulting in a three-way battle as we sat and watched.

A little outdated, but compared to Baldur's Gate, it's lush.

Even though the graphics of this game are a little outdated, they are very impressive. Looking back on Baldur's Gate and comparing it to Neverwinter Nights is a pretty big leap. Roaming through a forest at night with friends can be rather creepy with realistic looking trees, grass, and, well, friends. The leaves even fall from the trees! I would have to say hands down that the graphics is one of the most impressive things about this game. That and the graceful sound!

Much like the other D&D games.

Keeping up the tradition of quality voice-overs and great FX, Bioware once again outdoes themselves. The music is mostly uninstrusive. Neither annoying or catchy, it is still high quality. The sound FX are impressive, to say the least. Both spells and melee sounds fit well, and are deep and rich. Creature noises are original and unique. NPCs, when they speak, are wonderfully voiced. If anything, the game suffers from too little of this voice acting.

Dungeons and Dragons fan? This is like heaven.

I can do nothing but love this game. Deep and sophisticated singleplayer, rich and truly social multiplayer, there is nothing that stands out as needing improvement. Do I have any issues with this game at all? Only one. As good as this game is, as much as I am having fun with it, its still a Baldur's Gate clone. Adding a good multiplayer aspect and updating the graphics does not change that. I think this issue is going to come up more and more as we see the next wave of games. We are in a stagnant period. The next wave of games are steps in an evolutionary process, but are far from revolutionary.