Neverwinter Nights
The best game ever to evolve out of the Baldur’s Gate game engine? We think so.
Tags: Neverwinter Nights Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Jan 7th, 2004
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Neverwinter Nights (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
Atari recently sent us the newest expansion pack to Neverwinter Nights, Hordes of the Underdark. While we’re pumped at DEN to get to reviewing that game, we realized our readers might appreciate being brought up-to-date on our take on the series. So as we count down to our Hordes review, we kick things off with our review of the original Neverwinter Nights and will follow it up with our review of the first expansion pack, Shadows of Undrentide, before finally unveiling our review of the latest installment.
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Ever since Neverwinter Nights debuted, plenty of games have come along, following in its shadows. Released with a powerful set of design tools to allow users to create and share their own campaigns, others such as Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind have followed suit, but few as successfully as the original Neverwinter Nights.
Built from an overhaul of the game engine BioWare created originally for Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights is a powerful platform built on D&D 3.0 rules, one of the first titles to do so back when it was released. What makes Neverwinter Nights so appealing is the visual upgrade from the original Baldur’s Gate engine and how well the game retains the turn-based feel of the original pencil-and-dice Dungeons and Dragons game off which it is based. Unlike the Baldur’s Gate bastardization that showed up on PS2, where the game was intentionally “dumbed down” by BioWare to be nothing more than a brainless Gauntlet clone, Neverwinter Nights allows the player to get as detailed as they want with the die-rolls, or hide some of the mechanics to give the game a more immediate-action feel without ever degenerating into arcade stupidity.
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What’s nice about the NN engine is that if you ever feel overwhelmed by an onslaught of enemies, all you need to do is hit the space bar on your keyboard; this pauses the game and allows you to enter into a cache your turn-based commands for each character. Once satisfied with your strategy, hit the space bar again and watch to see if your strategy worked. It’s a smart system with a lot of flexibility to satisfy a variety of gaming tastes.
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The 60-hour official campaign in Neverwinter Nights is one of the best-realized stories BioWare has produced under the AD&D license since they debuted Baldur’s Gate itself. And yet the game is not linear; if you want to attack a central character, you can, although unless you’re at Level 30 or so, you’ll probably just get smacked down in short order, die and earn a “Load Game” screen.
The story sets you at a training facility as a novice in the character class of your choice; you’re considered a promising student in general and the story kind of expects you to be the hero who will emerge to deliver Neverwinter from its latest threat, a sweeping, Black Death-style plague that’s taken tons of lives and may be natural or may be a biological attack by a mysterious enemy force. Unraveling that mystery is the point of the game.
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As pleasing as the official campaign may be, it is the expandability of Neverwinter Nights that is the game’s true strength. In the Aurora Toolset, gamers are given many of the same tools BioWare’s developers used in developing NN, except with lots of helpful wizard-based tools instead of a staff of 60 talented coworkers. Perhaps the most powerful toolset ever to be put in the hands of the gaming public, with some talent and not a small amount of time and dedication, one can actually construct anything from a mini-campaign that can be played online in the course of an hour or two with a group of friends or GameSpy-gamers, or if you’re obsessive-compulsive enough, you can even develop a long single-player scenario that can be added on to Neverwinter Nights almost as easily as any of Atari’s official “expansion packs.”
While Bethesda Softworks’ Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind also provided users a “campaign construction set” and was built on arguably a more powerful and detailed game engine, the Morrowind tools were nowhere near as user-friendly and complete as those found in Neverwinter Nights.
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While there are plenty of user-created scenarios out there to download if you know where to look, be aware that Neverwinter Nights still gives would-be game-designers access to scripting code and while most enthusiasts are benign, the potential exists for malicious code to be hidden within a game – so run that virus software on any download before playing through! If you stick closely to Atari/BioWare and their official sites, the risk of downloading a virus-infected campaign is considerably lessened.
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As powerful as Neverwinter Nights is, that power was extended considerably as Atari/BioWare began releasing expansion packs. The first, Shadows of Undrentide, will be the next game we review before unveiling our review of the latest release, Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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— The 60-hour campaign is better than many of the Baldur’s Gate titles that provided the game engine for Neverwinter Nights. — Solid 3.0 ruleset realization, a bit outdated now that AD&D 3.5 rules have been released, still brings home a solid and genuine D&D feel. — Aurora Toolset is still one of the simpler, more user-friendly environments available that allow users to create their own RPG campaigns. — Open system allows owner ability to play others’ scenarios online or download campaigns created by others, extending ongoing play-value. |
8.7 |
| What Doesn't | |
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— Despite wizard-driven system, Aurora Toolset still requires some scripting knowledge of user, which may intimidate all but the most dedicated from designing their own campaigns. — Even with all the help, it still takes 100s of hours to design even a relatively simple, 20-hour campaign. But then, it probably should, if it’s any good at all. |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| It may be a couple years old, but Neverwinter Nights is still one of the most flexible PC RPGs ever released. | |
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Tags: Neverwinter Nights
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Jan 7th, 2004 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
