Neverwinter Nights 2

aka: NWN 2, Wu Dong zhi Ye 2
Moby ID: 24735
Windows Specs
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/23 11:13 AM )

Description official descriptions

The tiny village West Harbor, located not far from the thriving city of Neverwinter in the Sword Coast region, served once as a battlefield between an evil being known as the King of Shadows and the defenders of Neverwinter. The protagonist's mother was killed during that battle; the elven ranger Daeghun took care of the orphan, raising him (or her) as his own child.

Their peaceful existence comes to an unexpected end when a group of githyanki attack the village just after its traditional festival. It appears that the attack was somehow connected with a mysterious silver shard that was left in a nearby cave shortly after the battle against the King of Shadows. The protagonist then leaves for Neverwinter, searching for Duncan, Daeghun's half-brother, who might have more answers.

Neverwinter Nights II is a follow-up to Neverwinter Nights. The two games share a common setting; where Neverwinter Nights uses the 3E ruleset released in 2000, Neverwinter Nights II utilizes the D&D 3.5 edition rules released in June 2003. As its predecessor, the game comes with a multiplayer feature and a tool set that allows players to create their own campaigns. However, the gameplay style differs from that of the predecessor by focusing on party-based combat, character management, and dialogue.

In the beginning of the game the player creates the main character, choosing his or her appearance, race (including planetouched, half-orc, and sub-races such as drow or moon elf), class (out of twelve available), and feats. The 3.5 edition of the AD&D rule set introduces prestige classes, into which regular classes may evolve, such as for example warpriest as a prestige class for clerics.

During the course of the game, various characters with their own motivations will join the protagonist. An active party may include up to four characters. The combat system is similar to that of Baldur's Gate: battles evolve in real time, and the player is able to pause at any moment to issue specific orders to characters. Automatic behavior routines for each character are available as well. Companions react to the player's choices during quests, and develop relationships with the protagonist depending on their ethical and personal preferences.

The player character eventually acquires a stronghold that can be used as a base of operations. The player can repair the stronghold, improve its defenses, and use it to repel sieges and generate income. It is possible to choose specific ways of using resources to upgrade the keep, recruit merchants, and command guards.

Spellings

  • 无冬之夜2 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 絕冬城之夜2 - Traditional Chinese spelling
  • 네버윈터나이츠2 - Korean spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Videos

See any errors or missing info for this game?

You can submit a correction, contribute trivia, add to a game group, add a related site or alternate title.

Credits (Windows version)

444 People (331 developers, 113 thanks) · View all

President
Executive Producer
Senior Producer
Assistant Producers
Additional Production
Asset Manager
Chief Development Officer
Art Lead
Art Environment Leads
Environment Artists
Character Modelers
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 81% (based on 49 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 53 ratings with 5 reviews)

Obsidian Entertainment does it again...

The Good
The Electron engine which is a modified version of Bioware's Aurora Engine (used in the game's predecessor, Neverwinter Nights) achieves in displaying a graphically detailed world. Although by no means as sensational as the graphics in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (which was released before it) - they are somewhat different styles of RPG and for Neverwinter Nights 2's purpose, the graphics are good.

The music for the game is extremely well done, fitting in the mood of the game. Voice acting is also very well done which helps you immerse that bit more into the game.

The best part of the game is what Obsidian Entertainment does best - they make you feel like you're in the world by giving you choices, and heaps of them. The decisions you make along the way will change the way your party and other characters react to you, determine what quests you will do and ultimately alter the ending of the game. OE once again brings their Influence system from Knights of the Old Republic 2 which (as the name implies) determines how much influence you have over your party members. Influence can be gained or lost by you performing actions that are either in-line with their alignment or not. The more influence you have with a party member, the more likely you'll unlock side plots. This brings me to another good point of NWN2 and that's its re-playability. With so many ways to end the game, different alignments to choose and different race/class combos, you'll find every experience of the game a different one.

The Bad
Once again, Obsidian Entertainment, while strong with the story and re-playability of the game, somehow released the game with a myriad of bugs. Apparently a lot of material was cut from the final release, just as it was with Knights of the Old Republic 2, however this time at least most of the game appears to tie in much better than it did with their first attempt.

The system requirements for this game may be a problem for some gamers as well since you require more graphics processing power than what you traditionally did with existing RPG titles of this sort (I tried running with 2xGeForce 6800s in SLI and it ran very slow, even on lowest settings - although on a single 7800GS it worked fine).

The Bottom Line
Neverwinter Nights 2 is a contemporary role-playing game that is strong on story and just like a good book will keep you wanting to come back for more, urging you to continue turning each page, just to find out what happens next. The game does have its flaws, namely several bugs plus debatable performance on seemingly sufficient systems, however when compared to what's good about the game, these issues often pale into insignificance.

If you're a fan of Bioware's more story-focused RPGs (e.g. Baldur's Gate) or of Knights of the Old Republic, this game is definitely worth a look.

Windows · by Rambutaan (2782) · 2007

Neverwinter Nights 2

The Good
- Companions. They are well-written, different and not always get along. Being everyone's friend isn't an option. - While the setting is somewhat generic, the actual plot is pretty engaging. Good side quests.

The Bad
- Third act is incredibly bland. - Gameplay. It's very easy to screw up the character creation and if you do, you're in for a bad time. The game should be called "Trying to hit everyone and missing 99% of the time" Nights 2", i hate this kind of combat system in games. - Obsidian have a really obnoxious way of designing indoor locations, which are all look the same, plays the same and resemble a usual tabletop dungeon which looks like it's been randomly generated.

The Bottom Line
It's probably not that bad, i just suck at these kind of RPG's. But i still think it's very outdated at this point in time.

Windows · by SanfordMorgan · 2023

Continuing the best tradition

The Good
Neverwinter Nights 2 is less a sequel to the first game than a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate series and Knights of the Old Republic. The first Neverwinter Nights concentrated more on a single-character experience, with party members being nothing more but "henchmen" for hire. The second one returns to the classic formula that was picked up by Obsidian in the Knights of The Old Republic sequel: party-based role-playing is the driving force of the game.

The core gameplay of Neverwinter Nights 2 follows the familiar template we have seen and loved in Baldur's Gate games. It utilizes the same fantastic combat system - and this time it is fully justified by the return to proper party management. Real-time combat quickly deteriorates into a test for reflexes, leaving little room to tactical thinking; turn-based combat can get too slow. What we have here is a fast-paced system that gives us the best of both, As in other games of the same kind, the combat system works flawlessly (if you disregard technical issues such as poor pathfinding). Positioning your characters, choosing melee or ranged weapons, protecting your spellcasters - everything has an effect. Some of the enemies are surprisingly clever, going for weak and wounded characters, chasing them all over the place, buffing themselves up with spells, etc. The game uses the newest edition of AD&D rules, and there are tons of ways to customize your characters, a nearly unlimited amount of spells, skills, and abilities to choose from. You can spend hours just sitting in front of the "level up" screen, gazing at all those possibilities. It is quite overwhelming.

The many cool spells make druids and mages more interesting to control than ever. Just as it should be in RPGs, preparation and strategy influence the outcome of the battle much more than brute force. Having a balanced party with characters of different classes is a key to success. There are plenty of powerful spells to exploit, many ways to outsmart your enemies and to make battles easier. Since there are so many companions of different races, classes, having different spells and abilities, you won't be able to see everything the game has to offer during your first play. There is a good replay value and so many things to do that the game can eat up a big chunk of your time. Even if you choose the quickest way to the goal, the game remains large and long.

Neverwinter Nights 2 was clearly custom-made for party-driven gameplay. Your companions aren't just picked up and invited to your party; each one of them is connected to the part of the story you are currently experiencing, presented in a dramatic fashion, and logically integrated into the events. Companions have different reasons for joining your party, and those reasons are properly explained, often with a detailed psychological background to the character's actions. After they have joined you, they continue to make comments on your actions and remain present. It is clearly visible how much effort and care was put into designing those characters' actions during the game. Many of the cutscenes will be different each time you play the game with different party members, because they will speak in cutscenes just as they do during gameplay or while performing side quests.

The focus on characters in Neverwinter Nights 2 pretty much drives another big nail into the coffin of Japanese RPGs. Each character is a colorful, clearly outlined representation of a type, sometimes carried to the extreme, but always done with conviction and great charm. You'll want to play this game just to spend some time with your companions. Even the most deliberately generic characters come with personal backgrounds that make them more than just an obligatory cliché. The moral decisions you make in the game might affect the story in a certain way (like a large split in the story arc that occurs when you decide whether to side with law enforcement or criminals in Neverwinter), but they become even more interesting and exciting once you realize that they also influence your party members. Nearly everything you do in the game is noted by your companions, and they sometimes react even to a small dialogue choice. I remember how my companions initiated a conversation with me after I have saved two children in a side quest, talking about education and parental responsibility. I chose answers that made me sound like a mature person with an understanding for a child's mind, and the female druid elf said I would make an excellent father, and (very cautiously) asked me whether I'd already thought of getting married and having children. That's what role-playing is about.

Naturally, most of the choices are just plain old good and evil decisions. Good characters will favor compassion and kindness, evil ones will prefer doing things for the sake of destruction and violence. But it's not always as simple as that. Sometimes you'll have to know a character on a more personal level to make a decision that will influence him or her. A conflict rising when you have to make a decision that involves being careful or just throwing yourself into battle is not necessarily a choice between good and evil, but rather between too equally understandable approaches.

The writing in Neverwinter Nights 2 is, overall, excellent. While I expected this from a game that continued a tradition of high-quality dialogues, I was still impressed by the amount of care put into them. Nearly every dialogue line, no matter how unimportant and casual the conversation is, is written so cleverly that it becomes a pleasure to simply read the game. No matter how generic the subject is, the choice of words makes the conversation interesting. Often such quality is achieved by excessive implementation of humor, but the game avoids this trap and doesn't turn itself into a comedy. On the contrary, it is a serious game with a serious story. It has plenty of humor, but it is not a parody; the humor is there to soften things and shed new, unexpected light on familiar topics. Without turning the game into a caricature of itself, the warm, intelligent humor of Neverwinter Nights 2 works like a magical spell. Suddenly, the medieval fantasy setting of the game becomes a part of our reality. Characters don't talk like generic noble heroes, villains, or commoners. Their language is rich and updated to modern sensibilities, touching upon issues that were probably not discussed in a real medieval society.

Even though the game begins in a (probably deliberately) generic way - you are an orphan, your village is attacked, the attackers are after a magical artifact split into several pieces, and so on - the story soon turns into a complex net of situations that grows the more you play the game, unveiling the main story arc layer by layer. The architecture of the story line is very impressive, and the word "epic" comes to mind when you see how all those quests are bound together, morphing into larger quests, which eventually take you to your ultimate goal. The main story line develops slowly, but that's a requirement for a true epic. The quality of this story is manifested in the quest design, where nearly every quest is a mini-story of its own, dealing with different people, locations, moral issues, etc. A bit like in Final Fantasy VI, what matters here most is not necessarily the main plot, but those little stories that make each location and encounter personal, creating an image of a living, believable world. Even so, the main plot has quite some twists up its sleeve, and becomes progressively interesting until it reaches its climax in the end of the game, where you'll also have to face the consequences of your decisions and the way you have treated your companions.

The Bad
I guess the only substantial complaint that can be made about Neverwinter Nights 2 is its unabashedly traditional personality. And I'm not talking just about the classic medieval setting, the AD&D gameplay, the familiar conversation style, the classic combat system, etc. This is a 3D game created with the same rules that applied to classic isometric RPGs. As a result, very few of the things made possible by 3D graphics are actually implemented here. Sure, you can rotate the camera and get any view you want, but that's about the only feature that reminds us of the fact this game is indeed three-dimensional. There is no physical involvement in the game world of Neverwinter Nights 2. You cannot perform any physical actions, cannot climb or jump. You can only walk on pre-determined paths, and even though the game is large and has plenty of locations, they are artificially separated from each other, and every location has mysterious borders that prevent you from exploring it properly. Sometimes your path will be blocked by a ridiculously small obstacle, but you still won't be able to walk over it. In some cases, you can barely get off a road to explore a nearby meadow, because the game simply doesn't let you approach this meadow. You might say that I demand too much, but I find it deplorable that until now there hasn't been a single RPG that was equally satisfying in both party-driven role-playing and physical immersion in the game world.

Other than that, there are some minor issues, like the long loading times and slow-downs or the party AI. You can forget about general strategies and just go with the old Baldur's Gate-style micro-management. If you let your allies loose, they will do things that can almost be compared to what Fallout NPCs did to you in terms of sheer stupidity and suicidal tendencies. Hurting a badly injured ally with an area spell or running off to unlock a faraway chest at the most critical moment of a battle are just examples of what this AI can accomplish if you have the misfortune of turning the puppet mode off. Also, the pathfinding is quite bad. My companions often got stuck in the middle of a totally empty space on their way to the enemy, and I had to manually re-direct them. I remember one time when I cleared an entire dungeon area before realizing that one of my characters was stuck in a door just near the exit during the whole time, making idiotic movements with his weapon, but still unable to walk through an open door.

The Bottom Line
Neverwinter Nights 2 won't win any awards for originality, but it doesn't matter. For anyone who cares for the wonderful style of RPGs that was manifested in Baldur's Gate (and actually has its roots in Ultima), this is a great choice. Ignore the voice whispering "been there, done that" to you, and bask in the nostalgic glory of complex role-playing rules and romances with cute half-elves.

Windows · by Unicorn Lynx (181780) · 2015

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Interesting mods in development. The Fabulous King (1332) Jan 15, 2008
Snore... Indra was here (20756) Jul 26, 2007

Trivia

Pre-order extras

Pre-ordering the game gave customers a Pre-Order DVD with a serial number which gave early access to the toolkit, granted an exclusive in-game talent called "Merchant's friend" (which unlocks a special item that lowers the prices when buying from merchants) and contained the fan site kit.

Online servers

The game's online servers which were hosted on GameSpy were shut down on 5 December 2012.

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2006 – #5 PC Game of the Year
    • 2006 – Best Character of the Year (PC) (for Khelgar Ironfist)
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • Issue 03/2007 – #3 Best RPG/Adventure Game in 2006 (Readers' Vote)

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Neverwinter Nights
Released 2002 on Windows, Linux, 2003 on Macintosh
Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide
Released 2003 on Windows, Linux, 2004 on Macintosh
Neverwinter Nights: Diamond
Released 2005 on Windows
Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir
Released 2008 on Windows
Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark
Released 2003 on Windows, Linux, 2004 on Macintosh
Neverwinter Nights: Platinum
Released 2004 on Windows
Neverwinter Nights 2: Deluxe
Released 2008 on Windows
Neverwinter Nights 2: Gold
Released 2008 on Windows

Related Sites +

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 24735
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by The Fabulous King.

Macintosh added by Corn Popper.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Corn Popper, UV, Sicarius, Zeppin, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Plok.

Game added November 2, 2006. Last modified March 6, 2024.