You can find my NWN 2 review here at Xtreme Gamer.

Though strategy and wargames are my bread and butter (well, air and water) I like a good RPG and Neverwinter Nights 2 is a good RPG. The review reads really negative because as I was writing it I was annoyed by a lot of things, primarily the knowledge that this could have been so much better. Also, the score more closely reflects the game as it is now – post patch – but I couldn’t let the botched launch get away without a comment.

But Obsidian really fell down on the interface. It is too difficult to do much of anything. I’m not the first person to comment on the lack of drag-select, but this absence really interferes with combat when there are a couple of high level dudes left to kill and you need to corral your mage and thief who were cowering the corner.

Take my warnings about character class seriously. Though you can easily succeed with whatever class you choose, don’t play your first game with someone that will easily die. You will spend most of your time on your knees resting.

There I go again…

The plus side is that the story, as cliche as it is, holds up pretty well. Even the annoying party members (Hello, stupid bard. Useless cleric.) aren’t so grating that you want to kill them. The subquests are well designed and the puzzles are RPG puzzles, not adventure game puzzles, so they are obvious in a clever way. The castle management in chapter 2 is reminiscent of the stronghold stuff in Baldur’s Gate 2. I even liked the voice acting, eventually, and I usually hate the voice acting.

Now that I am getting back into the Elder Scrolls stuff and have played NWN2, I may have to commit more fully to this genre beyond my obsession with roguelikes.