Neverwinter Nights
Jul. 7th, 2002 10:45 pmLooking back on it, I guess that was sixty hours of play after all.
Not a bad game. I rather liked the flow of the plot and the challenges; it moved nicely from the collection quests of Chapter One through the more complex collection and judgement quests of Chapter Two into solid hack and slash in Chapter Three -- just when I was wanting mindless slaughter. A couple of subplot threads continued through the entire game, which was nice. And the overall plot was interesting enough to hold me.
I'd have liked to have seen more consequences for actions. I had a failure in Chapter Three which made my character fairly unhappy, but it didn't really matter much for the plot. In most cases where an NPC doesn't want to share certain information, it's possible to just threaten them until they tell you with no real effect. Most annoyingly, while you can slip from good to evil and vice versa, there are no actions in the game which affect your chaos/law axis. Boo, hiss.
Let's see... it's not really D&D 3rd Edition, although it's close. The real-time combat makes mincemeat out of tactics. There's no way to take a five foot step back to get off an arrow safely, and so on. (Although you do get attacks of opportunity and Concentrate checks and so on.) Stat bonuses seem to stack, stats max out at 30, and the skill list is really weird. You ought to be able to bull rush anyone -- none of this special feat needed junk. Grrr.
Still and all, it's the first CRPG I've finished, which says a lot.
Not a bad game. I rather liked the flow of the plot and the challenges; it moved nicely from the collection quests of Chapter One through the more complex collection and judgement quests of Chapter Two into solid hack and slash in Chapter Three -- just when I was wanting mindless slaughter. A couple of subplot threads continued through the entire game, which was nice. And the overall plot was interesting enough to hold me.
I'd have liked to have seen more consequences for actions. I had a failure in Chapter Three which made my character fairly unhappy, but it didn't really matter much for the plot. In most cases where an NPC doesn't want to share certain information, it's possible to just threaten them until they tell you with no real effect. Most annoyingly, while you can slip from good to evil and vice versa, there are no actions in the game which affect your chaos/law axis. Boo, hiss.
Let's see... it's not really D&D 3rd Edition, although it's close. The real-time combat makes mincemeat out of tactics. There's no way to take a five foot step back to get off an arrow safely, and so on. (Although you do get attacks of opportunity and Concentrate checks and so on.) Stat bonuses seem to stack, stats max out at 30, and the skill list is really weird. You ought to be able to bull rush anyone -- none of this special feat needed junk. Grrr.
Still and all, it's the first CRPG I've finished, which says a lot.
no subject
Date: 2002-07-07 11:59 pm (UTC)Regarding real-time combat, I used the pause function a LOT in combat, to set up the next move, etc.
It's not exactly 3rd edition, but I'm using it as a device to become more familiar with 3rd edition anyway. I agree with you about not having consequences, kind of like the story is already written and it doesn't matter what alignment you are, etc.
Once I have done the actual game story, I'm looking forward to designing some adventure-type modules of my own, I think that would be cool, especially if they fit in with a story I'm working on or a tabletop rpg of some kind. Hopefully the interface won't be too tortured for that kind of thing.
no subject
Date: 2002-07-08 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-09 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-10 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-10 08:55 am (UTC)