Neverwinter Nights product reviews

Neverwinter Nights is Bioware’s latest foray into the D&D franchise based on the 3rd edition rules, and the first release to make use of their new 3D engine, AURORA.

Any concerns I may have had about the quality of this 3D CRPG where quickly blown out of the water. The AURORA engine delivers superb graphics and some of the best spell effects I’ve seen. The character animations are equally as good with combat actually fun to watch as opponents take up appropriate stances, then dance around each other attacking, countering, and dodging, all of which continues until you win, lose, or run away screaming like a goblin.

The music and sound effects are excellent, which is no surprise as Bioware games have always excelled in this area. The voice acting is good for the most part but a few did seem overdone, all in all the speech is well done and does help drive the story.

The interface is a simple point and click with the cursor changing based on what you’re pointing at, for example, highlight an enemy and the cursor will change to a sword. Every action you’re capable of can also be accessed via a radial menu, although very easy to use it isn’t something you’ll want to be doing while a monster is trying to turn *you* into a hero burger. With this in mind you have two options, you can pause the game and plan your next few moves, or, you can use the quick slots. Neverwinter Nights has 36 quick slots that you can setup with actions from the radial menu, items dragged from your inventory, or spells dragged from your spell book. Any action assigned to a quick slot is only a key press or two away.

Exploring prompts a loading screen when entering new areas, and loading usually takes anywhere from 1-5 seconds and IMHO is detrimental to the sense of immersion. An engine which streamed in new content with breaking the game play would have gone along way to increasing the immersion level of this game. That said, the world is vast and populated with plenty of critters to smash, bash, bite, punch, and kick. Your encounters are automatically scaled to your level so you always have a challenging fight even if you’re a walking tower of destruction. If you do find you need help, you can hire a mercenary to aid you in dishing out pain.

The real power of Neverwinter Nights however is in its replay value. You have 7 races and 11 classes to choose from and each have their own strengths and weaknesses. If you get sick of playing the official campaign, simply jump on the net and download one the many community created modules. If you feel like contributing to the community with a module of your own, no problem, fire up the AURORA Toolset and create a module to strike fear into the hearts of adventurers everywhere. On top of all this, there’s the DM client where *you* control the trials and tribulations of the players in the game, or simply jump online and aid others in the vanquishing of evil.

Neverwinter Nights is a great game and well worth a look if you’re a RPG fan.