While I definitely prefer full party control, we can thank shoddy, high selling console RPGs and Diablo clones for the henchmen method today.Ģ. With HotU, you can do most everything cept have full party control. PreSoU henchmen had extremely limited control, not allowing you to even open their inventory or equip them.
In addition, the ingenious mod makers figured out how to add more companions.
With the Hordes of the Underdark expansion, you gained a second party member and increased control over them.
If you are referring to NWN1 before its expansions, than you are more correct, but the OP bought the Diamond Edition, so he has all the expansions.ġ. A lot of effort was put into the other party members and consequently they are much better than any of the NWN npc's you'd have.Ĭlick to expand.Man, I really need to set this straight, you've got some inaccurate information in there. It does, however, touch upon a lot of the things you might see in a PnP campaign and has some interesting ideas in it. NWN 2 stars out great (better than any of the NWN's IMO) but falls apart at the end when it starts to get really cosmic (the 'good' ending in particular is the worst ending I have ever seen in any videogame ever and I've been playing games off and on for 30 years). NWN 2 isn't quite so solo (you can have parties in the campaign instead of a single player with henchman note HotU for NWN does the same as I recall) but the AI is not as good as NWN which can force you to micro-manage your party in certain fights (which is very hard in an action game) making some fights more frustrating than they should be.Īs far as the stories go the NWN initial campaign is so-so but the expansions are much better (HotU being the best IMO). Action games aren't better or worse than turn based, they are just different and may be better/worse for a particular person depending on what they want. This forces some changes to the d20 rules and of course makes for a totally different game experience from a turn based classic RPG (which seem to no longer exist). They are (somewhat liberal) conversions of the d20 ruleset to an action game format with the intent of supporting multiplayer. The NWN games are totaly different than BG, if you go into them wanting another BG then you will end up being sorely disappointed. If you have a good gaming system you may want to check out NWN 2, they fixed a lot of the bugs and now its just a mediocre game instead of a bad one. I honestly can not think of anything positive to say about Neverwinter Nights, at least not anything encouraging you to play it. NWN 2 had graphics that look decent, but the game performs relatively poorly. NWN 2 also alllowed much larger parties and slightly better control over those parties, but it still feels clumsy compared to the Baldurs Gate games. NWN 2 had better implementation of the rules, more character classes and prestige classes, more spells and skills and powers and goodies to play with. The ONLY real improvement was a mixed blessing: They went to D&D 3rd Edition rules, which many people dont like anyway. You never really get the same Epic feel throughout the story. The dialog and quest quality is much worse than the other games. Also, when you move between chapters you can't go back to previous areas. Fewer things and people to interact with, fewer side quests and optional areas. The world is very plain and sparse on detail compared to BG2. You actually have to move your PC's there and they walk hideously slow. You cant pan around the map independantly from the party to check out the landscape. More often than not your view is partially obstructed even with the so-called "intelligent" building see-through feature. The nifty little 3D rotation and zoom never has a great angle or lets you go way out to see things. Difficult to access character abilities and spells and even more difficult to interact with objects and people. You can only have 1 main party member and 1 hireling, and the hireling has extremly limited control. Its inferior in just about every manner you can think of. When they made the move to 3D they lost a lot of gameplay and even with NWN 2 they never got it all back. It is a horrible game for those of us who remember the quality 2D RPG's from earlier days. "If you loved Baldurs Gate then you'll HATE Neverwinter Nights!" It was supposed to be a sequel to Baldurs Gate 2, they even had plans to import characters but dropped that idea before release.