The quests feel very rail-roaded. Controlling the camera is a constant fight; controlling your party is even worse. You'd think that having a bigger party and a more fully realised 3d-environment would be upgrades to NWN1, but alas they are very much not. And where the first Neverwinter Nights was cirticised (rightly so) for its somewhat bland storytelling, in this game the plot (for as far as I managed to play) boils down to "I could tell you, but Jim from three towns over can say it even better. Go bother him." Then there's the technical difficulties. If you leave your computer on for a while and then try to play NWN2, the graphics become really choppy. You see, there is a counter on your processor keeping time since last bootup, and NWN uses that for the rendering engine. Only if that number gets large, NWN can't really deal with it and your graphics/animations go to sh-t. So in conclusion: don't. Play NWN1 instead. It's less refined in some areas but at least doesn't ACTIVELY suck as much.

I sank 80 hours into this game. The game concept is okayish. The execution is bad. Overall the game is average. The UI cripples the game big time - clipping camera, unintuitive controls and hard-to-click objects. Inventory management is bad. Sometimes the camera advances in steps, giving choppy, nauseating experience. The gameplay is okay, with a four main issues: 1. Time: unskippable quick time events, lengthy travels within a location and padded story. 2. Crafting did not work for me at all. Building a character is either hit'n'miss or requires deep knowledge that is not offered by the game. Selection of spells/feats is a hit'n'miss as well. 3. Simplistic world, where your actions and decisions matter very little. The story is forgettable, NPCs are bland and hard to attach to. The game forces player to select some of the companions for some missions, but that is more annoying than helpful. 4. Bugs! This game is so unpolished, that certain event's do not happen, inventory items get lost, NPCs go idle whenever something gets in their way, enemies teleport thru your tanks, game crashes or hangs. The good: Combat is fine (RTwP). Enemy AI is passable, for the most part going for the party members you least want attacked. The ugly: Unbalanced enemies (Moire that kills entire party on her own, vs. Nightwalker that dies off almost on its own). Choppy camera. Useless lore: a lot of text to get thru for nothing. The Keep is a wasted opportunity. No matter how good or bad the Keep is, it matters very little in the end.

Truly, a gem shining proudly. NWN2 serves as an ariergarde for RPG classics, having a demanding system, interesting plot and amazing replayability. Plus, Mask of the Betrayer is one of the most ambitious RPGs of our decade, daring to wink suggestively at Torment and surviving the confrontation in a good shape. Why not buying it? It's probably the last quality RPG we shall see in a long time.

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Neverwinter Nights series made me a game dev!