Yes, that too. Although it's a bit of a mixed bag as well, because the default mini map in NWN2 is more nice to look at than functional, a lot of pretty frame, not a lot of map. But I assume you could mod that out as well, so yes, that point goes to NWN2.

Personally, I don't really mind the UI in NWN that much though. The one thing that annoys me most about it is the limited number of quickslots, seeing that there is no quickcast menu like in NWN2. High level casters quickly run out of space if they use the quickslots for their spells.

My main issue with NWN2's camera are not so much the modes, but how close it to the ground; even in the top down mode I'd always have liked to zoom out just a little bit more than it was possible, and it especially became an issue when the characters moved to higher ground, up a mountain or so, because often the camera wouldn't zoom out along with them but remain locked at the same distance, getting even closer to the (mountain) ground. And in some cases, possibly due to bugs or glitches, it was so close to the ground that I could hardly see anything at all.

Not quite sure if I understand you correctly here; do you mean you prefer great flexibility on the mod author's part to the game running well? If so, I can't relate to that. I'm all for flexibility, but not at the cost of performance. What good is a nice looking area if it's no fun to explore it because the performance can't keep up?

Forgot about that - that's my main frustration with the NWN2 camera too (to be fair it would probably have affected NWN1 also, if that had mountains in the first place).
It's more about having the possibility/feasibility to mod in the first place. The more data that is hard-coded in relation to maps, the harder it becomes for third parties to modify it or produce new content.

However there is one big performance hit for NWN2 and that is its lighting model, where the sun (and moon) crosses the sky. These cast shadows, so every time they move, every shadow for every object has to be recalculated and redrawn. Compare that to Dragon Age Origins, where lighting conditions are fixed, which removes the need to redraw shadows so often - in DA:O, Bioware don't even need to worry about shadows for buildings and fixed objects since these can be "painted" onto the ground leaving only PCs/NPCs requiring shadow updates.

Result? DA:O performs better than NWN2 in most cases, but lacks the realism that NWN2's lighting offers (in particular, sunrises and sunsets casting long shadows). In this case, I'd say the performance hit was worthwhile.

I don't really remember the lighting in NWN2, I'd have to check it again, but the fact that I don't remember is kind of telling as well. I wasn't particularly impressed with the graphics in NWN2, they are certainly better than in unmodded NWN, but not exactly pretty in my eyes either, and shadows are among the things I put the least store in, definitely less than in performance. Would performance improve if you'd just toggle off shadows entirely, if possible?

Overlooked this point - but NWN2 actually has 2 mini-maps, the mini-map (which appears by default - called up/dismissed with the N key) and the area map (called up/dismissed with M). I find the area map more useful, but you need to be running NWN2 at high resolution on a large screen to avoid it taking up too much space.
Something you don't notice can be a sign of it being done right ("uncanny valley"). Look at it this way - in DA:O, did you not find it disconcerting that Lothering was always in sunset, or that the docks for the Mages' Tower were always in moonlight? And that bad weather was never present? (even the original Witcher game, based on the NWN1 engine, managed to add periodic rain and thunder).
Strong recommendation, add all of NeilMc's texture mods from the following list:

https://neverwintervault.org/tags/neilmc

That will make a significant improvement to NWN2's looks (at the cost of higher GPU memory usage - you'll need 1GB VRAM with all graphics options enabled).

Yeah, I remember that I wasn't content with either map's size. In this regard I prefer the middleground of NWN.


To be honest, no. I don't remember anything about lighting and shadows in either of the three games. I can only assume that I was neither impressed nor put off by any of them, it just wasn't something that I put much store in.