This game is one of my favourites. It mixes a wonderful blend of RPG goodness with strategy and puzzles to envelop a wide range of gamers. This single player story alone will provide months of entertainment, over 65 hours just to beat. Your leader, the heroine of Neverwinter, Aribeth, instructs you to find the Waterdhavian creatures that have a cure for the Wailing Death. The plague has quarantined the city, allowing nobody in and nobody out. Thousands of burning corpses line the streets, others more are slowly dying off. You will battle waist high goblins when you are still wet-behind-the-ears (shoulder height if you are a gnome or a halfling), slowly work your way up to zombies, skeletons, and then you are ready for such atrocities as frost and fire giants, dragons, and many more. Of course this isn't to mention hundreds of other creatures you will encounter. As you uncover the plot, there will be many plot twists that will keep you guessing to the end. Is it your nearest friend behind all this, or your not-so-innocent henchman. Could be. You will just have to find out for yourself. I won't mention any twists here to prevent spoiling the experience for others.
Another one of the many great features in Neverwinter Nights is the character creation and growing scheme. You have gnomes, elves, halfling, half-elves, half-orcs, and of course, humans as avaliable races. You can choose to be a wizard, sorceror, rogue, fighter, paladin, ranger, and more. You choose a portrait for your character that gives you a general idea of what the character looks like. Although there were not that many portraits that came with the game, the excellent community churns out more everyday. It is also possible to import portraits from the Diablo series. Next come the skills and feats choosing. There are many skills to make your character unique in his/her own way. There are absolutely no limits to what you can do. Unbelievable traits such as paladins (protectors of all that is good and righteous) with a pick-pocket ability. Or you can make a wizard who duels two longswords like a pro by the way of combining character classes. You can have up to three different character classes on each character that you configure each time you level up. Millions of possible character combinations you can make. When you are done selecting your skills and feats, you can choose from a variety of body sizes, faces, hairstyles, and tatoos to make your character recognizable. Once you are done this, you select a name, age, and voice set. A lot of thought and effort was evidently put into the voices. They range from the truly hilarious, like the "high-strung evangelist" voices. This voice spews out threats like "You are sooooo gonna feel my wrath!" in the funniest voice imaginable. Basically the only thing the "manic pshychotic" voice says is "Die! Die! Dieeeeeeee!" Once again very funny. After you are done that, you are ready to beging playing.
The combat system is very simple in the game. You click on your enemy once, and your character attacks with whatever is in his hand. If you are a spellcaster, you simply select a spell from your spellbook, and click on your enemy. Nothing to it. Once in combat, you can heal yoourself from potions in your inventory, or use potions for boosting your stats up. If you are a spellcaster, it is a necessity to hire a henchman when you are a lower level. Hire one that is meant for close combat, to distract enemies while you throw fireballs at their faces.
Two things that make Neverwinter Nights different from other fantasy RPGs is the radial menu, and the quickbar. The radial menu is a menu you get whenever you right click on an NPC, henchman, enemy, on anybody in the game. From this menu you can choose attack the creature, or bow to it, talk to it, the options vary along with the character. The quickbar is a useful item that allows you to store inventory for quick access by way of the function keys (F1,F2,F3 etc.). You can store spells, and with the touch of a button you can summon a fire ball. It helps you bring weopons into your hand quickly in battle instead of searching through your inventory. You can store potions to heal you or buff you up. Take my sorceror/fighter combo. I let the enemies come to me in a wave, and weaken them with spells until they get close enough to use their melee weopons. With a touch of a button I now wield two enchanted longswords in my hands instead of a staff. I continue to chop down the enemy with my superior melee skills. Now isn't that helful?
Neverwinter Nights was worth every penny that I bought it for (around $80), and with two expansion packs and a possible sequel, this game stays fresh for a very long time. When you have beat the single player campaign, you can head online for easily another twenty hours of gameplay in the hundreds of community modules. You don't need to download anything to play, just join the server and you are there. My most memorable experience online was when I made a rogue who was adept at hiding, moving silently, pick-pocketing, and various others that make the rogue sneaky. It was in an arena server, where you fight one-on-one duels against other opponents. I snuck up behind a fellow player, pick-pocketed him, and recieved the best shield I have ever seen. I continued to do this until they finally caught on to my game, and I was instantly banned from the server, live to steal another day.
95%
