Neverwinter Nights

[ISP]

So Neverwinter Nights: EE is $6.79 on Fanatical.com right now

I'm really torn on getting it because they also have Siege of Dragonspear EE for 5, Planescape EE for 5 and Icewind Dale EE for 5. I hate to buy a bunch of games that are serious time commitments at once. But that would complete my Enhanced Edition collection for the Infinity Engine (Baldur's Gate style) games.

Link: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/ne...hanced-edition
Additional 10% off with coupon FANATICAL10 too btw

[Hadley]

How could I not! This was our game of choice for LAN in college. The campaign was a bit boring, especially by yourself... but the toolkit was fantastic.

[JackofTears]

I hated the game when it came out, the included campaign was terrible and I returned it after only a day. I then picked the game up a year later, after the modders had gotten to work, and enjoyed it for several years to come. Many of the modded campaigns were fantastic, imaginative, engaging, and so much fun that I got several times the value for my dollar. Now, though, the game is dated and I doubt I could go back to it.

[Saber]

Will be playing this game again when Steam does their Winter sale. The new Enhanced Edition keeps adding "new" stuff and the game has server again so that's cool.

[Eisah]

Just packed up two copies for storage the other day, along with Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. I only have some vague memories of playing, but I do remember how impressive it was for its time. I think the computer we had back then lagged a lot when I ran it, so I didn't end up playing it enough. It's probably worth trying again.

[Omegapyrate]

Oh my god, I loved this back in the day.... It was one of the first PC RPG's I ever got into- I think it was the first time I get to play an 'evil' character in a game too. Blackguard ftw! ^_^ I really liked the story with Aribeth too, and the way she reappeared in the Hordes of the Underdark expansion (especially as an evil/corrupted person) was sweet.

[Great Walrus]

NWN community still runs a score of persistent multiplayer servers and it's honestly the closest thing to mmo that is not vomit inducing for me.
The difference is dozens of players instead of thousands. And dedicated DMs instead of scripts. Well, scripted quests are there too, of course. But major plotlines stem from player character interactions and are facilitated by DMs. All in all feels almost like a tabletop rpg.

[Drann]

I'm actually in the middle of a play-through of NWN:EE's main campaign at the moment, I picked it up during the last Steam sale for about five bucks. Funnily enough I was finishing off the campaign in BG2EE and still had a taste for more, so the sale was well timed. The main campaign isn't up to much in my eyes, I remember playing it on release and not being impressed after coming from the mostly excellent and far more expansive Infinity Engine games, my current time spent while enjoyable has confirmed my memory of first playing it all those years ago. The two expansions and some of the user modules really improve on those areas, but ultimately I'd say the multiplayer was where the meat of things were, which I'm glad to say seems to be pretty healthy with the EE edition of the game. That said I would argue that the sequel (NWN2) was the better game game as far as the single player experience went, full party management/control as well as the ability to spec into a fourth class, among a few other things. Again the vanilla campaign could have been better, but the Mask of the Betrayer expansion is absolutely fantastic and in my eyes the best computerised DnD experience since BG2.

[ad_victoriam]

I am one of the OGs that played it on release, OP. I well remember getting way psyched popping open that launcher:

Who wouldn't?

I played it tons back in the day, though not as much MP; unfortunately my folks were late arrivals to home internet access and only had 56k when we did, so the ability to go on the internet was limited to our office computer. But it was a first taste of internet multiplayer.

I also count it, however, probably my first real bruising experience with the game industry. I know you never got into Baldur's Gate, OP, but I did, and that game blew my goddam mind. It was my first Role-Playing Game, and was really the perfect RPG for me. Having grown up playing Real-Time Strategies like Age of Empires and Command and Conquer, the concept of moving units around was already elementary to me, all BG had to do was introduce me to the fine-grained statistics and inventory management factors. By comparison Neverwinter Nights felt clunkier and more limited, especially with regards to party management. I was not a little cheesed at the prospect I could only have one follower and I couldn't directly order him. I was also a bit put off by its smaller, more linear campaign.

At the time, I just chalked this up to the switch to 3D - I reasoned that, given time and practice, the industry would undoubtedly put out something as incredible as Baldur's Gate again in 3D. I would never have guessed that the practice of making subsequent games smaller, more limited, and more linear, of giving players less agency and control, and that stripping out complexity was the goal, not just an annoying side-effect. In retrospect I suppose the rise of ARPGs also had something to do with it too (one notices that NWN's inventory screen is almost a straight up ripoff of Diablo 2's), but I never glommed onto that subgenre either.

Another crimp in my memory is this. If you played the campaign only in the original version of NWN, you probably remember the two followers Sharwyn and Boddyknock looking like this and this; if you install an updated version (like GoG's), however, they will now be this and this. Apparently there was some kind of dust-up over the original pictures the former two were based on, and the developers were forced to swap in the latter two portraits. It's not a huge deal, I guess; I kind of liked Sharwyn's later portrait better even if I thought Boddyknock's was worse. But it was still an indication where things were going: copyright looming larger and uglier over gaming, exerting more control; the content that you paid for being swapped out and removed not for reasons of game function, but fiat of outside corporate interests.

In full, it wasn't a bad game itself, but it was a herald of terrible things to come.

[GenKaan]

Played both but do not remember much beside liking it. Tried to play multi player with a friend but it was too buggy, or we couldnt figure it out. Tried to revisit it but the tutorial is way too much haha

[StanTheStrongArm]

I tried playing it after getting it from GOG during a sale. The difficulty seemed unbalanced to me, so I put it down and went back to playing Morrowind.

[Gray]

Yeah, I remember getting this when it came out and I played the hell out of it. Then after I played through it, I started playing a lot of persistent worlds. I remember one specifically by name called something like Layonara.

The gamegame defindefin had some clunk factor and it was kind of easy to gimp your character.

[Shotgun Gibbs]

I'm actually just wrapping up a recent play through of the OC right now. I picked up the EE to check it out and ended up just playing on through and it has been a blast. Well, up until the guardian fight right before the final boss which is proving problematic for my character. I wish I would have played more back in it's heyday so I could have enjoyed the multiplayer experience but, for some reason, I never did.

[ISP]

Oh I loved the first Neverwinter Nights. I got it early on but it took me a while to accept the new ruleset and move away from 2D stuff like Baldur's Gate but once I did I had some really memorable times and by the end my character felt more my own than any time I played the Bhaalspawn.

That said, I haven't revisited NWN while I revisit Baldur's Gate series and other Black Isle fare quite often! I think I should give it a go though, it's a game that deserves it. And hey, who knows? There might be some truly epic modules to find after all these years.

[MakeGamesGreatAgain]

Hey, I remember that game too. I loved it.

The amazing modules I played from other people was amazing, and I even created a few modules myself.