Neverwinter Nights for PC
Developed by BioWare

Role-playing games have long been one of the greatest genres of computer gaming, allowing you to cast magic spells, slay monsters, and travel to distant lands.

There are only a couple of problems with RPGs, namely that they are either way too fucking complicated, or way too fucking easy. You either spend hours trying to adjust your armor class agility impediment modifier, or you end up just pointing and clicking your way across big boring landscapes a la Diablo 2.

Having said that, the benevolent gaming gods have blessed us with a game that is fun to play, yet offers lots of depth and replayability: Neverwinter Nights.

The game starts off with character creation, which is actually a fun experience. You can choose between seven races, eleven classes (professions), and countless other options.

Herein lies the first stroke of genius, allowing you a wide range of customizability. While you can pick every little detail about your character, you can also pick pre-made packages and just play.

This makes NWN accessible to a wide range of players, from gaming lightweights (such as yourself) to hardcore D&D freaks (it's based on the D&D 3rd edition rules, nerdo). The same holds true for leveling up, as there are recommended buttons for most upgrades, yet the user can manually make changes at any point.

After making your character, you start off with a none-too-inspired "you're-in-the-finest-military-academy-but-it's-really-just-a-tutorial" beginning, but it seamlessly integrates into the first battle of the game, wherein your graduation is crashed by a group of mysterious assassins looking to destroy the cure to a plague ravaging the city. As in real life.

You then go on during the next few chapters on a brilliant adventure with plenty of twists. It seemed like every time I had someone pegged as the mastermind villain, it turned out that they were merely pawns in a grand plan of conquest. What is refreshing about this plot is that it eschews the traditional "you're the prophetic savior of the land" plot so common to RPGs. Instead, you're just some shmuck recruit who managed to not die during the ambush.

You eventually become a hero, but because you have accomplished valiant deeds and built a reputation, not because of some bullshit prophesy. The plotline is substantially non-linear, allowing you to choose how you will go about completing it. In most chapters, you are given a very general quest, and it is up to you to gather intel and decide how to best approach the situation.

For example, in the second chapter, you are tasked to discover where the cult you are hunting is based, but instead of telling you where to go and what to do, you're let out into the wild with the vague tip that you should check out a town to the north.

The design team obviously put a lot of effort into this game, and it shows. While you can blaze right through the game, there are numerous side quests and dungeons that will keep you entertained for hours. There was also a lot of careful play testing involved. If I was thinking, "This better be the last umber-hulk," it usually was. That's pleasing, because there's nothing worse than one too many umber-hulks.

The in-game conversations were often times long and interesting, usually requiring a certain charisma or persuasion level to learn the most information. All of this attention to detail really makes it a fulfilling experience and helps the game reach the fullest possble potential.

You'd think this killer game would be enough for the fine folks over at BioWare, but they went two steps further. First, they added some killer online play. You can either play as a character or as the Dungeon Master. The DM controls are quite intuitive, as you can customize the dungeon on the fly, adding traps, taking control of monsters, or – get this – adjust the overall difficulty of the entire dungeon with one slider bar. In real life, adjusting the difficulty of a dungeon can take hours, and more slaves than I typically have access to.

Even better than this is the set of development tools that are included, free, with the game. You can create huge worlds with multiple areas, populate them with townspeople and monsters, and make them look damn good with relative ease. In just a few hours, I was able to create a world with a town, a forest, and a multi-story castle filled with vampires. Again, in real life, the best I'd be able to do would be, like, a studio apartment with maybe one vampire.

NWN's powerful suite of tools has led to a huge amount of free custom content online, effectively allowing you to continue playing new adventures endlessly. All of this combines to form one kick-ass game that I recommend without reservation to any type of gamer … even you.

Loud Bassoon rating scale

Review by King One-Eye