First Impressions

I started playing the Official Campaign over the weekend and have some first impressions. Girruuth, a character I have used since the first Neverwinter Nights, is the typical Half-Orc I run through these campaigns. Girruuth started life with a level of Rogue and at second level began his career as a – high Str high Dex – Barbarian. The character creation process is simple and there are several choices to make for the characters appearance, nothing as comprehensive as the ample options available in Everquest 2 or Oblivion, but improved over the original game. Skill and Feat assignments are similar to the first game as well, with minor graphical improvements. No spells on this character so I will evaluate those screens at some later date.

I didn’t create any characters of other races this time out so some of this may not be accurate for all circumstances. I felt that, in light of what I have seen in other games, more character appearance options would go along way to making this a better experience. As many choices as there are, I can quite easily see how duplicate head/hair/color combinations will quickly crop on Persistent Worlds. Perhaps making more colors available for hair and things would be an easy enough change, for starters.

I really like the way they integrated the beginner’s tutorial in the game. It provides a fairly seamless way to introduce UI concepts to completely new players as well as those that just need to get used to the new interface. A couple of areas that will require some getting used to are the camera and WSAD movement. The camera seems particularly obstinate -- it never seems to point where I want it to -- and the movement controls feel extremely sensitive. Maybe there are some setting under options that can fix the movement but I have tried all the different camera's and none feels entirely satisfying.

Some final issues; I recently installed a new top-of-the-line video card and cranked up the graphic effects. As soon as I entered the first outdoor area I saw a shadow rapidly flickering on a boulder in an unexpected way. I don't know how much of this is NWN2 and how much is DX9 or the Video Card drivers. Also in the graphics department, there is a road sign tucked under some shady trees near the far side of the village that when highlighted with the mouse 'dissipate' the shadows. I am fairly certain that this is caused by the 'light' that the highlighted sign is generating effective dispelling the shadows until the mouse is moved away and shadows are restored.

All in all, I like what I have seen so far. The interface is something that I will need to get adjusted to and the graphics glitches are not really a big problem.