This review is a bit of a blast from the past. I’ve been playing Neverwinter Nights again, after it was on special on Steam. I think I got the extended edition for about $15 which was a pretty good deal – even if it is for a game that first came about in 2002. Interestingly enough, I tried to play Neverwinter Nights at that time, and I really struggled to get a machine that was powerful enough to run it. Needless to say, it runs pretty smoothly on my laptop now…
Anyway, Neverwinter Nights was seen as a very big deal when it first came out – and it was pretty well received. It was a departure from the old party focused RPGs that had dominated the market from that time – all the way back to Ultima and then Baldur’s Gate and so on – and had become de rigeur. Of course, these still remain popular today, but Neverwinter Nights introduced the single-person action RPG, which became increasingly popular through games like Morrowind and Oblivion.
The game holds up well; the main campaign, which was, I thought, unfairly maligned when it first came out, is interesting. It has all those elements that make a story worth falling: compelling characters, plot twists, betrayal and redemption. Of course, it’s not perfect, and there are parts of it that were rough then and are even more so now – but there’s no doubt that it set the standard for many games that came afterwards. The music and sound effects, in particular, are atmospheric.
The menu system uses a rather odd radial menu, which I actually enjoyed. It hasn’t really been picked up by many other games since, but it was for the most part effective and suitable. Something that was really annoying was the inventory system. There was no way to sort items, and really the only way to organise it was through different containers within your inventory.
The real asset in the game, though, was the opportunities it provided for others to make their own content – the modules and the expansion packs are top notch, and worth the price of the game on their own.
Recommended, especially for a (sometimes frustrating) trip down memory lane.