Beat One, One to Go

I managed to beat the NWN2 game last night. The final battle is pretty epic, in that you are supposed to control nearly all of the companions you have accrued during your time playing the game. In addition, you are fighting against some extremely high-level villains who have a variety of skills.

Then, once you complete the first battle, you get a moment to rest and save the game, and then the next villain comes out. Once he’s defeated, another set of mobs attack you before you have an opportunity to do much of anything. Then, the final mob attacks. All during these battles, you have to pay attention to the clues being spoken by various members of your party as you need to destroy statues, destroy portals, and use certain abilities in order to be successful. And, with the mobs and number of characters you are trying to control, those messages may fly by very quickly.

All in all, I felt that the graphics were much better and the rules engine superior to that found in NWN (and its add-ons). However, NWN was a more fun game to play, as the story made more sense and you had more choices as a player of what to do and where to go. NWN2 really forced you into a linear progression that had few variations even if you played once as a Lawful Good character and the next time as a Chaotic Evil character. Basically, there are three chapters and you have some “evil” choices/directions in chapter 2 you can make—but the story is the same; you are just playing on the other side of the cut scenes and conversations. There is something wrong with a game when you get nearly the same minions and missions as a paragon of light and goodness or as a scion of darkness and evil!

Also, when the game was first installed and the first few game updates were available, the game engine ran smoothly and without any noticeable hitches on what was determined as the “standard” setup for my CPU, memory, and graphics card. However, after the most recent update (1.04), my game play shot to hell and I had to disable many of the features that I could run with no difficulties prior. Also, I went from having smooth transitions and virtually no errors or crashes to jerky transitions that took much longer to load, errors, and the occasional crash. I have a pretty solid gaming machine, so I can only imagine how tough it was on others with lesser or borderline machines.

The fights against the Red Dragon, Fire giants, and the fight against the two Black dragons were really well-done and nice—almost worth the price of the game alone. However, I don’t think this game has much replay value. I will probably uninstall it from my system now that I have beaten it.

As a brief aside: If only they could make a game that was in-between Elder Scrolls and the two NWN. A game with great play- /replay ability, awesome graphics, some ability to play online with friends or networked (doesn’t have to be as complete as with a fully online game), and the option to follow the main storyline or do more of your own thing. I mean, I would love to play Morrowind with my friends online; the ability to create nearly any character and do nearly anything would rock the house. Or, a DnD-based game that has true “modules” that you can run with your character, instead of being a persistent world online (ddo.com) or limited focus/scope storyline (NWN2). Wouldn’t it be great to buy the equivalent of NWN, get some friends together, download and play a fully-tested and complete module?

So, after beating that game, I turned my attention back to City of Heroes. I played for an hour last night and got one tenth of the way to level 50-- only about 4.2 million XP to go. I am close to reaching the end of the level progression in that game and unlocked the two new archetypes for use.