An excellent translation of the real thing.

There have been countless computer games over the years that have attempted to recreate the magic that sent thousands of nerds scurrying into their basements to play Dungeons and Dragons for hours on end. Very few of these games have been particularly successful. Even recent attempts, such as the popular "Baldur's Gate" series have been seriously flawed by repetitive stretches of random encounters whose sole purpose seems to be the acquisition of experience points. Although these games have their fans, I've found most of them to be boring, frustrating, or both.

NWN is an exception, however, and is one of the few fantasy rpg titles I've ever played through and enjoyed. An adaptation of the 3rd edition Dungeons and Drgaons game, the title manages to hit all of the positive aspects of computer rpg's while avoiding most of the problems.

The storyline is actually quite good, although that's a relative thing. Most RPG's have weak plots, and this one isn't going to give The Lord of the Rings a run for its money, but it isn't bad. At the start of the game, a plague has decended on the city of Neverwinter, and adventurers of all stripes are being recruited to help find the cure. This eventually leads to a much larger and more sinister quest to stop an evil scorcerer from taking over the entire world. Add the numerous side quests into the mix, and you have a storyline that is full of twists and turns. Overall, I found it to be well written and effective.

The actual gameplay is made up of a series of smaller miniquests, each one moving the story along another step towards the final goal. Some of these quests are downright excellent, such as the "judging" of two brothers in a haunted village and the time-jumping quest to make invincible golems...well...vincible so that they can be defeated. These quests are imaginitive, and provide something more than hack-n-slash insanity. Unfortunately, there are also a number of quests that are repetitive and even downright annoying. The trial of the Uthgardt man in Berounna's Well is an example of this. The endless Ogre/Orc/Kobold cave quest is another.

The general value of the quests seems to be inversely proportional to the level of the game you are playing. Towards the end, as you character gets quite powerful, the game designers seem to have run out of ideas and just started throwing dragons into your path left and right. This is effective at first because dragons look so cool and are dammn hard to kill. Eventually, however, you just start to roll your eyes. The last battle, of which I will say little here, is filled with annoying "immunity" aspects where you have to do some annoying task before the enemy (who is trying to gut you with her bare hands) can be harmed by even your most powerful spells. Again, it seems like they just ran out of ideas before they ran out of game.

The game allows you to fight with a single henchman, along with a familiar (if you are a wizard) and a summoned creature (again, if you are a wizard), giving you a maximum of four companions. This is a departure from the large parties of Baldur's Gate, and I was suprised to find that it made the game more fun. I didn't have as much micromanagement of my forces, as my companions essentially did their own thing allowing me to do mine. Battles also didn't take nearly as long as they have in previous RPG's. The drawback to this, of course, is that it is easy to get overwhelmed by your enemies at times...particularly towards the end of the game. Fortunately, if you henchman gets killed you can always get them back for a small fee...

The difficulty level of the game is a little difficult to assess. In some ways, it fairly difficult. This is particularly true at the end, where the game throws some (I feel) unfair tricks at you that almost require you to read a walkthrough to deal with beforehand. On the other hand, for the majority of the game, dying really isn't that big of a deal. You simply lose some experience points (50 per level) and gold and start back at a convenient Temple of Tyr. You can return to these temples at nearly any time and get healed (and recover dead companions). You can even rest, recover spells, and return right back to where you left...even if it is in the middle of a fight. There, the monsters you were fighting will simply pick back up where they left off, and they evidently did not use the available time to rest and recover.

I figure that this "consequence free" system is really just a way of dealing with the limited henchman system. It is very easy to die in this game...particularly due to the random "deadly" traps that you encounter...so you need something to balance this out. Really, if you just keep plugging away with your recall stone, there isn't much you can't handle over time. The only exception is the end of the game...

Spoiler Alert!!

The last part of the game, where you fight Morag, is enormously frustrating. Here, you suddenly (and without warning) lose the ability to use the recall stone, rest, or even turn back. The game autosaves after you enter this region, making it impossible to get out of the level. Therefore, you had better have a large number of spells and healing potions ready before you walk in. This is fair enough, but you need to give players some kind of freakin' warning! Particularly when the next part of the game is so hard...I simply could not win after spending hours moving through the game (mainly using the quicksave feature) and had to cheat in order to defeat the baddie. I simply didn't have the proper spells memorized and had no way of changing them. Very frustrating!

Overall, this is a great title. Long, but not boring. Solid graphics (although they are aging a bit now), good design, fairly nice sound effects. The only problem I had with the sound was that you get some annoying, repetitive outbursts from your companions every time they go into battle. I've never gotten into the 3rd edition D+D rules (I'm a first-edition, old fogey) but this game translates the game very well.