Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Great multiplayer"

I would have to say as far as RPG's go that Neverwinter Nights 2 has got to be one of my favorites. Of course it helps that I'm a big fan of pen and paper D&D in the first place.

That aside this game has everything where it counts great character creation, a good story, plenty of hours of gameplay and decent graphics for its time. For those not familiar with D&D 3.5 the character creation might seem a little complicated but the game does a pretty good job of explaining everything in detail.

As much as it gets a pretty heavy dose of criticism I thought the official campaigns story was pretty good, I liked the characters as well.

I myself never had any problems with the supposedly "dastardly" camera or control schemes. It all seemed fairly intuitive to me.

As far as game length, this game has at least 40 to 60 hours of gameplay. Its a good solid chunk for just one play through of the OC. The D&D 3.5 rule set is implemented quite well and so is the feel of the forgotten realms.

On top of the already great OC and MoTB/SoZ expansions, there's countless player made custom modules floating around the vault and a few other websites. There's bound to be something there to fit almost anybody's tastes.

However for most people where the real meat of the game is going to be is the online multiplayer. It's excellently done and there is plenty of player operated dedicated servers to play on. With the OC and two expansions and custom modules as well as multiplayer servers this game has tremendous replay value.

There are a few problems that keep me from giving the game a perfect score as much as I happen to love it. One of them being some really shoddy coding in certain aspects of the game.

For instance if you take the "evil" route in Neverwinter some of the quest triggers won't fire correctly even if you've done them the particular way that is asked for. It is nothing that will stop you from completing the game or continuing to play but it's certainly a letdown.

On top of that the game definitely lacks polish in certain areas. that just don't seem up to snuff for a completed product. But if you can get around those problems then the game has plenty of hours of D&D styled fantasy fun.