Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Grows on you"

Neverwinter Nights is truly an amazing game, one that I find thinking about every so often even if the bulk of my gaming is behind me (I put importance in other things as well so don't spend as much time on it). The problem with such a quality game is its greatness isn't quite explained alongside requiring certain circumstances for aspects to shine through.

As some reviews pointed out, the main single-player scenario is easy and doesn't fully explore the gaming system. However, this statement pointed something very important: the gaming ; the system *is* excellent and rival the original P&P (pen and paper) under the right circumstance.

First, you need the right game (as in save/load) and the right scenario, in which you need to fully exploit your character ability ; that will unlikely come out if you play an adventurer so will need to specialize your character. However some people might not like that because at the same time specializing give advantages, it create disadvantages and some might prefer more rounded "player" (character), the key is to join/create a balanced team.

Second, the monsters & items need to have the right difficulty. IMHO, there's too much "mods"/modifications/custom scenarios with average items too cheap thus almost-everlasting or too good thus to force a minimal time spent in each area of the mod, the monsters difficulty is raised proportionally. While on average that balance doesn't impact much the progress of the mod, beside maybe quicker leveling, something is greatly diminished: the (character) classes differences. The end-result is that most characters will likely have quite different base class they should pretty much all end with minimal adventuring ability but that shouldn't be! An arcane/divine-based character that has gone through his/her limited physical shielding summons should fall from very few physical hits. A melee/projectile-based character that has gone through his/her very few (magical) spell resistance potions/scrolls should fall from very few spell hits. Those were but a couple examples and there are many other aspects ; the most important IMHO is inter-dependence, thus appreciation of other classes. The powerful items & monsters combo diminish inter-dependence quite a bit to the point players think "No rogue? Oh well! Instead of opening that locked door, we'll go through the other harder rooms." and "Instead of going through that side of the cliff with a cleric against divine-vulnerable monsters, we'll take the other side with (50-100%) more monsters.". I almost forgot that most scenarios don't use enough skills, is any at all, which add another level of character specificity (in this case loosing the distinct advantage of some classes that have many skill (rogue, wizard, ...)).

With the right appreciation, there are many layers of this game to be enjoyed, many hours to discover and to make use of them ; or simply know they exist while you choose a more action-oriented style (not using the second case I pointed).
PS: I suggest those that want to fully enjoy the gaming system and/or role-play (chat in the style of their character), to choose Role-Playing in the (multiplayer) server list filter.