July 26, 2002: Yet again I've purchased a massive RPG videogame that I really don't have time to play. This time the game is Neverwinter Nights. Awhile ago I talked about Morrowind, the insanely good first person RPG. Neverwinter Nights is just as good. I know, I know. How can two games so good come out within a couple of months of each other? Honestly I don't know. I do know though that my many other games are suffering from a lack of attention due to these two games.

In the game there is a massive amount of character customization that can be done. You pick a class then decide what extra abilities and skills you want to have. This is pretty cool but honestly I kind of guessed which things would be most useful to me. Luckily the logical thinking I used was right on the money. It isn't quite as open as Morrowind because you have to pick a class but it is pretty open in that you can choose a different class when you level up. I think this gives you the abilities from both classes but I'm not sure because I haven't tried a multiclass character yet.

Neverwinter Nights is based in the Forgotten Realms which is a large, rich fantasy world used for non-computer RPGs (pen and paper?) and the setting for many books. Since I've read pretty much all of the Forgotten Realms books this world is pretty familiar to me. That's kind of nice since some of the game mechanics aren't so familiar. All of the stats on items and weapons must be pulled from the pen and paper type roleplaying games or something. I sure as hell don't know what 1d6 (insert more random numbers) means. Just trying to figure out if a short sword is better than a scimidar is an effort in futility when you have no clue what numbers means what. I'm pretty much sticking with short swords for now since I know just how much damage they normally do. When I loot a +1 short sword I don't know what that really means but I do know it is better than a non +1 short sword. Some sort of explanation as to what all of the random weapon numbers are would be useful. Maybe they are in the book somewhere but I didn't manage to find them while reading it.

In spite of the confusion over weapon stats this game totally rocks. The combat system is somewhat reminiscient of Dungeon Siege but is more engaging. The single player mode story is quite a bit more engrossing than Dungeon Siege also. I think I like the leveling up system better too. In Dungeon Siege it was like "Oh, my archery skill is lagging a bit. Guess I'd better pull out the bow and raise it up." That's how use based systems all work. If you use the skill it goes up. NWN follows a slightly different thing where at various levels you get to raise your stats and at other levels get the chance to purchase skills. Sure it isn't exactly realistic but it is more fun than the drudgery of making sure you equally use each skill you care about like you would in a use based system.

I haven't yet mentioned the graphics or sound. The graphics are excellent. They aren't quite as beautiful as Morrowind but they are pretty darn good and have tons of little detail such as proper character shadows. The massive amounts of animation such as when you put something down or pick something up is a nice touch too. The sound is pretty good too. One nit-picky thing is that the background sound sometimes gets a bit much. I killed off every rioting prisoner in the prison section of level 1 but the sound of the rioting prisoners was still there. Who is supposedly making the riot noises when I've killed everyone other than the boss off already? Other than that sound and graphics are both quite good.

This game isn't quite as stable as I could have hoped though. I've had it lock up on me like 15 times in 12 or so hours played. That's more than one lockup per hour. I've also had it do weird stuff a couple of times when I launched it. It launched to the menu but I couldn't click on anything on the menu. There's also been something odd when I pick the lock and open an empty chest. It takes like 30 seconds for it to open the chest. Until then I'm stuck doing nothing. These problems haven't affected playability much though. I just follow the save often principle and keep multiple saves going in case something goes bad.

All in all Neverwinter Nights is a most excellent game. I've actually played it more than I expected to. The only real negative about it is that I haven't had time to play Morrowind since I've been busy with this one. Oh, it also cuts into my Everquest playing time. Not sure if that is a good or a bad thing.

Update August 12, 2002: Even though I complained about not having time to play, I've actually been making time to play this game. I am having issues with the following bugs in the game though.

• Script breakage in a number of chests and containers when opened. Symptoms include a 5 to 15 second pause where your mouse cursor moves but nothing else is responsive. Container is always empty. Sometimes console errors about the script will appear in yellow in your dialogue box. I believe I've only seen this in 1.21 and 1.22 but it could have been in an earlier version also.
• Inability to right-click use potions and items sometimes. It works just fine to drop them on yourself to activate them but the use option is greyed out on right- click. This has been happening to me randomly in every single version of the game so far.
• Doors not opening, unlocking, or trap disarming: After playing for awhile I'll do the normal unlock thing and get the unlock icon in the upper left. However, the timer window never appears. I can then try to unlock again and again and build up a big pile of unlock icons at the top left of the screen. The only solutions I've found are to either bash the door for awhile then try unlocking again (which works sometimes) or to fully exit the game and reload my previously saved game.
• Henchmen sometimes get in a screwed up state where you can't talk to them or hire a different one. Occasionally my henchman give me some bs about working for another master and won't respond to me. The only solution I've found is to exit the game and restart from a save point.
• Entering and exiting doors can get really screwed up. Normally you can just run through an open door to get to the next area to be loaded. Sometimes this gets screwed up so bad that you just hit the edge of the currently loaded segment and are totally unable to exit. In this state sometimes it works to click your mouse when the cursor is the entrance with an arrow in it. Other times if you run away from the exit you manage to make it through on your way back through the door. Sometimes you get stuck in a spot where if you move forward nothing happens but if you move back you go to the next area to load. Then on the other side the same thing happens. When this happens I've only been able to fix it by reloading a previously saved game.
• You can't sneak backwards. It does some screwed up stutterstep thing like the sneak modifier is being applied as a forward motion which cancels out your backwards motion.
• Sometimes when the game starts up I can't click on anything in the initial menu. This requires a reboot of my machine to fix.
• The game locks up like once every two hours or so. To get it back into a stable state requires a reboot.