Neverwinter Nights is arguably one of the most complete, interesting, and beautiful Dungeons and Dragons games ever.
Neverwinter Nights offers almost everything from a tabletop Dungeons and Dragons experience, translating nearly everything perfectly to a third edition game. There are some omissions, such as whips or deities, but these omissions have little effect on the game for the most part. Instead of focusing on what’s missing, the massive amount of content there is simply staggering. The player has the ability to craft just about everything he or she could want, there are a variety of weapons to beat the faces of your opponents, equally as many solutions to any given problem. All of the classes are available, such as monk, warrior, or wizard, giving the player a massive amount of replay value, and all feel faithful to the source material.
NW’s story is an exciting, suspenseful, and interesting with enough plot twists to keep you going all the way to the end. The game starts by introducing you to the city of Neverwinter, which is in the throws of a plague. You’ve been called to train at the academy in hopes that you will yield results along with your comrades. Of course things take a turn for the worse, the academy is attacked, and it’s up to you and one helper to make things right.
Neverwinter doesn’t offer you a full party of people to quest with, but rather gives you the option of hiring a single helper whose story you learn as time goes on. It’s kind of disappointing in a way that you can’t run a full group of wizards and fighters on your adventures, but the system works remarkably well so you don’t feel overpowered, but you also don’t have a walk in the park.
NW has a cooperative mode for the campaign, however, so you can fill your party if you have enough people, and believe me, this is worth it. The game has stable play for multiplayer, and offers a great deal of strategic gameplay, loot, and experience for any group of people.
By now, NW has a great deal of player created content thanks in no small part to the developer’s kit. These mods are some of the greatest player creations for any game, giving a professional grade experience for free, and thus giving even greater replay value.
The graphics in NW are very good, giving the player a convincing environment to explore. While the environments suffer from an extremely right angled level design, this in no way diminishes the look and feel of NW.
The sound is top notch, with spell casting, fighting, and the occasional voice work all sounding well done.
Neverwinter Nights is probably the best Dungeons and Dragons game ever made, and should you have the opportunity, I would recommend you pick this up. This is the rare game that truly offers something for everyone.