Can you be the hero that the world needs....or will you fail before you even make it into the night.
To start off i will cover a little of the plot/story for Neverwinter Nights. You are sent by Lady Aribeth to recover four monsters needed to make a cure for the Wailing Death. This is not a nice thing at all as it is a plague that is sweeping the city of Neverwinter. With the help of Fenthick Moss, Aribeth's love interest, and Desther, Fenthick's friend, you are able to retrieve the monsters. As you are collecting these monsters, you are attacked by mysterious assassins from the cult that is behind the spreading of the plague.
As the cure is finished up being made Neverwinter Castle is attacked by Desther's minions. Desther takes the completed cure and escapes the castle, with you and Fenthick in pursuit. When they catch up to Desther, he surrenders after a short battle. Desther is sentenced to burn at the stake, and Fenthick, despite being unaware of Desther's true intentions, is sentenced to hang. You then meet up with Aribeth and they begin searching for the cult responsible for the plague and the attack on Neverwinter.
Now as you know from may past reviews i like to leave you hanging when it comes to the story of a game. This time will be no differant as it is only fair that you the player play the game and find the end of the story for yourself.
Now with that out of the way i will take a look at the gameplay. As you may have seen in the section above you may not have seen the players name...that is because in Neverwinter Nights you have to create a character. You get to choose the character's gender, race, character class, alignment, statistics like strength, dexterity and others and abilities like skills and feats. you also get to pick your appearance, and your name. There is a great deal of customization involved. You can be, for example, an outdoorsman Ranger class or a healer Cleric class. Then you can choose the skills and feats that would help you the most, a Ranger might want the Animal Empathy skill, for example, while a Cleric would choose the Combat Casting feat.
Neverwinter Nights is not a short game either as this first one comes on three CDs, while the expansions each add one CD. Down the road the makers of the game where kind enough to move the entirety of the game to a single DVD. Which to be honest is always very very handy (I tended to have CD's go missing alot). Following a small prelude, there are four "chapters" in the original game, with each chapter consisting of a general storyline. The first chapter, for example, deals with a mysterious plague in the city of Neverwinter. Within each chapter, there are many quests, subquests, and mini-storylines to have a go at.
Depending on specific quests completed, and specific items kept, some storylines are continued throughout the entire game such as Henchman or Aribeth's tales. Completing many of the side quests will give the player's character more experience and special items, making him/her level up faster and continue to make the game easier as the player progresses. For example, completing all quests in the first and second chapters will place the player in Chapter 3 with a 13th level character, instead of a 10th. Which as we all know comes in very very handy. Being more powerfull never hurts you it only hurts the people you are fighting.
Now this being an olderish (is that even a word) RPG Neverwinter Nights actual mechanics is based on the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition rule set; most actions fighting, persuasion, etc. are based on dice rolls. For example, when a fighter attacks, he would roll a 20-sided die which is called a d20 in-game to determine if he hits the target and then roll another die determined by the type of weapon an 8-sided die (d8) for longsword, two 6-sided dice (2d6) for greatsword, 10-sided die (d10) for dwarven waraxe etc. To determine damage dealt. Although nearly all actions are based on a dice roll, the player does not see the dice roll and it is calculated "Behind the scenes" although a nearly exhaustive feed of the various rolls may be enabled.
Now this being an old RPG you would not expect it to have a multiplayer side to it but that is where you would be very very wrong. Neverwinter Nights lets upto 96 players on the same server application. Now that does not mean every server will be like this but it gives you a sort of scale that you might only find in an MMO. One important feature of Neverwinter Nights is the 'DM' or 'Dungeon Master' Client, a tool that allows an individual to take the role of the traditional 'Dungeon Master', who guides the players through the story, and has complete control of the server. Neverwinter Nights had the most evolved version of this feature and thus arguably created one of the most 'immersive' RPG experiences currently available in CRPG gaming. The DM Client allowed players to participate in regular campaigns, while also allowing persistent-world servers to flourish by permitting the Dungeon Masters of those servers to possess NPCs 'on-the-fly' for added realism. The DM Client also permitted the user to spawn and control masses of monsters and NPCs much in the same way as units would be controlled in a real time simulation strategic game. So you can see that Neverwinter Nights is no normal RPG.
Neverwinter Nights first came out for the PC in north america on June 18, 2002 and in europe and australia on July 3, 2002. It also came out for Linux in north america on June 20, 2003 and for Mac in north america on August 2003.
The System requirements are:
Windows:
Windows 98/ME/2000SP2/XP
450 MHz CPU (800 MHz CPU recommended)
128 MB RAM (256 MB RAM recommended)
16 MB RAM video card TNT2-class OpenGL 1.2 compatible (32 MB RAM GeForce 2 or Radeon video card recommended)
8X CD-ROM drive
DirectX 8.1
1.2 GB available hard disk space
Macintosh:
Mac OS X version 10.2.6 or higher
450 MHz G4 or faster processor
256 MB RAM
32 MB RAM video card
2.1 GB available hard disk space
This is one of them games you may have missed first time around and could have missed second time around as well. For me i am glad i did not miss it at all. For an RPG it offers alot more than most games even try to. Find this game and give it a go.