Neverwinter Nights: First Impressions

Well.

At the request of one of my friends, I've downloaded Neverwinter Nights and have given it a bit of a test run.  I'm not really sure what I think of it so far.




First off, there was the initial hiccup that it's not officially supported for Macs.  I have a trial version of Crossover which I used to download the game;  the trial's due to expire and the end of the month, and I'm not sure if the game will run as well using Wine or another free cross-platform application.  I suspect there may be some difficulties with using Crossover, as well, instead of a native platform.

So I downloaded the program, which turned out to be a lot easier than I thought since I was able to search for it on Crossover's website and it only took a few clicks to get it installed.  Then came the patch.   Just like WoW, the first time the game's run, it takes a while to download the latest content.  Off to study up on races, class, and history, I figured.


I'm not a D&D person, so when I read that it's based on the Dungeon & Dragons universe, that doesn't really tell me much except that it's got a lot of history and lore behind it, which is a daunting thing for a roleplayer to tackle.  That's a lot of history and culture for me to start reading; not something that sounds awful, just time-consuming when I've got a lot of other things I'm working on at the moment.

Neverwinter's site was actually very unhelpful.  I did not have much success in finding information on races and classes, and the default layouts were difficult to read; the page shows up as very small text.  I eventually found a link to a community Wiki where I could find information.  After zooming in several times on the text just to read it, I was dismayed to find the articles were inconsistent and minimal.

Some races, such as the Tieflings, had an extensive background, but other races had little more than a paragraph.  There was the same issue with the class articles; some of them, such as the Guardian Warrior, were helpful enough to describe that class's basic role in groups, but most of them were short paragraphs and a lot of tables of abilities.  I mostly ignored the tables on the assumption that they'd be too technical for someone who hadn't spent any time in the game to understand... and also because they were extremely ugly, particularly since I had everything zoomed in.

 I finally got the game running and hit the character creation screen. There's a lot of choices to customize your character.   I appreciated having the ability to chose hair and eye color, a range of hairstyles, a few choices in body build, etc.   I played around with the little sliders for nose size, jaw length, etc, but I wasn't going to invest and hour in being picky about features I was rarely going to be looking at in great detail.

I wish they had a few more options for freckles, moles, and other more 'natural' features and variations instead of several dozen options for tattoos.  But at least I got to chose how long my nails were?

The game has the same problem with the Sims 3 for me in that they character models stray too close to the Uncanny Valley.  I felt like I was shaping a rubber Barbie Doll's head. 

There's only two free character slots, which was disappointing, but not surprising in a free-to-play game.  It means that if I want to try out the different classes, I'll have to keep deleting a character and going through the character creation process over and over and starting from scratch.  As someone who's not at all sure what she wants to play,  it's a depressing thought.

The first class I rolled was a Guardian Warrior.  Something completely different than I've played in the past.  In other dungeon-style games, I've played mostly as a ranged character, and in WoW, my main, Ketlan, is a ranged healer.  Kezrin is technically a melee fighter, but only when I'm leveling her, as I play her as a healer in group content.  I've never played a tank for a group, ignoring the few times I've run lowbies through a dungeon!

I decided on the warrior because I wanted to do something different and something easily soloable.  I remembered that playing a ranger with my brother worked best when my brother was present!  Same with mages in WoW; I get stomped when I try to solo.  So a halfing warrior it was.

Nor did I really like the idea of picking a character background.  While it was nice to have a bit of lore to read as a new player, I didn't want to pick something with only a few lines of text and be stuck with it as my character's background.  Nor did I like being pigeonholed into specific storylines.  I'm sure dedicated roleplayers will be happy to ignore that and make up their own stories, but I can already see the grief they'd get from people who tell them they can't change it, just like all the griefers in WoW who think all humans must come from Elwynn.

There was trouble with the "select a deity" options.  Several of them were underneath other elements of the UI, with no ability to scroll down.  I can only hope I did not miss any really interesting choices.  I have no idea if that's a problem with the game, or because I was playing on a Mac.

I can't say I like the idea of rolling for stats.  That's a traditional D&D thing, but it left me feeling like if I didn't sit there and roll it exactly right, I'd be hampered the rest of my gaming life for one initial bit of bad RNG and ignorance about stats.  How am I supposed to know what is a good amount of stamina or not?  Or which bonus I should pick?


Queue the cinematic.  It was very nice, even if the WoW girl in me immediately thought, "Oh, hey, it's the dragon from the Wrath cinematic!"   I loved watching the rogue fight; I bet a lot of people rolled rogue because of that sequence.


I got stymied the moment I tried to move.

Years of practicing to be a mouse-turning in WoW betrayed me.  Neverwinter requires you to use the keyboard, as the mouse is used to steer and aim a targeting reticule.  I spent most of the tutorial just learning how to move.

The initial quest was to find gear scattered on the beach.  I had great difficulty with that because the two pieces of wreckage wouldn't always show up as being able to interact.  I'm not sure what was going on- was only one piece of loot there at a time, and those other players running by grabbing it, forcing me to wait for a respawn?  I spent a while scoring the beach looking for more loot until I returned to the crate and found I could loot it again for the other item I needed.

The quest tracker and the char box texts were super tiny and very annoying to read.  What's with tiny text, Neverwinter?

I was also frustrated with the 'use F' to interact instead of simply clicking on an item.  It later started to throw me off in combat when I had to switch between clicking on enemies to fight, and using F on wounded soldiers to heal.

That said, it was fun playing a warrior once I started picking up the knack of navigating the screen and received more abilities.  There's a good, visceral fun is just cleaving your way through enemies and Heroic Leaping (or whatever their name for the ability is) at a distant foe.  The blocking mechanic felt fun, too, a nice way to be proactive about defending myself.   I was killing things without thinking about it.

The graphics were pretty, if a touch busy compared to WoW's more simplistic style.  I could get used to it, but for now, it still feels like Uncanny Valley territory to me.  I like it better than Diablo's one-camera-angle-only style, however.

I don't like that I have to press a button just to mouse over UI elements.  It feels like I'm pausing the game when all I want to do is just to check what this button does.  (This tiny button.)

I was rather confused by the "daily action."  That sounded awfully a lot like something I could only use once a day, which seemed like a terrible thing to waste. I'm suspecting that's some sort of D&D legacy naming, but it could use a better name in an MMO environment.

I very much expected Wilfred to die and was not at all moved by it.  If you're going to kill an NPC to get us invested in a story, give him more than two brief conversations and a corny anecdote about his mother.  It was pretty obvious he was going to die.  I cared a lot more about Zuni from the Echo Isles.

The boss fight was fun, and then there was the city!  I finally stopped here to try and fix my chat box.  I was able to get the text to a decent readable size, but put off learning about more of the settings until later.  I went to go find the guy to tell about whats-his-name's death.

I have a feeling this guy is someone important, but as a new player, I have no idea who he is.  It made me wonder about how new people in WoW could turn in a quest to say, Aggra, wife of the Leader of the Horde, and not know who she is.  (Confession: I did not know who she was the first time I rolled a goblin!)  So I apologize for not knowing who stern-guy-on-pedastool is.

Another confession:  I kept having trouble just with the mechanics of turning in quests.  Stern guy told me, 'look at the chest behind me,' I clicked 'done,' and then was really confused when I couldn't inspect the chest.

Turns out you can't click 'done,'  you have to click 'continue,'  THEN 'done.'     Despite that, I made the same mistake two minutes later when talking to the guy for my peasant's garbs.

Up pops the tutorial thingy telling you have to get to your character pane, and to click 'fashion' to equip visual gear.  Too bad they don't tell you where that (tiny) fashion button is, nor is it labeled 'fashion' until you mouse over it.

I do like the idea of a fashion tab, even if the first pieces of clothing you get are so ugly that it's best just to stay in your combat gear.  Thanks a lot, guy, but I prefer looking like a warrior over a lumpy potato sack.

I decided not to continue on the next quest.  I restarted the game, this time going for a ranged caster, the control mage.  Selectrion screen went a lot faster, and I was soon in the game.  It felt a lot better not having to flounder around my first few steps.

The starting area was much quicker this time around, as I knew just to stand by the crates and keep looting them until I had everything.

The biggest difference was in the fighting.  I was no longer running up to enemies, but targeting them from afar and picking them off.  That actually took a lot more thought than the warrior.  And it was almost until I was at the boss fight at the end that I finally figured out I could just hold the mouse button down.

The best thing about the mage class I felt was the teleportation.  It was immensely fun.  The freezing thing didn't really seem to slow down creatures fast enough to really put distance between mobs and my mage, but then I got teleport!  The fights became a lot more dynamic and fun as I was able to position myself and jump out of harm's way instead of standing still and holding down a button.

Overall, I did very much enjoy the fight mechanics of Neverwinter and will have to play both classes more to determine if I have a favorite.  I would also like to try the other classes and see how they differ.  I'm also looking forward to testing out group content with friends to see how that changes the game.

The graphics are a little off-putting and busy looking to my eyes, but I'm sure I could grow used to it over time.  I can't tell you yet if I like the lore, the people involved, or if there's an actual RP scene.

I'll play it a few more times to hang out with my friend, and then we'll see what happened when my Crossfire trial expires.