When I was like 11 years old I begged my oldest brother to install Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind for me on the family PC and he said, "Only if you finish the first game I got for you." That first game was Neverwinter Nights: Platinum Edition and after beating it I got to play Morrowind. To this day both are some of my favorite games of all time.
@@kylel7158 single player games should never require commitment or discipline but be compelling enough to finish them for their own sake. Commitment and discipline should be reserved for things that give you an advantage in life, make you money or make your life and beloved one's lives easier. If you finished the game with an eye to play different games, then that says something bad about said game and if your brother made you play it to test your mettle/will then it says someting equally bad about said game. It says the game was a slog. The burning question becomes did you enjoy the whole experience and 2. Did you know what you were doing?
This was a life defining game for me. I played on the persistant world arelith (I think) where, in addition to all the other rp'ers there, met a young lady who showed me a different side of the character I was playing. A character that was the main inspiration for the novel I worked on (which remains in a completed rough draft form). Although the young lady passed from heart problems irl, I have fond memories of my time there that will last a lifetime.
I played on the wheel of time server! Lemli Hairn, John Do'Urden, and a few other characters that I'd RP religiously pretty much everyday for years. Sooo, fun! I miss it
Neverwinter Nights is my favorite game of all time, precisely because of the user created content, so I'm glad to see you tackle it. If I may, I strongly suggest playing the following user created campaigns, which you can find on the Neverwinter Vault: Aielund, Bastard of Kosigan, the Cave of Songs/Honor Among Thieves/Prophet trilogy (probably the single best), Swordfight, and Tales of Arterra. All of these easily blow even Hordes of the Underdark out of the water and are my absolutely some of my favorite gaming experiences ever.
Yeah i can confirm that lot of them are quite awesome, though i must admit that i have never finished swordfight, as the difficulty kept steadily increasing and once i got into second chapter i got stuck on some stupid oozes that did absurd damage :D also bastard of kosigan is beyond awesome, i dare to say it is one of the best implementations of fantasy europe i have ever seen.
@@fafnyr2537 Definitely agreed! Swordflight is super tough but amazing nonetheless. And as a history nerd, Bastard of Kosigan is pretty much porn to me. Probably my single favorite module of my single favorite game. And it is historically accurate for the most part, aside from the magic and fantasy creatures.
Exactly this. What made NWN great, and in many ways unsurpassed even to this day, is that it made it easy for fans to make their own content. The quality of the best of that content is simply fantastic. In terms of story telling the best fan-made NWN modules are far better than any commercial RPG I've played before or since. All the modules you've listed are great and in addition I'd also strongly recommend A Dance With Rogues as well for those that enjoy a more adult themed story. I'm still waiting for the next NWN: a game that makes it easy for fans to build their own amazing worlds and stories on top of.
There's a huge amount of things they fixed/changed in this EE; from pathfinding to textures to water and metal reflections, the amount of old code they had to go through just to fix some very small things (such as fog effects around objects) is quite admirable. Modding, scripting and servers are also always still looked into. One should still look into the most famous custom modules, they're beyond impressive and pretty much considered a mandatory part of the experience.
@@notalefty999 Pale Master levels themselves indeed do not add to caster levels, it does keep in mind your other class now though and THAT was the bug that was fixed, cause it wasn't before. If you want to change this to PM itself giving caster levels, I believe the community patch does that, I'm not sure about prc (player resource consortium).
@@Andriej69 While pointing out some things that happened isn't shilling, hating without providing a good reason is indeed being a hater. Please, don't give me notifications on weeks old comments just to hate on patch notes for your personal delusions...
NWN 1 is a criminally underrated and unknown gem that the current wider RP community is missing out on. Let every fandom know that they can run their own world as a server!
Enhanced Edition is waaay better MadPutz unless you are still using Windows XP or Linux, I don't even know why you'd prop up NWN1, it's almost dead now, while EE still has thousands of regular players playing on servers!
NGL, I bought NWN instead of Morrowing (as the game shop was out of stock for it, lol), best decission of my life (but I never got into elder scrolls, though)... some 20+ years ago
Cool video. One thing worth mentioning regarding the legacy of NWN is that without it we wouldn't have Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic as it uses the NWN's Aurora Engine as a basis. As did the original Witcher and Jade Empire games. Bioware was so far ahead of the competition looking back at this game - I love to revisit it every few years. NWN - EE could have really improved upon the OC by adding full-party support and more dialog options to cut out the filler combat. But they did a lot I suppose already. Good vid!
Best multiplayer experience I had in any game ever. Social media wasn't as big back then so people logged in just to talk and hang out, everyone was super welcoming and chatty. I love FF14 to death but it's just not the same.
Wulfram 2 from 1990s into 2000s was that game for me. Best game ever made. Fairly simple with some complexity yet required actual skill. Still hoping for wulfram 3 to be made, if only i were rich lol. We did have icq messenger and yahoo messenger but that was mostly for hitting random chicks up on the net lol. FF14 looks like shit. Standard boring mmo. Dragon Age was very good though.
I restarted the original campaign as a kid sooooo many times, and only got to actually playing through the main game, SoU, and HotU in April. Almost 100 hours to get through all 3 and I loved them. Never even touched any of the user created content but this game still holds a place in my heart.
This game was incredibly formative for me. I played in a PW (persistent world) called Caenyr for 4 years, well into high school. In retrospect I created some extremely embarrassing characters but there really was nothing like it. It's hard to describe what a lifeline and creative outlet this game was. You just couldn't connect with other people online in the same way you can now. It felt truly magical and I feel lucky to have had that experience.
One of the coolest memories of my early 20s was creating my tabletop D&D 3E characters in NWN and seeing them in action. This game was kinda cutting edge once. Pretty awesome stuff. Just try to ignore the clay-mation looking robot chicken style appearance of your character in the equipment menu. With good armor equipped it's not so bad 😂 and the weapons look great, especially magical ones. Great video, sir.
@@BlueTurn Aged like milk...already sour milk. I was playing BG3 in EA around the same time he was writing that comment, and it was great even then. I put 200 hours into it before the game even came out. If that's not worth $60 flat, I don't know what is
The Aielund Saga is my favorite single player adventure from the Vault. Much better than any of the official campaigns. And allows you to experience a full complete narrative from lvl 1 to max level 40.
NWN persistent worlds were my first "MMO" experience and to this day, for me, nothing has even come close to the sense of community and shared experience that they provided. As a non-RP'er, I loved the RP-lite servers where I could watch other people's RP adventures play out and occasionally get roped into them.
My favorite game of all time, been playing since it came out when I was in high school, the best implementation of a magic system I ever played in any game, you truly feel like an OP glass cannon (unless you shape shift into tackiness)
Never even played the campaign, but spent sooo many years in the toolset making mods for this. Still remember how incredibly excited I was when one of my adventures got inducted into the hall of fame on the vault. So much fun. Great memories.
@@7kurisu Vampire - Heaven Defied. I had just played Vampire the masquerade Bloodlines and wanted to make something similar. You had to bite people to heal and carve out hearts from dead people to keep as healing potions 😂haha.. I was really into death metal and horror movies back then so I’m sure I did my best to be as edgy as possible😅
i remember watching the trailer (from a cd that came with a gaming magazine of course) and being blown away by the lightning effects. shadows to be specific. oh and i still remember that "dungeon master" shot with the dude with like twenty monitors surrounding him =D
giving your brain time to "breathe" on certain topics can really help; you CAN binge watch a long show in a few days but going arc by arc and letting yourself rest on some concepts will help you both remember it better and notice thing you wouldn't have noticed otherwise. Whether it's books, shows, albums, videogames, it's more about finding the right amount of immersion without going in too little or too much. This formula works great for Mortismal but it's not going to be the perfect ideal for the every user. You shouldn't feel too bad if it takes some time to complete something, as long as you don't give up for lack of discipline or focus.
@@taomahNEGEV taking your time is preferable so you can soak in all the details and events that occur, but when you have a massive backlog it feels like you're never finishing games! Haha
I'm glad you covered this game, as it's my all-time favorite and I'd like to see more people play it. My favorite part about it is the toolset that comes with the game, because if you're willing to learn how to use it, you can make your own game with any amount of story depth or combat focus you like. You can make games for your friends to play, and you can be a player while also technically being the DM, etc. For its time, it was really one hell of a game that gave a lot of value to the consumer. Edit: with the toolset there are even some rules you can change/bend to your liking.
Neverwinter Nights was one of those games which holds a special place in my heart. Before i went into MMO, i used to play the multiplayer side of this religiously and got to know alot of awesome people. Fadrea, Rerith, Arum...still remember them and whenever i play RPGs, those are the names of my group members. Used to play in Leather and Lace and had the most fun whn everyone in the server fought against 2 hackers. It was one we knew we couldn't win but it was fun as hell cause we were totally united in that little cause. They left cause they were annoyed at us and not so much cause we did any damage..lol. Even till today, i always have a copy of Neverwinter Nights installed on whatever laptop i have,
...i found out that a co-worker also played *_Neverwinter Nights:_* And he told me about a glitch where you could unplug your router/modem to duplicate items: i tried it a few times on a power piece of armor that i gave to someone else (since I was a Sorceror), but I got banned from my favorite server for it !!! lol
I used to play on a persistent low magic world with always in character roleplaying. There was almost always DMs online, tailor made fun that'll never be repeated! Really do miss those days, whilst there's now swathes of RPGs to choose, I've never experienced anything like Neverwinter Nights. Custom content and the multiplayer set it apart in the long term, I cannot express how much more joy can be gleaned from a live mastered session, than just smashing hoards of mindlesss AI. The remaster's in active development with regular updates, don't think it's for everybody but if you are a fan of D&D 3rd I'd say give it a whirl, you can even see the dice rolls! ( well some ) 7/10 - ambitious jank
thanks for the great review and historical overview. very cool that you called out and appreciate its influence (considering how many you've 100%'d). wish i would've checked this out 15+ years ago.
It was obvious that the base campaign was more like a demo of the toolset. The focus was definitely on being able to create your own campaigns and run it for a group. The persistant world servers weren't really the point either, but could be really good. The smaller scale, compared to MMOs, meant that you had DMs really making sure that roleplay-servers were just that. There was custom systems as well, such as crafting for some servers. The official DLCs were far better for single player than the base campaign.
Actually, Trent Oster's gone on record as having said that the mini-MMO model was in fact a core focus for the team during development. Ultimately, the modding community had to provide external scripting and database support to fully realize this use scenario, but I do think that Trent (by way of Beamdog) did take that to heart in developing the Enhanced Edition. But, yeah, totally agreed that the base campaign was solely a proof of concept, and that the real software being sold were the Aurora Engine and its amazing creation tools. The community around this amazing game has done some utterly astonishing things with it.
You saved me the trouble of typing this up. I was extremely tolerant of RPGs back when this came out, and I still found the base campaign a tedious slog. The DLC campaigns, though, were great.
The mods make this worth playing. "Pretty Good Character Creator" lets you customize everything you can imagine, from access to every item in the game, your gold, your level and the ability to create custom weapons and items to changing every aspect of your appearance. The "OHS" mod lets you bring in your own custom characters as companions (henchmen that follow you and you can equip and command, but can't actually take control of because of game limits). It works with almost every module, including every default campaign, (only found 2 fan made ones that didn't work with it, out of hundreds of available adventures), so you can play with your own personalized party and is the only way I'll ever play NW. The sequel has mods that do the very same things, except in that one you can manually control every member of your party.
In what I believe is the first major town, I had killed EVERYONE and realized later that it locked me out of progression. I had never experienced that kind of thing before, so the experience, considering I was a kid then, really helped me understand that not every game needs to follow the same rules. I'm thankful for such an early experience because it opened up my imagination more to the idea that you really can make pretty much any game you want, and that's totally okay.
Definitely life defining for me and my buddies as well. This was the first time we were able to take our DnD campaign and bring it to life through the toolset. Absolutely awesome experience in my teens.
I played this in my teens back when the expansion packs came out, and after finishing Icewind Dale 2, i was just blown away how great of a game NWN was back then. Your review was spot on just how i remember it aswell. I remember experimenting a lot before i could get a character build i wanted. Didnt really have walkthroughs and extensive guides back then so I spent so much time with the console aswell just to test what my character levelup choices should be to reach the prestige classes and builds i wanted :D And as you mentioned the story got so much better with the first 2 expansion packs. One of my favourite features was that you could pause and observe your enemies and finding a small weakness to exploit.
One of the coolest aspects of this game is how easy the editing tool is. Its genius really because you can see the code but how it nearly automatically does things its super easy to fiddle around with it and learn. And I've seen comments from people that were inspired by this tool to go into programming.
The multiplayer in Neverwinter Nights blew my mind back then and was the best part of the game in my opinion. The amount of DnD servers were incredible and there were so many custom made worlds and the world builder was super easy to use. The element of surprise and the very hardcore consequences of dying in these worlds were unmatched and I never understood why everyone where playing WoW and not giving Neverwinter multiplayer a chance. People where actually role playing on the servers and ive been told off by an actual DM a few times for doing things like farming enemies and hanging out with evil players while being a goody goody paladin. The levels where low and it took ages leveling up and going anywhere was by foot. Some people even where rewarded for playing well and giving life to the servers and where allowed to play different races, like a minotaur and so on, but a full fletched character. Running into an actual dragon on these servers where terrifying, the fuckers would slaughter you in seconds and where so fast and would follow you through different locations. It was honestly super ambitious and unique.
I'll never understand why Bioware took a party-based tabletop rules system and released a campaign based on basically a single character. I could never get over that.
Speaking from the POV of someone who knows programming, I'd say that it was probably a time thing. Making a game full multi-player is at least an order of magnitude more difficult than making a single-player game. You have to account for every possibility without allowing anything to break the game. Do you force all players to be in the same party and have them share all achievements/progress in the game even if that player wasn't physically present for a particular crucial event? If not, how do you allow for one player completing a quest and then another player coming along 5 minutes (or less) later, wanting to do the same quest? What if players need to do the same quest at the same time but at different stages of the quest? Then there's the problem of XP and advancement, since players may have widely differing levels in the same party. All of this needs to be accounted for, and more. It's a long and difficult job. I'm actually impressed that the OC is as good as it is, even though it's generally rated as "mediocre" at best by most who have played it.
Loved this game when came out back then and loved it again when the EE released. Hordes of the Underdark to this day is still one of the best expansions ever released. Its interesting that the expansion for the 1st game, as well as the expansion for the 2nd game were both better campaigns than the originals. Very fond memories.
This game is very dear to me, especially hotu. I play through hotu campaign every year for like last 7 years and I am always blown away how good the game is in terms of features considering when it was released.
Way back when TV on Demand was still a thing, before we really figured out streaming services, my mom got me a subscription for Comcast's Games on Demand. It was absolutely the defining moment that shaped my video game tastes, because suddenly at my fingertips I basically had everything from the golden age of PC gaming at my fingertips. Mechwarrior, Hitman, Original Tom Clancy games, Age of Mythology. And of course, Neverwinter Nights. The only game that just one image sends me straight back to that old computer hutch in the foyer. Replaying those first few hours so many times over, trying the custom campaigns and underdark expansion, having no idea how any mechanics worked or that this was even Dungeons and Dragons.
I credit NWN for turning me into the gamer I am today. It was my FF7, Half Life or LOZ Ocarina Of Time. It introduced me to both western RPGs & D&D, two loves. At one point in time all I ever played was this, Pokémon & Oblivion over & over again. To this day I yearn for more games where I can make a character & take it through multiple campaigns, both official & fan made. Keeping the progress I earned all the way. The closest thing to a true D&D experience video game to this very day. Really happy you covered it. It gets overshadowed every time, especially by its predecessor series Baldur's Gate. Would love for new players to enjoy it like I did.
Now the most important thing. You haven't reprimanded Deekin, have you? I've played a lot of games, but deekin has his own special plays in my heart. He is incredibly charming.
I remember creating some deekin dubstep by speed clicking on him so he would say his singular greeting line of 'deekin?' over and over! I still don't know why that was so funny.
I think my strongest memories of these games are the initial chapter when everything is just so fresh and new and the final chapter of the very last game where I was distraught about trying to save Aribeth from Mephistopheles. I remember actually being kind of impressed that they did her so dirty even after I went through all that effort to try and save her at the end of the first game.
Started playing some of the new modules for this game and it sucked me back in after being away so many years.. especially after installing the game with the HD texture pack from Beamdog, it actually looks pretty good now..
I remember playing that game back in 2002. It's amazing to see how far video game have come since then. The field of view is so ridiculously low in this game, the fog of war is like a couple feet in front of you.
That must have been a bug in the early version of the game. Visibility hasn't been a problem for me and I started with "Hero's Edition" which had different problems (fortunately, easy to overcome with a couple of free downloads).
I would recommend anyone liking nwn to try shadowlords and dreamcatcher custom modules from the vault. I vaguely remember enjoying those even more than the official expansions.
Aielund also needs to be on that list. It also has the virtue of being pretty much the only lvl1 to lvl 40 (max level) campaign in the Vault that is 1 self-contained single player adventure. That it's also a quality story and provides good RP opportunities is also a win.
There is just something so charming about the graphics of the game, many detailed animations and very nice voice acting that makes it in my opinion timeless
NWN holds a special place in my heart as my first crpg. later i played through BG1 and 2. when i heard about POE i backed that game and put in well over 500 hours into it POE 2 was a bit disappointing but still fun. hands down my favorite is Pathfinder: Kingmaker and WOTR best crpg games imo
I really love the story of the wailing death. But I hate what they did to the hero of Neverwinter and aribeth. I kinda hoped that the hero helped aribeth escape and starts a family in a far-off land.
When I play Hordes of the Underdark I always reroll the answers from the knower of names until I get Aribeth to be the true love of the sleeping man. That way everything she went through was so she could meet him at the gates of Cania.
I got a copy of this game when I was 10 or so. But it was hard to play at first, I got a bit older and figured it out. For reasons I don´t know, I have actually skipped the Main Campaign and started with SoU. It was the best RPG experience I had. This cozy kind of start in the Winter theme is what got me hooked. I then finished the main campaign. Now I am back at it again and got all the other modules and will try them out. Sure, the graphics may have aged, still there are some mods to improve the textures. I don´t need a lot. I just want a good RPG experience.
Really nice review. The one thing I'd say is it sounded a bit like maybe you (understandably!) haven't quite twigged to what is the only truly unique feature of NWN... the feature which IMO is the only real reason why people might actually want to play NWN today despite its dated-ness. Whilst (as you say) newer games have definitely done *some* of the features NWN has in better and more modern ways, there is *no other* RPG in history (besides NWN2, which was a very broken game) that has had the *combined* features of NWN which allowed players to create the Persistent World experience. You don't have Persistent Worlds in any other game. They are really not like MMOs. PWs require: (i) a DM client + (ii) the ability for players to create huge custom worlds and populate them to an insane level of detail with quests, creatures, cities, items, dungeons, stores, NPCs, stories of all kinds... etc. + (iii) player-hosted servers that can handle high player numbers + (iv) massive levels of customisation and expansion of base game content, rules, mechanics and assets. If there was another game with that feature set, then I am pretty sure most of the NWN PW community would have at least partly switched to that hypothetical game a long time ago; despite NWN2 being a broken mess which it was incredibly hard to create content for, a large portion of the NWN community did initially try to switch to it because we were desperate for a new and actively supported software platform to create and run our PWs with. In the end, NWN:EE is the only surviving platform that really allows gamers to do it. I would love some day to see someone make some good videos reviewing and explaining the PW experience. It's one-of-a-kind; the closest thing to the magic of tabletop D&D that you can find in any video game.
Hey M I'm a fan.. This review though was a little lighter than usual on the actual in game mechanics , story and side quests I thought. To bad, it was a big game for me.
As I mention in the video, it's very hard to go in depth about them when they change with every module, about the only thing that stays consistent is the 3e ruleset, and while a bit dated, most people get the gist of.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane. I was part of the team that created a persistent world for this game back then. Before real life forced me to quit the team, we had tried to make a full blown version of Menzoberranzan, the City of the Drow. I have some great memories of working on 3D models of custom creatures, role playing as Priestesses of Lolth and just making this jewel of the Underdark come to life. Thanks again for the memory.
@@arcticdream4905 Many of us were into the whole Drizzt Do'Urden thing and Salvatore's series as well as the TSR published source material. It wasn't long after I had to leave the project that NWN sort of fizzled.
@@themanickwarrior981 its a shame, really. If NWN never slowed down and somehow managed to gain a momentum, the amount of incredible modules we'd have on top of what we already have today. Anyways im getting ahead of myself, thanks for the tidbits!
Dozens of RPG's later, hundreds of companions later, from all the Mass Effects and Dragon Ages and whatnot.... This video made me realise that I missed Deekin. Shit, I'm old.
This game was and is incredible. I played it a ton and spent quite a bit of time messing around with the toolset. Recently bought the EE and hoping to dive back into the toolset to actually make some adventures of my own since you can literally make ANYTHING.
I remember hating this one back in the day coming on the back of Baldur's Gate 2 and while HoTU went a long way to improve things, it wasn't until NWN2 and its expansions that pulled it back for me. Will you be doing NWN2?
Mask of the Betrayer is the standout campaign in any of the NWN games. I enjoyed all the NWN offerings, but MotB is on a whole different level and among my absolute favorite RPG games ever.
As a non pc kinda guy, this one one of the first games I played when I bought my first cheap pc as an adult and had no idea what I was doing. I also had zero knowledge of DnD and just remember this game completely defeating me and not picking up another pc game until a room mate introduced me to vanilla World of Warcraft. 10 years later I slowly started trying these again then put them down again. Finally came back to them again when several of these were ported to the switch and now I'm playing em on a Steam Deck. Its been a bumpy roller coaster but I've come to love them after being on and off for so many years. Ramble complete. Really enjoying the videos. Keep up the good work.
While NWN 2 tried to follow suit, and other games try to let players build dungeons, like Solasta, to me NWN did it best. It was so easy. It was all point and click, and while you could get more advanced with scripts, you could make a player world with a few clicks. The community was and still is amazing, and yes the graphics are old, it truly was one of a kind for all it created.
The original campaign, though fun, felt underwhelming after the masterpiece that was Baldur's Gate 2. As soon as you delved into the expansions and the modules, however, it became a truly great game. It was a great foundation to build upon, and people truly did.
I heard good things about some of the premium modules, and I myself quite enjoy Infinite Dungeons. All in all, as someone who didn't experience this game when it first came out, I quite like it and I see how much it influenced the RPG genre. The PWs are particularly interesting to me as someone who enjoyed MMOs but like many, fell out of love for the genre. I would love to see a modern RPG have another go on that concept, seeing how popular multiplayer modes are, how much people want a good online game, and how little faith the same people have in the MMO genre, despite its recent overnight successes. PWs are a pretty elegant solution to all that, though they'd be quite difficult to fit in today's landscape due to how many companies see monetization as an integral part of multiplayer. But I could see a smaller studio doing their own take on PWs. We sort of already have them in survival games and I guess the closest it gets to NWN's PWs is Project Zomboid due to its heavy RPG elements, but I'd like to see this sort of thing on a proper RPG.
I got this game at eb games when it first came out. I totally geeked out on the campaigns lol. The booklet that came in the box was like 200 pages! Lol a true example of "they don’t make them like they used to."
Great review as always, playing this game to 100% must have been an herculean effort. Thanks for the great content! These takes are very unique, they feel special. I's always a lot of fun watching your videos
I thought that the user interface for Neverwinter Nights was really clunky even back in 2002, but it did the job well enough for translating the 3.0 D&D ruleset to computer. I have a lot of memories and long nights of planning out various characters and playing various community made modules. It was a ton of fun. I wish a lot of other games were more like Neverwinter Nights in giving the player freedom to build their own little games within them because some people are just so incredibly creative and talented. These are the folks who may become future game devs too, so games like this really helps them develop their talents.
Kinda miss the longer reviews/lore breakdowns. Would love to hear more of your thoughts on the modules’ stories, and a comparison with previous games from BioWare/Black Isle.
One of my all time favorite games. I think it was ahead of its time and I think they gave players more than they knew what to do with. It was potentially a single player/co op RPG, an MMO with no monthly fee, and a game design kit, all rolled into one. It also had a client that would let you run the game as a GM. The problem was that every player would also need to own a copy of the game, but that aside you could have built a campaign, taken control of the AI NPCs at times, or just let them do their thing. The chests could have items inside that you placed there or random items spawned by the AI. You could basically run a game of D&D online, complete with an incredibly detailed and interactive battle map for its time. I never got to find out how effective the GM client was as my RPG buddies didn't own the game, but bearing in mind this was a decade before the existence of roll20, the fact that they bothered to build and implement it into the game was amazing in and of itself.
I love that you repeatedly go over why you 100% stuff. It shows confidence (well earned in my opinion) that your channel is going to keep growing and you are getting new people who don't know.
I can see in analytics that its usually about 50/50 new and returning viewers on reviews, and I try to make sure people know they can check out/verify it on steam etc
My favorite build was a rogue(for the sneak attacks,stealth, picks locks and such)/shadowdancer(needed only 1 level for "hide in plain sight")/and the equal amount of Fighter levels in case the stealth didn't work !
One of the strongest memory I (who considers BG2 the PC game GOAT) have: watching the gameplay trailer of NWN 1~2 y before it releases - it felt like the second coming! Watched it multiple times. It was so epic - from a 2D art-driven world building to full 3D - it felt like entering a new age of RPG gaming.
This game had so many memories for me although with the expansions and second game, I remember we made a huge custom world as big as the campaign and we would play through it with friends every night. Total bliss of a game. I miss games like this I wish they would make another one with a editor as well.
As far as character creation went the game came with detailed handbooks. I'm pretty sure even the digital copy comes with it as well in pdf form, you just have to look for it in the files. But as others this was a game that filled many years of my youthful pastime, hordes of the Underdark was excellent, But mostly for the persistent worlds, I played many different types and had a few favourites.
I absolutely loved the handbook that came with it. It was my first pc game and I thought it was standard. I spent forever just reading through all the different classes and prestige classes at the time as id never played dnd before.
@@hagan3151 yeah, it was a mini DnD handbook, it had so much detail. People who have only bought digital games would be surprised about the handbooks you used to get and the NWN one was certainly one of the better ones.
I loved it in 2002 and I still love it today. I just finished Kingmaker which was enjoyable. For some reason they removed Vsync from the settings. It didn't handle video well back then and still doesn't today. I had to edit a settings file to enable Vsync. I made a story campaign for my girlfriend when it was first released 2002. She was impressed. It was a great easy to use toolset. I also connected to the Ravenloft: Prisoners of rthe Mist persistent world. It seems pretty cool. I'm happy Beamdog released this enhanced version as the original version was getting to be a pain. I purchased the enhanced version two years ago but just decided to get back into it after seeing this video over the 2022 XMAS holiday. Thanks for all the great content! Happy New Year!
I played this game quite often on my big old beefy desktop PC back in 2007, and I fell in love and completed it twice. After it got released as the enhanced Edition on my preferred console the PS4, I bought it two weeks later waiting for it to get patched. After that I played for about 224 hours. I got my character to level 31 and completed the main campaign and a few of the side campaigns. However in the time span that I played it even though it is my favorite D&D game of all time, I had about 22 crashes. I quit playing the game and waited for them to patch it but a patch never came so I ended up dropping the game due to frustrating issues. However besides the crappy port I do think this is one of the best PC games of all time, especially people seeking an MMO Style game without the online only persistent world.
The 1991 Neverwinter Nights was a D&D "gold box" game that supported multiplayer co-op on America Online (for $6 per hour in 1991 dollars in addition to your AOL subscriber fees). Ultima Online was the first graphical "online virtual world." The 1991 NWN is the first graphical online multiplayer RPG. The 2002 NWN game engine was designed to work like an MMO.
Playing Baldur's Gate 3 is making me want to go back and play all the old all the old school RPGs I played in my youth. Not sure if I could handle the drop in graphics but willing to give it a go.
When my family upgraded from a Pentium to a Pentium 4 I went to Bestbuy looking for a copy of Baldur's Gate but they were out so I got Neverwinter. I started a new game yesterday and it is as fun as I remember. I also remember my favorite fan mod being Aielund Saga. *it is probably still in my top 5 game hours of all time with more than any Infinity Engine and maybe Morrowind and Skyrim.
This game was bought for my younger son when it first came out and it was a firm favourite. We played on an online server mod called "Dor Maeglin" and we spent years playing it. It was such a wonderful community of players from extremely diverse backgrounds and countries around the world. It had so much more depth of play rather than the first person shooter games. I missed it so my son bought it for me as a present for my birthday. I would be interested to know if there are any games that are more modern which have this kind of community of players ?
hey so the base ee is on sale rn for 5.99 the whole bundle is 29 I still own the original disks all though I'm not sure I have a drive for them, can I ask would you still pay for the whole bundle or would you just get the base enhanced edition and need with player made stuff? really the 30 American isn't a big deal but if I won't use it might as well just pay 6
Watching this before me and myndad play the game, today me and my dad were looking theough his game libraiy and found neverwinter nights enhanced edition. My dad said we should play sometime. I dont own a pc (i play primarily on consle) so ive started to fix up an ild laptop to play with him. Super excited to play this!
Was a long time since i played this game. I played this then followed by 2 and tbh I preferred 2 as with 1 I felt it was a bit to building block like with the levels if that makes any sense, like areas were snapped together fairly simply and with 2 the world felt just better designed. Though as said was a long time ago so memory is a bit hazy
I've spent more time with this game than any other game. Bought it on day 1, and I still end up coming back to this day. There's more content to explore here than any other game I know of. Graphics suck now, but gameplay is still fine.
If you want to check out old CRPGs that are heavy on roleplaying... how about Planescape: Torment? An absolute gem in the imo best D&D setting heavily focusing on RP.
I'm actually updating my "Castle of the Winds" modules that I made back in 2010 or so, for the Enhanced Edition, fixing things I wasn't quite happy about.
When I was like 11 years old I begged my oldest brother to install Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind for me on the family PC and he said, "Only if you finish the first game I got for you." That first game was Neverwinter Nights: Platinum Edition and after beating it I got to play Morrowind. To this day both are some of my favorite games of all time.
Great memory right there - also great that your brother taught you discipline. I was the older brother; I did not have that same self-discipline, lol.
@@kylel7158 discipline for playing game ? man wish someone tell me to play game so after that they can bring me more lol
@@LuciferCode0 lol in any pursuit that requires commitment, discipline is required - especially in long RPGs my friend
@@kylel7158 got daamm guess I have too much discipline
@@kylel7158 single player games should never require commitment or discipline but be compelling enough to finish them for their own sake. Commitment and discipline should be reserved for things that give you an advantage in life, make you money or make your life and beloved one's lives easier.
If you finished the game with an eye to play different games, then that says something bad about said game and if your brother made you play it to test your mettle/will then it says someting equally bad about said game. It says the game was a slog. The burning question becomes did you enjoy the whole experience and 2. Did you know what you were doing?
This was a life defining game for me. I played on the persistant world arelith (I think) where, in addition to all the other rp'ers there, met a young lady who showed me a different side of the character I was playing. A character that was the main inspiration for the novel I worked on (which remains in a completed rough draft form). Although the young lady passed from heart problems irl, I have fond memories of my time there that will last a lifetime.
NWN is a special place with an awesome, dramatic! But awesome community.
I'm pretty sure that Arileth has been converted to Enhanced Edition and is still running. I know that Viking Northeast is (Diablo based server).
had a big impact on me too, not sure about life divining but yea, Baldur's gate had more of that for me
thay lady lives on in your "rough draft" and in your heart
I played on the wheel of time server! Lemli Hairn, John Do'Urden, and a few other characters that I'd RP religiously pretty much everyday for years. Sooo, fun!
I miss it
Neverwinter Nights is my favorite game of all time, precisely because of the user created content, so I'm glad to see you tackle it. If I may, I strongly suggest playing the following user created campaigns, which you can find on the Neverwinter Vault: Aielund, Bastard of Kosigan, the Cave of Songs/Honor Among Thieves/Prophet trilogy (probably the single best), Swordfight, and Tales of Arterra. All of these easily blow even Hordes of the Underdark out of the water and are my absolutely some of my favorite gaming experiences ever.
Yeah i can confirm that lot of them are quite awesome, though i must admit that i have never finished swordfight, as the difficulty kept steadily increasing and once i got into second chapter i got stuck on some stupid oozes that did absurd damage :D also bastard of kosigan is beyond awesome, i dare to say it is one of the best implementations of fantasy europe i have ever seen.
@@fafnyr2537 Definitely agreed! Swordflight is super tough but amazing nonetheless. And as a history nerd, Bastard of Kosigan is pretty much porn to me. Probably my single favorite module of my single favorite game. And it is historically accurate for the most part, aside from the magic and fantasy creatures.
Exactly this. What made NWN great, and in many ways unsurpassed even to this day, is that it made it easy for fans to make their own content. The quality of the best of that content is simply fantastic. In terms of story telling the best fan-made NWN modules are far better than any commercial RPG I've played before or since. All the modules you've listed are great and in addition I'd also strongly recommend A Dance With Rogues as well for those that enjoy a more adult themed story. I'm still waiting for the next NWN: a game that makes it easy for fans to build their own amazing worlds and stories on top of.
Ah yes, how could I forget that infamous mod. It's definitely a great one, though people should be aware it is pretty much pornographic in some parts.
Aielund Saga was amazing. Holy shit that was a good mod.
There's a huge amount of things they fixed/changed in this EE; from pathfinding to textures to water and metal reflections, the amount of old code they had to go through just to fix some very small things (such as fog effects around objects) is quite admirable.
Modding, scripting and servers are also always still looked into.
One should still look into the most famous custom modules, they're beyond impressive and pretty much considered a mandatory part of the experience.
@@maxmach4361 they did, it's just a horrible class all around regardless.
@@notalefty999 Pale Master levels themselves indeed do not add to caster levels, it does keep in mind your other class now though and THAT was the bug that was fixed, cause it wasn't before.
If you want to change this to PM itself giving caster levels, I believe the community patch does that, I'm not sure about prc (player resource consortium).
I see that Beamdog shills are everpresent as always
@@Andriej69 which part of this was "shilling"?
I stated some improvements they objectively made, would you like the exact patch notes for each one?
@@Andriej69 While pointing out some things that happened isn't shilling, hating without providing a good reason is indeed being a hater.
Please, don't give me notifications on weeks old comments just to hate on patch notes for your personal delusions...
NWN 1 is a criminally underrated and unknown gem that the current wider RP community is missing out on. Let every fandom know that they can run their own world as a server!
Enhanced Edition is waaay better MadPutz unless you are still using Windows XP or Linux, I don't even know why you'd prop up NWN1, it's almost dead now, while EE still has thousands of regular players playing on servers!
It never was underrated.
NGL, I bought NWN instead of Morrowing (as the game shop was out of stock for it, lol), best decission of my life (but I never got into elder scrolls, though)... some 20+ years ago
much-much better than BG3
Cool video. One thing worth mentioning regarding the legacy of NWN is that without it we wouldn't have Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic as it uses the NWN's Aurora Engine as a basis. As did the original Witcher and Jade Empire games. Bioware was so far ahead of the competition looking back at this game - I love to revisit it every few years. NWN - EE could have really improved upon the OC by adding full-party support and more dialog options to cut out the filler combat. But they did a lot I suppose already. Good vid!
Best multiplayer experience I had in any game ever. Social media wasn't as big back then so people logged in just to talk and hang out, everyone was super welcoming and chatty. I love FF14 to death but it's just not the same.
This was me in online matches for Mechwarrior 3 and Starsiege
I didn’t even know this game was multiplayer lol
@@TheFreestylebeastpvp is most importantaspect which game lack
Wulfram 2 from 1990s into 2000s was that game for me. Best game ever made. Fairly simple with some complexity yet required actual skill. Still hoping for wulfram 3 to be made, if only i were rich lol.
We did have icq messenger and yahoo messenger but that was mostly for hitting random chicks up on the net lol.
FF14 looks like shit. Standard boring mmo.
Dragon Age was very good though.
Same here, it's really the only MMO game I ever played, so will always be the greatest thing to me.
I restarted the original campaign as a kid sooooo many times, and only got to actually playing through the main game, SoU, and HotU in April. Almost 100 hours to get through all 3 and I loved them. Never even touched any of the user created content but this game still holds a place in my heart.
This game was incredibly formative for me. I played in a PW (persistent world) called Caenyr for 4 years, well into high school. In retrospect I created some extremely embarrassing characters but there really was nothing like it. It's hard to describe what a lifeline and creative outlet this game was. You just couldn't connect with other people online in the same way you can now. It felt truly magical and I feel lucky to have had that experience.
One of the coolest memories of my early 20s was creating my tabletop D&D 3E characters in NWN and seeing them in action. This game was kinda cutting edge once. Pretty awesome stuff. Just try to ignore the clay-mation looking robot chicken style appearance of your character in the equipment menu. With good armor equipped it's not so bad 😂 and the weapons look great, especially magical ones. Great video, sir.
There is not a single mainstream game coming close to the DM and toolset client in this game as of yet.
Ben, I sincerely hope you mean coolest gaming memories and not just coolest memories in general.
I want a NWN3 with todays graphics... made by a developer that pays tribute to the prequels..
I would even support an early access backer .
Then they would try to sell you the game before it’s even ready to play, in early access for years like “baldurs gate”
@@theglamourisgone5669 How about it now? Since it's, you know, arguably the best game of the 21st century.
@@xanatanuwulmao that guy's comment aged poorly.
@@BlueTurn Aged like milk...already sour milk. I was playing BG3 in EA around the same time he was writing that comment, and it was great even then. I put 200 hours into it before the game even came out. If that's not worth $60 flat, I don't know what is
@@damienrobertson4356 I literally can't wait until I can get a PS5 just so I can play baldurs gate 3
The Aielund Saga is my favorite single player adventure from the Vault. Much better than any of the official campaigns. And allows you to experience a full complete narrative from lvl 1 to max level 40.
Aielund Saga.... my gooood what a story.
No!! Don't do this to me. Now I have to check it out 😀
@@zodden01 it is amazing. Plot twist between chapter 3 and 4 (last and the one before) is fantastic.
I agree. One of the best mod I have ever played.
Been meaning to check that one out.
Hordes of the Underdark for NWN and Mask of the Betrayer for NWN2 are still my all time favourites, simply brilliant :-))
NWN persistent worlds were my first "MMO" experience and to this day, for me, nothing has even come close to the sense of community and shared experience that they provided. As a non-RP'er, I loved the RP-lite servers where I could watch other people's RP adventures play out and occasionally get roped into them.
My favorite game of all time, been playing since it came out when I was in high school, the best implementation of a magic system I ever played in any game, you truly feel like an OP glass cannon (unless you shape shift into tackiness)
Never even played the campaign, but spent sooo many years in the toolset making mods for this. Still remember how incredibly excited I was when one of my adventures got inducted into the hall of fame on the vault. So much fun. Great memories.
which mod was it?
@@7kurisu Vampire - Heaven Defied. I had just played Vampire the masquerade Bloodlines and wanted to make something similar. You had to bite people to heal and carve out hearts from dead people to keep as healing potions 😂haha.. I was really into death metal and horror movies back then so I’m sure I did my best to be as edgy as possible😅
@@jimpahansen3738 thanks, will check it out!
i remember watching the trailer (from a cd that came with a gaming magazine of course) and being blown away by the lightning effects. shadows to be specific. oh and i still remember that "dungeon master" shot with the dude with like twenty monitors surrounding him =D
I wish I could complete games at the rate you're able to, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the game.
giving your brain time to "breathe" on certain topics can really help; you CAN binge watch a long show in a few days but going arc by arc and letting yourself rest on some concepts will help you both remember it better and notice thing you wouldn't have noticed otherwise.
Whether it's books, shows, albums, videogames, it's more about finding the right amount of immersion without going in too little or too much.
This formula works great for Mortismal but it's not going to be the perfect ideal for the every user.
You shouldn't feel too bad if it takes some time to complete something, as long as you don't give up for lack of discipline or focus.
Why? It is just so much more satisfactory to take your time. I hate when the fun comes to an end.
@@taomahNEGEV taking your time is preferable so you can soak in all the details and events that occur, but when you have a massive backlog it feels like you're never finishing games! Haha
@@Dermetsu I feel this comment so much lol
I'm glad you covered this game, as it's my all-time favorite and I'd like to see more people play it. My favorite part about it is the toolset that comes with the game, because if you're willing to learn how to use it, you can make your own game with any amount of story depth or combat focus you like. You can make games for your friends to play, and you can be a player while also technically being the DM, etc. For its time, it was really one hell of a game that gave a lot of value to the consumer. Edit: with the toolset there are even some rules you can change/bend to your liking.
Neverwinter Nights was one of those games which holds a special place in my heart. Before i went into MMO, i used to play the multiplayer side of this religiously and got to know alot of awesome people. Fadrea, Rerith, Arum...still remember them and whenever i play RPGs, those are the names of my group members. Used to play in Leather and Lace and had the most fun whn everyone in the server fought against 2 hackers. It was one we knew we couldn't win but it was fun as hell cause we were totally united in that little cause. They left cause they were annoyed at us and not so much cause we did any damage..lol. Even till today, i always have a copy of Neverwinter Nights installed on whatever laptop i have,
...i found out that a co-worker also played *_Neverwinter Nights:_* And he told me about a glitch where you could unplug your router/modem to duplicate items: i tried it a few times on a power piece of armor that i gave to someone else (since I was a Sorceror), but I got banned from my favorite server for it !!! lol
I used to play on a persistent low magic world with always in character roleplaying. There was almost always DMs online, tailor made fun that'll never be repeated! Really do miss those days, whilst there's now swathes of RPGs to choose, I've never experienced anything like Neverwinter Nights. Custom content and the multiplayer set it apart in the long term, I cannot express how much more joy can be gleaned from a live mastered session, than just smashing hoards of mindlesss AI.
The remaster's in active development with regular updates, don't think it's for everybody but if you are a fan of D&D 3rd I'd say give it a whirl, you can even see the dice rolls! ( well some )
7/10 - ambitious jank
thanks for the great review and historical overview. very cool that you called out and appreciate its influence (considering how many you've 100%'d). wish i would've checked this out 15+ years ago.
It was obvious that the base campaign was more like a demo of the toolset. The focus was definitely on being able to create your own campaigns and run it for a group. The persistant world servers weren't really the point either, but could be really good. The smaller scale, compared to MMOs, meant that you had DMs really making sure that roleplay-servers were just that. There was custom systems as well, such as crafting for some servers. The official DLCs were far better for single player than the base campaign.
Actually, Trent Oster's gone on record as having said that the mini-MMO model was in fact a core focus for the team during development. Ultimately, the modding community had to provide external scripting and database support to fully realize this use scenario, but I do think that Trent (by way of Beamdog) did take that to heart in developing the Enhanced Edition.
But, yeah, totally agreed that the base campaign was solely a proof of concept, and that the real software being sold were the Aurora Engine and its amazing creation tools. The community around this amazing game has done some utterly astonishing things with it.
You saved me the trouble of typing this up. I was extremely tolerant of RPGs back when this came out, and I still found the base campaign a tedious slog. The DLC campaigns, though, were great.
The mods make this worth playing. "Pretty Good Character Creator" lets you customize everything you can imagine, from access to every item in the game, your gold, your level and the ability to create custom weapons and items to changing every aspect of your appearance. The "OHS" mod lets you bring in your own custom characters as companions (henchmen that follow you and you can equip and command, but can't actually take control of because of game limits). It works with almost every module, including every default campaign, (only found 2 fan made ones that didn't work with it, out of hundreds of available adventures), so you can play with your own personalized party and is the only way I'll ever play NW. The sequel has mods that do the very same things, except in that one you can manually control every member of your party.
In what I believe is the first major town, I had killed EVERYONE and realized later that it locked me out of progression. I had never experienced that kind of thing before, so the experience, considering I was a kid then, really helped me understand that not every game needs to follow the same rules. I'm thankful for such an early experience because it opened up my imagination more to the idea that you really can make pretty much any game you want, and that's totally okay.
Me in Morrowind.
Definitely life defining for me and my buddies as well. This was the first time we were able to take our DnD campaign and bring it to life through the toolset. Absolutely awesome experience in my teens.
I played this in my teens back when the expansion packs came out, and after finishing Icewind Dale 2, i was just blown away how great of a game NWN was back then.
Your review was spot on just how i remember it aswell.
I remember experimenting a lot before i could get a character build i wanted.
Didnt really have walkthroughs and extensive guides back then so I spent so much time with the console aswell just to test what my character levelup choices should be to reach the prestige classes and builds i wanted :D
And as you mentioned the story got so much better with the first 2 expansion packs.
One of my favourite features was that you could pause and observe your enemies and finding a small weakness to exploit.
The curse of D&D-games. Never settling down on a character, but restarting and redoing over, and over, and over, and over again. ^_^
One of the coolest aspects of this game is how easy the editing tool is. Its genius really because you can see the code but how it nearly automatically does things its super easy to fiddle around with it and learn. And I've seen comments from people that were inspired by this tool to go into programming.
The multiplayer in Neverwinter Nights blew my mind back then and was the best part of the game in my opinion. The amount of DnD servers were incredible and there were so many custom made worlds and the world builder was super easy to use. The element of surprise and the very hardcore consequences of dying in these worlds were unmatched and I never understood why everyone where playing WoW and not giving Neverwinter multiplayer a chance. People where actually role playing on the servers and ive been told off by an actual DM a few times for doing things like farming enemies and hanging out with evil players while being a goody goody paladin. The levels where low and it took ages leveling up and going anywhere was by foot.
Some people even where rewarded for playing well and giving life to the servers and where allowed to play different races, like a minotaur and so on, but a full fletched character.
Running into an actual dragon on these servers where terrifying, the fuckers would slaughter you in seconds and where so fast and would follow you through different locations. It was honestly super ambitious and unique.
I'll never understand why Bioware took a party-based tabletop rules system and released a campaign based on basically a single character. I could never get over that.
Speaking from the POV of someone who knows programming, I'd say that it was probably a time thing. Making a game full multi-player is at least an order of magnitude more difficult than making a single-player game.
You have to account for every possibility without allowing anything to break the game. Do you force all players to be in the same party and have them share all achievements/progress in the game even if that player wasn't physically present for a particular crucial event? If not, how do you allow for one player completing a quest and then another player coming along 5 minutes (or less) later, wanting to do the same quest? What if players need to do the same quest at the same time but at different stages of the quest? Then there's the problem of XP and advancement, since players may have widely differing levels in the same party.
All of this needs to be accounted for, and more. It's a long and difficult job. I'm actually impressed that the OC is as good as it is, even though it's generally rated as "mediocre" at best by most who have played it.
Loved this game when came out back then and loved it again when the EE released. Hordes of the Underdark to this day is still one of the best expansions ever released. Its interesting that the expansion for the 1st game, as well as the expansion for the 2nd game were both better campaigns than the originals.
Very fond memories.
This game is very dear to me, especially hotu. I play through hotu campaign every year for like last 7 years and I am always blown away how good the game is in terms of features considering when it was released.
Way back when TV on Demand was still a thing, before we really figured out streaming services, my mom got me a subscription for Comcast's Games on Demand. It was absolutely the defining moment that shaped my video game tastes, because suddenly at my fingertips I basically had everything from the golden age of PC gaming at my fingertips. Mechwarrior, Hitman, Original Tom Clancy games, Age of Mythology.
And of course, Neverwinter Nights. The only game that just one image sends me straight back to that old computer hutch in the foyer. Replaying those first few hours so many times over, trying the custom campaigns and underdark expansion, having no idea how any mechanics worked or that this was even Dungeons and Dragons.
I credit NWN for turning me into the gamer I am today.
It was my FF7, Half Life or LOZ Ocarina Of Time. It introduced me to both western RPGs & D&D, two loves.
At one point in time all I ever played was this, Pokémon & Oblivion over & over again.
To this day I yearn for more games where I can make a character & take it through multiple campaigns, both official & fan made. Keeping the progress I earned all the way.
The closest thing to a true D&D experience video game to this very day.
Really happy you covered it. It gets overshadowed every time, especially by its predecessor series Baldur's Gate. Would love for new players to enjoy it like I did.
Now the most important thing. You haven't reprimanded Deekin, have you?
I've played a lot of games, but deekin has his own special plays in my heart. He is incredibly charming.
I remember creating some deekin dubstep by speed clicking on him so he would say his singular greeting line of 'deekin?' over and over! I still don't know why that was so funny.
Deekin like cake!
This game still have the best spell effects of any game.
The fact that its crossplay is why me and the boys ended up playing it and it was a great experience
I think my strongest memories of these games are the initial chapter when everything is just so fresh and new and the final chapter of the very last game where I was distraught about trying to save Aribeth from Mephistopheles. I remember actually being kind of impressed that they did her so dirty even after I went through all that effort to try and save her at the end of the first game.
Started playing some of the new modules for this game and it sucked me back in after being away so many years.. especially after installing the game with the HD texture pack from Beamdog, it actually looks pretty good now..
I'd like to see a review of the second game and maybe a comparison between games. This was a great video.
I remember playing that game back in 2002. It's amazing to see how far video game have come since then. The field of view is so ridiculously low in this game, the fog of war is like a couple feet in front of you.
That must have been a bug in the early version of the game. Visibility hasn't been a problem for me and I started with "Hero's Edition" which had different problems (fortunately, easy to overcome with a couple of free downloads).
Wow, just watching the intro took me back. So many hours spent playing this. I still have the CD's in the boxes.
The premium module Darkness over Daggerford is a hidden gem
I would recommend anyone liking nwn to try shadowlords and dreamcatcher custom modules from the vault. I vaguely remember enjoying those even more than the official expansions.
Aielund also needs to be on that list. It also has the virtue of being pretty much the only lvl1 to lvl 40 (max level) campaign in the Vault that is 1 self-contained single player adventure. That it's also a quality story and provides good RP opportunities is also a win.
I was trying to remember the names of these to recommend them too. Fantastic modules.
I love this game. One of my all time favourites. One of the games that started me modding.
There is just something so charming about the graphics of the game, many detailed animations and very nice voice acting that makes it in my opinion timeless
Makes me want to go back to the mid/late 90s and stay there.
NWN holds a special place in my heart as my first crpg. later i played through BG1 and 2. when i heard about POE i backed that game and put in well over 500 hours into it POE 2 was a bit disappointing but still fun. hands down my favorite is Pathfinder: Kingmaker and WOTR best crpg games imo
I really love the story of the wailing death. But I hate what they did to the hero of Neverwinter and aribeth. I kinda hoped that the hero helped aribeth escape and starts a family in a far-off land.
When I play Hordes of the Underdark I always reroll the answers from the knower of names until I get Aribeth to be the true love of the sleeping man. That way everything she went through was so she could meet him at the gates of Cania.
I got a copy of this game when I was 10 or so. But it was hard to play at first, I got a bit older and figured it out. For reasons I don´t know, I have actually skipped the Main Campaign and started with SoU. It was the best RPG experience I had. This cozy kind of start in the Winter theme is what got me hooked. I then finished the main campaign. Now I am back at it again and got all the other modules and will try them out. Sure, the graphics may have aged, still there are some mods to improve the textures. I don´t need a lot. I just want a good RPG experience.
Really nice review. The one thing I'd say is it sounded a bit like maybe you (understandably!) haven't quite twigged to what is the only truly unique feature of NWN... the feature which IMO is the only real reason why people might actually want to play NWN today despite its dated-ness.
Whilst (as you say) newer games have definitely done *some* of the features NWN has in better and more modern ways, there is *no other* RPG in history (besides NWN2, which was a very broken game) that has had the *combined* features of NWN which allowed players to create the Persistent World experience. You don't have Persistent Worlds in any other game. They are really not like MMOs. PWs require: (i) a DM client + (ii) the ability for players to create huge custom worlds and populate them to an insane level of detail with quests, creatures, cities, items, dungeons, stores, NPCs, stories of all kinds... etc. + (iii) player-hosted servers that can handle high player numbers + (iv) massive levels of customisation and expansion of base game content, rules, mechanics and assets.
If there was another game with that feature set, then I am pretty sure most of the NWN PW community would have at least partly switched to that hypothetical game a long time ago; despite NWN2 being a broken mess which it was incredibly hard to create content for, a large portion of the NWN community did initially try to switch to it because we were desperate for a new and actively supported software platform to create and run our PWs with. In the end, NWN:EE is the only surviving platform that really allows gamers to do it.
I would love some day to see someone make some good videos reviewing and explaining the PW experience. It's one-of-a-kind; the closest thing to the magic of tabletop D&D that you can find in any video game.
Hey M I'm a fan.. This review though was a little lighter than usual on the actual in game mechanics , story and side quests I thought. To bad, it was a big game for me.
As I mention in the video, it's very hard to go in depth about them when they change with every module, about the only thing that stays consistent is the 3e ruleset, and while a bit dated, most people get the gist of.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane. I was part of the team that created a persistent world for this game back then. Before real life forced me to quit the team, we had tried to make a full blown version of Menzoberranzan, the City of the Drow. I have some great memories of working on 3D models of custom creatures, role playing as Priestesses of Lolth and just making this jewel of the Underdark come to life. Thanks again for the memory.
bums me out this never came to fruition, sounds awesome.
@@arcticdream4905 Many of us were into the whole Drizzt Do'Urden thing and Salvatore's series as well as the TSR published source material. It wasn't long after I had to leave the project that NWN sort of fizzled.
@@themanickwarrior981 its a shame, really. If NWN never slowed down and somehow managed to gain a momentum, the amount of incredible modules we'd have on top of what we already have today. Anyways im getting ahead of myself, thanks for the tidbits!
Ah man, I remember running my own server. Was a ton of work, but a lot of great memories.
Dozens of RPG's later, hundreds of companions later, from all the Mass Effects and Dragon Ages and whatnot.... This video made me realise that I missed Deekin.
Shit, I'm old.
One of my favorite games back in 2002. Brings back memories.
This game was and is incredible. I played it a ton and spent quite a bit of time messing around with the toolset. Recently bought the EE and hoping to dive back into the toolset to actually make some adventures of my own since you can literally make ANYTHING.
I remember hating this one back in the day coming on the back of Baldur's Gate 2 and while HoTU went a long way to improve things, it wasn't until NWN2 and its expansions that pulled it back for me. Will you be doing NWN2?
Mask of the Betrayer is the standout campaign in any of the NWN games. I enjoyed all the NWN offerings, but MotB is on a whole different level and among my absolute favorite RPG games ever.
Damn you are a machine. One video every day for months. Good stuff as always.
As a non pc kinda guy, this one one of the first games I played when I bought my first cheap pc as an adult and had no idea what I was doing. I also had zero knowledge of DnD and just remember this game completely defeating me and not picking up another pc game until a room mate introduced me to vanilla World of Warcraft. 10 years later I slowly started trying these again then put them down again. Finally came back to them again when several of these were ported to the switch and now I'm playing em on a Steam Deck. Its been a bumpy roller coaster but I've come to love them after being on and off for so many years.
Ramble complete. Really enjoying the videos. Keep up the good work.
One thing in NWN campaign is that you cannot have smith to build any special daggers or light armor.
While NWN 2 tried to follow suit, and other games try to let players build dungeons, like Solasta, to me NWN did it best. It was so easy. It was all point and click, and while you could get more advanced with scripts, you could make a player world with a few clicks. The community was and still is amazing, and yes the graphics are old, it truly was one of a kind for all it created.
The original campaign, though fun, felt underwhelming after the masterpiece that was Baldur's Gate 2. As soon as you delved into the expansions and the modules, however, it became a truly great game. It was a great foundation to build upon, and people truly did.
I heard good things about some of the premium modules, and I myself quite enjoy Infinite Dungeons. All in all, as someone who didn't experience this game when it first came out, I quite like it and I see how much it influenced the RPG genre. The PWs are particularly interesting to me as someone who enjoyed MMOs but like many, fell out of love for the genre. I would love to see a modern RPG have another go on that concept, seeing how popular multiplayer modes are, how much people want a good online game, and how little faith the same people have in the MMO genre, despite its recent overnight successes. PWs are a pretty elegant solution to all that, though they'd be quite difficult to fit in today's landscape due to how many companies see monetization as an integral part of multiplayer. But I could see a smaller studio doing their own take on PWs. We sort of already have them in survival games and I guess the closest it gets to NWN's PWs is Project Zomboid due to its heavy RPG elements, but I'd like to see this sort of thing on a proper RPG.
I got this game at eb games when it first came out. I totally geeked out on the campaigns lol. The booklet that came in the box was like 200 pages! Lol a true example of "they don’t make them like they used to."
Shoot, for the most part games don't even *have* booklets anymore. The prices keep increasing while the product keeps decreasing.
I played online after the main game, this game helped me stay clean. I am very much grateful for this game and the players who I played with.
Great review as always, playing this game to 100% must have been an herculean effort. Thanks for the great content! These takes are very unique, they feel special. I's always a lot of fun watching your videos
I maybe have over 3000 hours in Neverwinter Nights. Never played more than 10 minutes any campaign. The main game are the roleplaying servers.
Hordes of the underdark and Halls of undrentide were my favorite game at the time, finished them many times over.
Druids were a blast to play in this game, great spells
*_Sorcerors_* were definitely pretty OP and FUN too :P
I thought that the user interface for Neverwinter Nights was really clunky even back in 2002, but it did the job well enough for translating the 3.0 D&D ruleset to computer. I have a lot of memories and long nights of planning out various characters and playing various community made modules. It was a ton of fun. I wish a lot of other games were more like Neverwinter Nights in giving the player freedom to build their own little games within them because some people are just so incredibly creative and talented. These are the folks who may become future game devs too, so games like this really helps them develop their talents.
Kinda miss the longer reviews/lore breakdowns. Would love to hear more of your thoughts on the modules’ stories, and a comparison with previous games from BioWare/Black Isle.
One of my all time favorite games. I think it was ahead of its time and I think they gave players more than they knew what to do with. It was potentially a single player/co op RPG, an MMO with no monthly fee, and a game design kit, all rolled into one.
It also had a client that would let you run the game as a GM. The problem was that every player would also need to own a copy of the game, but that aside you could have built a campaign, taken control of the AI NPCs at times, or just let them do their thing. The chests could have items inside that you placed there or random items spawned by the AI. You could basically run a game of D&D online, complete with an incredibly detailed and interactive battle map for its time.
I never got to find out how effective the GM client was as my RPG buddies didn't own the game, but bearing in mind this was a decade before the existence of roll20, the fact that they bothered to build and implement it into the game was amazing in and of itself.
I love that you repeatedly go over why you 100% stuff. It shows confidence (well earned in my opinion) that your channel is going to keep growing and you are getting new people who don't know.
I can see in analytics that its usually about 50/50 new and returning viewers on reviews, and I try to make sure people know they can check out/verify it on steam etc
My favorite build was a rogue(for the sneak attacks,stealth, picks locks and such)/shadowdancer(needed only 1 level for "hide in plain sight")/and the equal amount of Fighter levels in case the stealth didn't work !
One of the strongest memory I (who considers BG2 the PC game GOAT) have: watching the gameplay trailer of NWN 1~2 y before it releases - it felt like the second coming! Watched it multiple times. It was so epic - from a 2D art-driven world building to full 3D - it felt like entering a new age of RPG gaming.
This game had so many memories for me although with the expansions and second game, I remember we made a huge custom world as big as the campaign and we would play through it with friends every night. Total bliss of a game. I miss games like this I wish they would make another one with a editor as well.
As far as character creation went the game came with detailed handbooks. I'm pretty sure even the digital copy comes with it as well in pdf form, you just have to look for it in the files.
But as others this was a game that filled many years of my youthful pastime, hordes of the Underdark was excellent, But mostly for the persistent worlds, I played many different types and had a few favourites.
I absolutely loved the handbook that came with it. It was my first pc game and I thought it was standard. I spent forever just reading through all the different classes and prestige classes at the time as id never played dnd before.
@@hagan3151 yeah, it was a mini DnD handbook, it had so much detail. People who have only bought digital games would be surprised about the handbooks you used to get and the NWN one was certainly one of the better ones.
I can heartily recommend the Legend of Grimrock games, especially the second.
I loved it in 2002 and I still love it today. I just finished Kingmaker which was enjoyable. For some reason they removed Vsync from the settings. It didn't handle video well back then and still doesn't today. I had to edit a settings file to enable Vsync. I made a story campaign for my girlfriend when it was first released 2002. She was impressed. It was a great easy to use toolset. I also connected to the Ravenloft: Prisoners of rthe Mist persistent world. It seems pretty cool. I'm happy Beamdog released this enhanced version as the original version was getting to be a pain. I purchased the enhanced version two years ago but just decided to get back into it after seeing this video over the 2022 XMAS holiday. Thanks for all the great content! Happy New Year!
I played this game quite often on my big old beefy desktop PC back in 2007, and I fell in love and completed it twice. After it got released as the enhanced Edition on my preferred console the PS4, I bought it two weeks later waiting for it to get patched. After that I played for about 224 hours. I got my character to level 31 and completed the main campaign and a few of the side campaigns.
However in the time span that I played it even though it is my favorite D&D game of all time, I had about 22 crashes. I quit playing the game and waited for them to patch it but a patch never came so I ended up dropping the game due to frustrating issues.
However besides the crappy port I do think this is one of the best PC games of all time, especially people seeking an MMO Style game without the online only persistent world.
I'm playing this again, from start to finish. Probably best game I've ever played
This was an awesome game when it came out. You could do a lot with it. Thanks for reviewing it.
The 1991 Neverwinter Nights was a D&D "gold box" game that supported multiplayer co-op on America Online (for $6 per hour in 1991 dollars in addition to your AOL subscriber fees). Ultima Online was the first graphical "online virtual world." The 1991 NWN is the first graphical online multiplayer RPG. The 2002 NWN game engine was designed to work like an MMO.
Playing Baldur's Gate 3 is making me want to go back and play all the old all the old school RPGs I played in my youth. Not sure if I could handle the drop in graphics but willing to give it a go.
When my family upgraded from a Pentium to a Pentium 4 I went to Bestbuy looking for a copy of Baldur's Gate but they were out so I got Neverwinter. I started a new game yesterday and it is as fun as I remember. I also remember my favorite fan mod being Aielund Saga. *it is probably still in my top 5 game hours of all time with more than any Infinity Engine and maybe Morrowind and Skyrim.
This game was bought for my younger son when it first came out and it was a firm favourite. We played on an online server mod called "Dor Maeglin" and we spent years playing it. It was such a wonderful community of players from extremely diverse backgrounds and countries around the world. It had so much more depth of play rather than the first person shooter games. I missed it so my son bought it for me as a present for my birthday. I would be interested to know if there are any games that are more modern which have this kind of community of players ?
Props to you for doing something so memorable and mutually enjoyable with your son! Playing games with family was always great.
I got into Neverwinter from Neverweinter nights 2. I love that game, I kinda hope they make a third one with a good single player campaign
hey so the base ee is on sale rn for 5.99 the whole bundle is 29 I still own the original disks all though I'm not sure I have a drive for them, can I ask would you still pay for the whole bundle or would you just get the base enhanced edition and need with player made stuff? really the 30 American isn't a big deal but if I won't use it might as well just pay 6
What are those games that did this better?
Another nice review from you, thank you. I really like your style and presentation. Subscribed!
Finally figured out how to use the vault mod installer and was able to use it to open up more adventures to explore in
Watching this before me and myndad play the game, today me and my dad were looking theough his game libraiy and found neverwinter nights enhanced edition. My dad said we should play sometime. I dont own a pc (i play primarily on consle) so ive started to fix up an ild laptop to play with him. Super excited to play this!
I think that NWN was good at creating atmosphere. I hope you check out Witch's Wake.
Was a long time since i played this game. I played this then followed by 2 and tbh I preferred 2 as with 1 I felt it was a bit to building block like with the levels if that makes any sense, like areas were snapped together fairly simply and with 2 the world felt just better designed. Though as said was a long time ago so memory is a bit hazy
I was really underwhelmed by the first game as well. Too robotic and by the numbers when it came to companions and personalities.
MotB was one of my favorite campaigns. I do think Nwn2 graphics aged a bit worse than 1 due to style though.
good memories on this one, some of the mods were pretty awesome actually
Well, this makes me want to give this game a try.
I've spent more time with this game than any other game. Bought it on day 1, and I still end up coming back to this day. There's more content to explore here than any other game I know of. Graphics suck now, but gameplay is still fine.
If you want to check out old CRPGs that are heavy on roleplaying... how about Planescape: Torment? An absolute gem in the imo best D&D setting heavily focusing on RP.
I've already reviewed it
I'm actually updating my "Castle of the Winds" modules that I made back in 2010 or so, for the Enhanced Edition, fixing things I wasn't quite happy about.