Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition Review (PS5)
Summary: CRPGs are a difficult genre to do well, and are often clunky. Neverwinter Nights 2 is both clunky and old, making it hard to enjoy today. This version has not made meaningful updates to the game, so it remains a pain to play for all but the most hardcore CRPG fans.
2
Outdated & Unenhanced
Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter Nights 2 is heralded as one of the best Character RPGs of all time. Well, not the base game, the “Mask of the Betrayer” DLC is what usually gets praised. The base game was pushed out of the oven before Obsidian could clean it up. The result is messy, unpolished, and uninspired (Polygon called it “heartbreaking”). That’s already a pretty big disclaimer, but there’s more. The problem with being in the pantheon of CRPGs is that it’s slim pickings.
Look up any list of “the greatest CRPGs” and see that it’s filled with truly ancient games. Fallout 1 was in ‘97, Planescape: Torment in ‘99, and even Fallout: New Vegas is fifteen years old. When Fallout 2 came out, they had to use “install sizes” because people couldn’t fit the whole game on their hard drive. It started at “Small”, 1.1mb, went up another three sizes and then their joke size, “HUMONGOUS”, actually contained the whole game. They didn’t even believe people would be able to use it, so they switched out the game’s icon with a photo of a dev’s face. One of the best CRPGs of all time, some fans call it the best Fallout game. It’s almost thirty years old and was a measly 625mb.
So that’s the competition when we say “the best CRPGs of all time”. It’s a hard genre to develop, you’ve got to account for all the choices and consequences, so it’s basically a list of the only CRPGs of all time. There are exceptions. Big ones. Disco Elysium & Baldur’s Gate 3 are truly great games that anyone can enjoy; They’re easy to play, have full-voice acting, and look good. They’ve brought a lot of people into the genre, hungry for more. But Neverwinter Nights 2? It’s one of the “CRPGs of all time”– Enhanced Edition included.
The remaster does close to nothing. Not even the load times have been improved. It’s an impressively plain remaster. Glitches and bugs, and bad design have been unchanged. Load up a new character and pick a voice for them and find that “Jokester” corresponds to “Sociopath”, and everything else is muddled down the line (if it works at all). You have to love CRPGs to want to play this to begin with, 2006 was nearly twenty years ago. For that reason, the developers deserve some commendation– you can’t imagine they were paid much, or will make much off of this, so it must’ve been for diehards by diehards.
Still, the enhanced edition is a new release at a price point that’s competing with Oblivion: Remastered, or Rogue Trader, or even a good fantasy audiobook (Guards! Guards!, Men At Arms). It’s hard to recommend it over any of those. That said, it is the definitive edition of the game: it looks slightly better yet still supports all mods and saves from the original. It comes with four separate campaigns, which enjoy a good variety– from classic evil-wizard fantasy, to medieval detective story, to a multiplayer-focused adventure, and shorter warring-factions storyline too.
So, all in all, there is something to enjoy in Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition. If you have the constitution for it– or a heavy dose of nostalgia– you can get hundreds of hours out of it. See the sword coast, explore Faerûn. If you got into DnD through Baldur’s Gate 3 this could be the way you learn more of the world, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2P00I5nJXk
About the Author
Branden Zavaleta Based in Perth, Branden writes on the arts for a handful of Australian outlets. He's also a street & creative portrait photographer, who's work can be found @brandenzp on Instagram.
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