Neverwinter Nights 2 review: Storm of Zehir is an RPG filled with excellent ideas, unfortunately...
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- Опубліковано 6 вер 2024
- Welcome to our Neverwinter Nights 2 Review. This time we're taking on Storm of Zehir, the second expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights 2. It is included in Neverwinter Nights 2 complete edition so you don't have to go out of your way, or put a penny more into getting it. If you are interested in the series we've called "Our Road to Baldur's Gate 3", then...
Check out our video:
• The Road to Baldur's G...
Or watch the entire playlist:
• Road to Baldur's Gate III
Here are our previous reviews of the series:
Baldur's Gate: • Baldur's Gate review: ...
Baldur's Gate, Siege of Dragonspear: • Siege of Dragonspear r...
Baldur's Gate II, Shadows of Amn: • Baldur's Gate 2 review...
Baldur's Gate II, Throne of Bhaal: • Baldur's Gate 2 review...
Icewind Dale: • Icewind Dale review: I...
Icewind Dale, Heart of Winter: • Icewind Dale review: W...
Icewind Dale 2: • Icewind Dale 2 review:...
Neverwinter Nights 2: • Neverwinter Nights 2 r...
Never Winter Nights 2, Mask of the Betrayer: • Neverwinter Nights 2 r...
Disclaimer: This is a computer RPG review, it's not meant to comment on the D&D ruleset or on how well the game implemented it in its mechanics. This review is for a non RPG specialized gamer who got hyped about Baldur's Gate III after watching the trailers and footage of BG3, someone who has maybe played Larian Studio's Divinity Original Sin II and wants more.
There are many games you could play in preparation for Baldur's Gate III: Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate Siege of Dragonspear, Baldur's Gate II Shadows of Amn, Icewind Dale, Icewind Dale Heart of Winter, Icewind Dale II, Neverwinter Nights 2, NWN 2 Mask of the Betrayer and NWN Storm of Zehir. If you already decided that Neverwinter Nights 2 is going to be one of them, should you go ahead and also play through its expansion pack, Storm of Zehir? Hopefully our review will help you decide. We still encourage to watch videos on Neverwinter Nights 2 gameplay.
Our other reviews are based on a criteria that assigns weights to aspects of the game that are particularly important for us. It is not meant to be the ultimate truth about the game. Classic Role Playing Games is our favorite video game genre for a reason, and there are a few things I expect from them...
You can check our system of categories in one of our early videos. • And this is how we rev...
Also.We mentioned Neverknowsbest in out review. We took his audio from his review on The Outer Worlds. Check it out: • The Outer Worlds Critique
First off, the editing in this video is just incredible. Secondly, perfect review. Properly covering the story, setting, and mechanics that are specifically unique to this expansion as a stand-alone. You explain what was great, the potential it had, and what it could have done better. I just played this as mindless as can be, being a completionist playing through the entirety of NWN2, but this was perfectly stated.
For me, I would have wanted storm of zehir as part of the main game, with its mechanics and all integrated into it. The one thing I can say I thought at the time was that it felt like Obsidian came up with some great ideas after finishing the game, and felt they might as well put them in somewhere.
Thanks mate! Although, while I was editing it I thought... "mmm It could've had a structure of "Great Idea --> thing that undermines it", but I was already halfway through.
I don't normally watch reviews of games I worked on years ago, but I'm glad I saw yours. I really appreciate your fair and comprehensive critique of the game. I think the only things you didn't cover are the soundtrack and the modding features introduced in SoZ.
Thank you for leaving a comment! I'm glad you thought it was fair! (I try hard). As for the modding features, I never used them. And the soundtrack, yes I liked it a lot and didn't comment on it. I don't use the category system (which includes music) when I'm reviewing expansion packs, but yes if there's something additional/different from the core game, I sometimes miss it. Thanks again!
@@andrewvincent7299 I could not believe it either.
I play this game almost every week and am surprised its still get some attention today.
really?
Storm of Zehir's party dialogue system isn't just a gimmick, it's a brilliant feature that I think could improve all RPG's dialogue system and should be adopted and adapted by other game studios.
From the last couple decades or so, RPG dialogue are basically stuck with the same format:
>Opposition says something
>Players get pre-determined dialogue choices
>Most of them boils down to Yes, No, and Question further
>Alternatively to Good, Evil, and Funny
>Repeat ad nauseum
This airs off a visual novel feeling where choices are just gateways to content rather than an actual system to interact with.
This feels too limiting especially in party based games. In group conversation, you don't just let 1 person in your group do the talking. Every member talks. Each giving their own insight to the discussion. How a burly man with a war ravaged past talks is different from a village girl who've never seen blood. The system benefits aspects of both role play and roll play. The former lets players choose the tone of the conversation, steering the interaction into conflict or peace. The latter provides a sort of social puzzle with different characters having different levels of success when espousing a certain talking point.
The current system may lead to miscommunication between the intentions of the player and the developers. The meme of choosing a mundane dialogue choice and have the PC flip out aggressively highlights its weakness. Providing a full sentence to a choice can only inform so much for an interactive audio visual medium. This new system can also benefit solo RPGs by substituting party choices with tone or emotion. You want to tell the scared conscript and hardened soldier to surrender, but you would approach both with differing tones.
That's one thing I liked about Storm of Zehir, but I don't think they fully accomplished the potential behind this concept. There are a lot of things from Storm of Zehir (the map system, the Dialogue system, skills having an impact on dialogue choices, the way in which trading works, etc) that I wish more developers would' adopt. I 100% percent agree with this assessment --> "In group conversation, you don't just let 1 person in your group do the talking. Every member talks. Each giving their own insight to the discussion. How a burly man with a war ravaged past talks is different from a village girl who've never seen blood" and that's why I LOVED Solasta in this respect... even if its bogged down by the cheesyness of its story. Thanks for leaving a comment btw!
As I mentioned in a comment on a previous video, I love Storm of Zehir. Maybe it's because of my age, but I love a good old fashioned dungeon crawl and that's exactly what SoZ is. As a result, the lack of depth to the companions or NPCs doesn't bother me in the slightest. In fact, if you do want to play SoZ, there is a simple way to change the number of characters you can create on the ship. My advice is to change that from 4 to 6, ignore the pre-made companions and just make the party of your dreams. A couple of mods wouldn't hurt, either.
Agreed. I feel like that was the whole point of the campaign: an IWD style dungeon crawl. If you go into it with that mindset, it's pretty damn fun.
Yup. I've replayed it like 3 times. Played the main campaign once and I've never finished Mask.
Morrowind also started on a ship... I can see a pattern
SOZ is the best murder-hobo simulator ever made.
Another fantastic review! Hats off for the fantastic work you've been doing in this genre!
Thanks man! I'll try to keep it up
I wish more games had SOZ’s party system and the rp options it enabled.
Hey I have just subscribed. You deserve it because of your great videos about rpgs. I can not watch this particular video about NWN2 expansion because I have to play this series first, I currently play NWN1 and I love it.
Well thank you for the sub! But yes, this video is a little bit spoliery. Hopefully you'll check it out later!
That's a fine, top of the line review. Well argumented points, each time you bring something up, you flavour it by exploring the topic just a bit further, but not too far as to not sound fanatical. It's fairly comprehensive as well. Peerless video and sound editing. Especially the sound editing needed work.
In some of your previous entries the sound from the game clips got in the way of your voice which mixed together terribly and created a jumbled mess. It's good you fixed that.
Fantastic job, Alex. So happy I stumbled upon your channel a way back. If you keep on with the quality content, whatever should it be, I'll be happy to watch and like it in turn.
Thanks for your kind words. I'm glad you're likingthe reviews. As for the sound I only panned the channels a little bit less and set the hard limiter one decibelium lower on the music channel. And that's not much of change. I still suggest that you ALWAYS use headphones if you have them. Thanks again!
But did you find the Wendersnaven yet !?
XD
Yeah, Storm of Zehir definitely has its faults, and scouring every inch of the world map is something I only did once, but the little gems in it are worth the time once in a while. I come back to it sometimes, but not as much as I do the OC and Mask of the Betrayer.
great video and commentary :) Keep it up Brother
Thanks man! Will try.
I tried 4 playthroughs but I've only finished it once, I was interested at first but the more time went on the less invested I became.
By the time I unlocked the final area I just wanted it to be done.
What bothered me the most about SoZ was no multiplayer. The campaign was perfect for coop. Easy to jump in and out. mostly gameplay focused
On a general level NWN2 is more fun and consistent than NWN1. Even being generic high fantasy NWN2's main campaign is a lot more fun than NWN1's (which is basically a sample scenario for the inbuilt creator engine).
Incredible to see that someone actually would think this about diversity of quests and story in NWN1! That sir, is an insult…
I actually like Storm Of Zehir, its nothing great, but it's really not trying to be.
Storm of Zehir is basically Neverwinter Nights main campaign redux. The main point of the SoZ expansion was Obsidian showing off their new assets, for us to then put into our PWs or our own little adventure scenarios. That's why it kinda sucks as an expansion to play with.
Really superb review, but the background music is so distracting and stressful. When reviewing a game you don't need to use music only found in game and can chose whatever music that is fitting for the text. You could even use music from another game, whatever works. Just don't use loud and bombastic music as a background and your future videos will be better.
Well done. How come you skipped Neverwinter nights and its awesome expansions? Hordes of the underdark is a masterpiece.
Thanks for leaving a comment. I do not have Neverwinter Nights and I have not played it. Playing NWN and its expansions would've probably compromised the series of reviews as a whole.
@@YeOldEntertainment TY for the reply.
Yeah if you were going to play NWN, I’d probably skip the original campaign and just play the two expansions in order (no need to carry your character over from original). And I agree, HOTU is fantastic, best of the NWN bunch.
@@stevequincy388 while I agree with you that with limited time available there are better games - from a plot point of view - than NWN 1, I've never understood the hate for the original campaign. It had everything a good D&D campaign usually has: companions, cities, misteries, nice antagonists, well made dungeons, etc. Of course something like BG2 has a better story, but Throne of Bhaal already was pretty bad from that point of view, while many later RPGs (PoE but also the DOS series) had very lazy storytelling, abusing the 'chosen one' trend, and trying to build words/mythos with a bazillion of lore 99% of which uninteresting, and always focusing around 2 or 3 bland items (the soulsssss, the soooourceeee...).
@@eugeniob9516 I actually quite liked the story in the NWN OC, that wasn’t my issue. I have a couple of issues that drove me nuts, first, being unable to equip items on your companions (thankfully this was fixed in expansions). I spent a lot of time trying to keep my companions alive while I sat there with an inventory full of high level gear I couldn’t put on them. I played as a ranger/rogue and could tank better than Daelen due to my better gear. Yeah he could kill stuff but I was constantly healing him and trying to keep him from dying with his default upgrades. Got to the point I tanked for him as a rogue haha. Second, the pacing was awful, each chapter basically was this- “ good job finding those 5 macguffins, now go find 5 more macguffins to further the plot.” It was fun at first, but by the end I was so sick of this process. Like I said, I actually quite liked the story, but the job of finding the next 5 “quest” items became a complete slog for me. I’m glad I finished the OC at least once, but I have zero desire to ever go back and play again. Plus, you start over at level one in the next expansion, completely disconnected from the OC, that’s why I said start with Shadows of Undrentide (a good expansion) and move on to HOTU (best of the bunch) it just flows better. Also, I have zero interest in playing POE ever again, boring slog for me and I skipped the second one because I just didn’t care. Obsidian really dropped the ball on this one, I was expecting BG3 with the people they had working there at the time, turned out to be “meh” at best. I’ve played the crap out of NWN and the various fan-made modules though, it’s one of my favorite games. Just my opinion, nothing more.
I agree with you that the game gets very grindy, even though it's likable in the beginning, I find it hard to finish the game by the latter half. It's really meandering.
What song is played in your intro?
Will you do Mysteries of Westgate as well? :)
Sorry, not for this series of videos. I don't have it and I'm moving to the last video on the series. Maybe later on a will.
@@YeOldEntertainment I hope you will at some point, it might be an interesting experience, especially to see the last of the NWN2 expantions.
You were very impressed with mask of the betrayer, I did play it all the way through once as a Cleric/ domguide of kelemvor. It was good but I do not remember it well. If it was as good as you suggest I would surely remember it better than I have. For some reason I remember it as dark souls type game which I hate. Meaning a lot of big fights. Maybe I should give it another go after all this time.
It's not at all like Dark Souls though the combat was indeed significantly harder than in the core game. It's the story what sets MOTB apart.
@@alejandrorios8386 The dark souls reference is about big set piece fights. I guess I love the other rpgs because you start out as low level grasshoppers and work your way up, but in motb you start out already high level, so I didnt really care so much about the toon. No history.
Mask of the Betrayer had challenging combat? Its certainly got one of the best CRPG stories ever written, but the mechanical balance of the game is a mess. This is partly just the nature of high level d&d, but any halfway competent melee character could breeze through the game. Yes, you could die to encounters if you fought them severely underlevelled (vault of the dead god was probably the most likely place to do this), but if you fought the battles at the intended level, it was very seldom a meaningful challenge.
It has been a long time since I played a RPG with a great story, Arcanum was solid, but it was mostly the world and lore, the story left me alone. A "good story" often seems to take me away from what I want to do and puts me on a path of what the devs want me to do. I did not like NWN2 because the story got in the way and often gave me too limited of options, pathfinder kingmaker did the same. Pillars of Eternity I never made it through as the character classes were so weak, and the stats were odd, where a fighter and wizard both used might to hit hard, it was just so foreign of an idea for me to get that into it. And I did not play Pillars 2 because the original game was not my favorite, and it built off the last. If it was a new story like IWD 2 that would be good, but it was more like BG2 where you missed a lot by skipping much of the first.
I might have to try this one just to see what does, I played the original campaign but not any expansions, maybe I can try this with 4 good character ideas and then import the one that plays the best into Mask of the Betrayer and see if that story is really good. I have played great stories in adventure games, and read great books, but for a game I want to make my own stories, and the ones with the biggest stories seem to limit my ability to make my own story. I also love the idea of make my own party. I give each one different personalities, goals, and I often can do as well as the follower systems of most RPG games. Often a game will give me one or two good concepts, but I can often make my own that mean much more to me.
This almost looks like Low Magic Age, but in a more finished state, I also played a lot of Kingmaker's endless dungeon. It leveled too fast and had lots of odd mobs with crazy status effects, but I was left alone to dive into a dungeon with a party for their own reasons to be there, and the game did nothing to try to tell me my way was wrong that I should only follow their story.
Well it doesn't get much more flexible than Arcanum. Have you tried Tyranny? It will probably hit the spot on the "build my own story" end of things, but it also seems like you are super demanding in terms of the depth you expect from classes and what they bring to the gameplay... and I suspect you won't be impressed with Tyranny in this regard.
@@YeOldEntertainment You may be on to something about the "You are super demanding in terms of depth you expect from classes." When you keep mentioning all the games with great stories, that I have not been able to get into, or just have not played because the classes seem different than what I have come to expect, I have been starting to wonder if I might just need to drop those expectations, get around them and see what the story they give me does. Maybe my own hang ups, are keeping me from experiencing something great.
I don't know why but i enjoyed neverwinter nights 1 alot, played it like 3 times start to finish, but i couldn't get into neverwinter nights 2.
I tried a few times, but i end up barely doing chapter 1 and then losing interest.
Man but its first expansion is awesome. I think it's worth the "hassle" of going through the core campaign. Besides... the core game gets kinda better in later acts.
There are many ways to view Neverwinter Nights 2, I am only a single person with a singular perspective. I played NWN from black box until today, I modded Neverwinter Nights, I had my meager submissions on IGN, I was on the closed beta for NWN2 specifically as a modder. I loathed NWN2; no horses, still 2.5D, still no jumping, no climbing, no physics, the mandatory buffer zone of map edges, outrageous system requirements (for the time), it was a disappointment to say the least. That is my perspective. I started playing WoW.
You could be Hasbro, that is another perspective. They saw the MMO event horizon approaching, sensing a new cash cow, they basically abandoned NWN2 and focused on Dungeons and Dragons Online. Too little, too late. They missed the MMO gravy train AND missed the opportunity to make NWN2 as great as its superior predecessor.
Another perspective is as a new player of an old game. They play the game in a void with no preconceptions. I suppose that perspective is best.
Every perspective is valid. Mine is that of the person who came from the isometric infinity engine based D&D games from the early 2000s (And Pool of radiance and Ravenloft before that and Wizardry before that)
You were far more generous than i would be. It took me two years to finish this expansion because i found it so fucking boring. It has all the terrible aspects of NWN OC with a story that held no interest and I found the so many of the mechanics like the exploration map and the ability to choose a party member to interact with a person or object as who the frak cares. I'm not saying they were bad mechanics, in fact they are great but with a shit story they are soulless. They are undead mindless husks, they add nothing to the game because there isn't a story to impact with the mechanics. I never cared that i could trade, never cared that i could pick the ranger to examine some object in the woods because it never mattered. i could have done none of those things and it would have been pretty much the same story. The expansion is just a husk it has pieces tagged on to it but nothing is alive nothing has a soul. I Recall a sense of relief when i finished and felt the only good think about the expansion where the expanded character creation options. Now this isn't true there were other good and great things added but because the story was shite they pretty much all fell short but the character creation options could be used for the OC & MotB, so you could actually use these option again as i am pretty sure only a masochists would play SoZ more than once. Hell I felt like a masochist forcing myself to finish the game the first time.
I give this expansion a 3/10 because it was such a huge letdown after MotB. But games are subjective so there is no right or wrong answer. I just feel that a lot of people are going to come straight off MotB from your reviews and feel like they got punched in the gut when they play SoZ and feel like it was an utter waste of time. They wont likely feel like it was a 7/10 title but far worse.
Though I understand where the frustration comes from (and on a general basis, I think I agree) I didn't hate it as much. But It's good for people to read this comment as well. Because there is a chance you´ll be slightly disappointed with SoZ but also a chance that you will hate it (especially if you come from MOTB). Hopefully everyone's playing the "complete edition" which includes everything and they won't feel like I made them spent money unnecessarily if they didn't like it XD.
i don't like this expansion, when i import my character there from campaign they are looking for hero of Neverwinter? i am hero of Neverwinter, or they are blind?😠
Can you even do that...? I don't remember I thought this was a standalone adventure since you create your party from scratch. I know you can do that in Mask of the Betrayer. In any case. I think it's still worth playing at least once to check out those wonderful new ideas they had (even of the story is crap and the game drags).
@@YeOldEntertainment "Storm of Zehir" MUST be standalone, but i have it in "Neverwinter Nights 2 Complete
collection"
@@Pavel-Geleznov how can you be hero of Neverwinter if hero of Neverwinter is in Rashemen at the same time?
@@38procentkrytyk "Storm of Zehir" in same timeline as Mask of Betrayer?
then it MUST BE standalone, why they are add it to collection?
A year late but Storm of Zehir is standalone, you were never supposed to import your character, though it's possible to do so. Timeline-wise it happens at about the mid-way point of Mask of the Betrayer, after One of Many is loosed from the furnace. This isn't the first time they did this in the NWN series. They did it for Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark even though Hordes would have made far more sense as a continuation of the original campaign rather than Undrentide. It baffles me why Bioware decided to do that, when Hordes' story featured prominent characters from the OC that have zero connection to your character from SotU. Regardless, it works fine for SoZ honestly.