Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition Review

I never played the original Neverwinter Nights 2 so I won’t really have anything to compare the enhanced edition too, but maybe that is a good thing since I am looking on it with fresh, virgin eyes. This review will not be a 100% completion review, that would take far too long and could vary depending on your class and side question decisions. But I will give you a summary of my experience Playing the Steam version of Neverwinter Nights 2 on Linux Kubuntu.

I have eight hours of in game time, according to the steam game play counter, and I have been live streaming the game on my YouTube channel, so if you want to checkout game play footage if you want to get an in depth look.

So far I am having fun. The opening town fair tutorial is a good way to get players used to the game mechanics. I personally didn’t really need this since I have played the original Neverwinter Nights 1 and the mechanics are nearly identical. But new players may enjoy the tutorial.

However, my eight hours of game play is probably closer to six hours since I had the game running while getting the live stream setup and dealing with game crashes.

So yes, lets talk about the game crashes. I had the game crash about five times in eight hours. Which sucks, and all five times required a hard reboot of my gaming PC. The crashes always happened at the exact same place. When I boot up the game and load a save file occasionally the game will freeze in the middle of a load and my screen will turn wild colors and the PC will become unresponsive to mouse clicks and keystrokes. I don’t know if this is a problem with linux/proton, or what, but it has been annoying. Other than the crashes I have not had any other technical issues.

UPDATE: POSSIBLE FIX FOR CRASHES?

After playing around with this some more, I may have found a work around for the crashing. You see, occasionally when the game launches, it will launch in a smaller 1280 x 720 (720p) windowed screen. It is tempting to go to the settings before you load a save and change it back to 1920 x 1080 (1080p) but doing this before loading seems to cause the crashes. If I load the game in this small windowed mode and then change the resolution back it seems to work fine.

But apart from the crashes I have been enjoying the game. The story is good so far and the game play is fun. I like how you can have a lot more party members compared to the original Neverwinter Nights 1 and the you can actually interact and with your party members similar to Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR).

I don’t like the inventory system however, Neverwinter Nights 1 had a better inventory system but I checked the Steam workshop and someone has already created a mod that improves the inventory, And I’m sure as time goes on more mods will come out that will make the game even better. Neverwinter Nights 1 has a ton of mods some of which make the game look even better than Neverwinter Nights 2 so we will have to wait and see what the modding community cooks up for this game.

The game is $30 on steam an I have seen some comments saying it isn’t worth the price if you already own the original game. I haven’t played the original Neverwinter Nights 2 so I can’t make a recommendation on that, but I did pay the full $30 for this game and I rolled the dice on Linux compatibility and so far it seems like a decent value for money apart from the load screen crashes.

So in summary, Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition is a fun RPG that hopefully will get even better with time as the patches fix crashing issues and the sky is the limit with the modding community, I am excited to see what they have in store.