Rating: 
Summary: Neverwinter Nights
Review: Neverwinter Nights is overall a good game. RPG fans will adore it, and tose who are unfamiliar with the genre will be surprised at how easy it is for beginers. The graphics are good, but not great. However, this game was in development for over three years and was supposed to be released more than a year from its current release date, therefore understand that the graphics were great for when it was made. The single-player game is good, but the story isn't as good as developer Bioware's famed Baldur's Gate series. Also the quests in the game can become a bit monotonous; I didn't buy the game so i could be the messenger boy of everyone in the city. The multi-player is good as well but it is difficult to meet people you don't know and be able to trust them to watch your back while you deliver the pain to a dragon; you're better off playing with a group of friends that you already know. Much like pen-and-paper D&D, it's more fun if you're comfortable with those in your group. The sound in the game is wonderful. The music can change in an instant from an enchanting melody to battle music. The ambient noise is great, but if you're in a crouded tavern buying equipment you'll notice repetition in the conversations of the coustomers. The music fits the mood and location of the game, and battle music rerely starts until you are attacked or you attack; it's not, as in some games, an "alarm" that goes off when an enemy is near, but rather when an enemy (or you) engage in combat. The Aura Toolset is more set towards people who have programing knowledge, thus if you don't know how to program, the games you make will be very basic. All told, Neverwinter Nights is one of those exceedingly rare games that has a lot to offer virtually everyone, even if they aren't already into RPGs. The campaign alone is easily worth the price of admission. Not only is it on par with all the best computer RPGs to date, but it's also a lot friendlier to new players, making Neverwinter Nights a perfectly good choice as someone's first role-playing game. Add the other aspects of Neverwinter Nights--the toolset, the DM client, and the multiplayer options--and you have a unique game that's an undeniably remarkable achievement. Some games are memorable, but years from now, people won't just remember Neverwinter Nights--they'll also still be playing. I would have given the game a 4.2 but since that was not an option, I gave it a 4 out of 5 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: An ambitious experiment in PC gaming but a failure
Review: Neverwinter Nights is really not a computer game in the traditional sense. It's more of an electronic version of the pen and paper role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. If you are an avid D&D player who can't get your group together at your own house, you now have the internet to do it. While this is fine for pen and paper D&D groupies, the rest of us are left out in the cold.Basically, Neverwinter Nights is set up in the hopes that a community will help it grow. The game comes with a sample campaign to play but it also comes with a complete editor that lets anyone design their own D&D adventures. Either with the official campaign included in box or some of the community made mods (there are already 500+ available online), you can play Neverwinter Nights by yourself or online with a group of players. To further enhance the pen and paper D&D experience, there is even a dungeon master client in the game. If you don't know what a dungeon master is I can already tell you you're purchasing the wrong game. Basically, a DM watches over the mod and controls the adventure to hopefully provide a better game for the players. Sort of like an invisible referee. This all sounds great when reading it on the back of the box but I'm not sure it really works. For one thing, while the editor has a lot of capabilities, every map has that same square-look to it to fit in the D&D grid system. Nothing looks natural and after playing a few mods you've seen everything the game has to offer and it all starts to repeat itself. Also, for a game that relies on the community to invent new adventures, the editor is more difficult than it should be. If you don't know programming basics, you're going to have a difficult time with the editor as every simple action has to be scripted which is basically simple C+ programming. To accomodate this new system and catch up with its competitors, Neverwinter Nights also has a new 3-D system that reminds me of hack and slash games like Diablo more than the company's previous classic release Baldur's Gate I and II. In fact, the official campaign included in the game is NOTHING compared to the Baldur's Gate games and I would recommend that you not buy this game if the official campaign is the only thing you will play. The included campaign is boring, linear and not that creative, it's more of a sample for the editor rather than an epic adventure. If you plan on only playing online, be careful if you only have a 56K modem. You'll never be able to host more than 3 players on your computer without lag. Also, you'll have a difficult time joining the large servers with 20+ players if your connection is slow. Neverwinter Nights comes with an ingame browser that divides online games by category. You can join the action channel, the roleplaying channel, etc. Most of these games are called persistent worlds and are basically smaller versions of Everquest. While they can be for awhile because of their small size and limited equipment, quests, etc., they never provide much fun. The best way to play the game is to get together with a group of friends and meet on a weekly basis just like you would the pen and paper D&D. While you can find people to play with through online fan sites, you'll have a much better time with this game if you already know people that own it and are willing to play the same mod with you at scheduled times. After trying this game for a month, frankly, I feel cheated. I bought the game because it promised gamers that even if they didn't want to play online or use the editor they could play the official campaign included in the game by themselves and have just as much fun as they did with the company's other epic releases Baldur's Gate I and II. That's a misleading claim because the new mechanics of Neverwinter Nights and the boring campaign included are pitiful attempts to live up to the company's previous PC D&D games. This game is really only for people that want to enjoy an electronic pen and paper version of D&D, the rest of us should move on to Icewind Dale II or Morrowind or hope that another company manages to design a great singleplayer RPG as fantastic as the Baldur's Gate series.
Rating: 
Summary: A bit boring after awhile
Review: I guess I am getting a bit jaded with hack and slash games. While each one comes up with its own new twist (this game's would either be the die rolling window, or the World Builder), the basic thrust of the game is walk into a room, hack up creatures, get some healing and run away when the going gets tough. This game is no exception. The graphics, overall, are pretty nice. I personally like some of the effects in Dungeon Siege better, but there are some neat effects here. I have found some annoying habits, however. Occasionally, the floors draw out in yellow or red rather than in the proper texture. At first, I thought I was seeing traps, or the like, but it happened in a safe area. Either way, it is annoying. I have also noticed occasional lag. On install, the game warned me that my P4 2.26 machine (with GF4 card and 1GB RAM) was not up to specs, and my game might suffer. While the specs are high, they are not this high. Most of the quests in this game are easily solvable. Find a locked door? Look for a key or another method to trip the lock (lever, et al). Unable to get through to an NPC? Talk to everyone you meet until you get the gem of knowledge you need. Overall, there are no real puzzles to challenge, which makes the game lose its luster rather quickly. The game is not bad in multi-player mode, but you need someone who has either created, or downloaded, a decent module. Unlike Diablo, which randomly spawned, or Dungeon Siege, which had a separate multi-plyaer world, or even Elder Scrolls III, which truly adapts to your play, you rely on the ingenuity of others to get past the mundane. I wish this game had a better adaptive engine, like Elder Scrolls, or a more free flowing play, like Dungeon Siege, which does not stop to load new areas (very neat effect). On the plus side, the game is easy to adapt to. You will learn the controls rather quickly and find that you are an "expert" before you even finish the training academy (nice learning feature, but unnecessary for most who play these types of games). The biggest gem in the package is the World Builder. Too bad I do not have the time, as I would love to take all of my old TSR and Judge's Guild modules and adopt them for play in this game. If you like to hack and slash, you will get a lot of fun out of this game. It is fairly straight forward, like previous D&D games, with the added bonus of being able to easily change angles.
Rating: 
Summary: Comparitive reviews reveal NWN's superiority
Review: Neverwinter Nights is simply the most fun I've ever had with a computer, ever. BioWare has produced a solid RPG title, with a personable storyline, completely customizable character creation and development, a complex, yet remarkably intuitive interface, and some lovely eye-candy. Beyond that, of course, they've realized the dream of many gamers who have long desired the ability to crank out virtual worlds with the ease of snapping together leggos, and a vital community with which to share creations. The toolset makes the ludicrously complex tools shipped with games such as Dungeon Seige look like what they are: afterthoughts. If you've ever wanted to immerse yourself in an environment of your own creation, and then invite others from around the globe to participate in your creation, this is as close as you're going to get until user-friendly virtual reality comes out. Some reviews mention NWN in the same breath as the other three big titles which appeared around the same time: Microsoft's Dungeon Seige, Bethesda's Morrowind, and Blizzard's Warcraft 3. You might well play all four of these games and enjoy them...but with all of those other titles, once you've played them once, they're done. Finished, kaput, over, back on the shelf, no longer entertaining. Not so with NWN, which allows you to download any of the hundreds of user-created expansion modules already available, or, better yet, fire up the included toolset and make your own to distribute to others, to play with others or on your own. No game has ever matched this level of expandability and replayability, and I include all currently available MMORPGs in that claim. That said, I have to confess complete mystification at the strange reviews this title has sometimes garnered. A quick flip through professional gaming resources and magazines will reveal that most of those reviewers got it right and pegged NWN as one of the greatest PC titles of all time. However, you'll see plenty of reviews from individual users that award NWN much lower marks -- but with little or no justification. I've never seen so many ostensibly well-experienced gamers and reviewers dissing a title for such remarkably wrong-headed reasons. A number of reviewers (including, bizzarely enough, the site'sown reviewer) have slammed NWN for not adhering strictly enough to D&D's 3rd edition rules. Hello? Who cares? Are they simply not aware that translation to a computer necessitates changes to the ruleset, and a subsequent re-balancing of the rules? Or did they think that NWN should come packaged with a real-live DM to adjudicate rules conflicts? Others slam NWN's single-player official campaign for not repeating the formula of BioWare's Baldur's Gate series. Oddly enough, they don't have a problem with the fact that Microsoft can produce an Operating System *and* a flight simulator *and* a dungeon-crawling adventure...no, apparently they think BioWare should make one game, and one game only, over and over and over, for the rest of eternity. And then there are those who've seen the toolset and complain that it is (a) too complex and (b) doesn't have enough options -- without acknowledging that these two demands are diametrically opposed. For such reviewers and players, you could simply throw up your hands at their lack of insight, and be grateful that they won't be cluttering up the NWN servers...only, here's the dirty little secret: even the ones who slam NWN most severely are *STILL PLAYING* online. It's easy to check -- simply pass through BioWare's bulletin boards... and you'll see ranks of these naysayers who slam the game with one hand, even as they chat in other forums about the amount of time they're spending playing the game. It's that addictive. So go purchase a copy of NWN and make your own decision. I'll lay down any odds you care to name that you'll be glad you did -- long after those other titles are collecting mold in your waste basket.
Rating:
Summary: Neverlucky Nights
Review: Neverwinter Nights is a solid game. Good graphics, good gameplay, and probably good sound and voice acting too. However, notice they are merely "good", but not great.
As for gameplay, the game should be called Neverlucky Nights. This is mainly due to the rather large amount of bugs that remain to be fixed. After browsing through Bioware's forums, you could see that LOTs of people have trouble running the game. I was merely lucky to have encountered few troubles along the way. The single player experience was okay: it had gotten rather boring after a while. Why? Well the objectives ALWAYS involved killing the boss or killing something. I am not being a pacifist here, but decending into simliar dungeons just to kill bosses isn't much fun. Probably the only fun part is to see your character level up and kick monster butts. The multiplayer experience is WAYY cooler, and should keep the game alive for a long while.
The graphics is good overall, though sometimes the characters are a bit blocky. However, the spells are beautifully animated, and so are the enviorments*.
The music of Neverwinter Nights was medicore, nothing thrilling, althrough there were some pretty tunes (such as that guitar solo music). The voice acting was superb.
Overall, Neverwinter Nights isn't perfect, but its nevertheless a fun, solid game that should keep you entertained for a long time to come.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Very good game although not revolutionary it truely is a great game in all aspects. Anyone the least bit interested in RPGs should pick this one up if you can handle the cost. :-)
Rating: 
Summary: Terrible Single-Player Game
Review: I bought this game for the single-player game (I don't like multiplayer), and was extremely dissapointed. I loved the Baldur's Game games, so I thought I would enjoy Neverwinter Nights. Since I started following the game's developement two years ago, Bioware has stated many times that the single-player storyline would be as good as the storylines of their past games, if not better. THEY WERE WRONG!
Ridiculous events and situations plague this game. For example, the story starts when the city of Neverwinter needs help from an adventurer. A powerful paladin in the city asks for an adventurer to step forward and save the city, so the main character, an inexperienced Level 1 weakling, steps forward. The paladin then tells the main character that the city is dependening on him. Why doesn't the paladin just take care of the problem on her own? From this point the story just gets more ridiculous, and matters aren't helped by the fact that much of the gameplay is Diablo-style(but not as good). Each of the first 3 of 4 chapters are almost the same. In each of them you have to travel to four different areas and for the most part, just fight through them. Graphics are repeated constantly in these areas, so each time you enter a dungeon or house, you feel as if you've already been there.
The only relatively good points of this game are the toolset(which is difficult to use), and the user interface. The interface is certainly improved from the Infinity Engine. A single bar on the bottom of the screen consists of twelve buttons. You can choose what each of these buttons does, by assigning actions to them(very useful). The graphics are dated and the variety of graphics is not very good. Sound effects are excellent, but the voice acting is ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE. The most important NPC for example, is completely over-acted and sounds ridiculous. Leaving the voice-acting out of the game would have been better. The game is also ridiculously easy(I finished the game in less than a week, and died only twice because of stupid mistakes). DO NOT buy Neverwinter Nights for the single player game. If, on the other hand, you want to play the multiplayer aspects of the game, read reviews that discuss it in depth.
Rating:
Summary: A wonder of Roleplay
Review: Alright, I've played every Forgotten Realms game out there and I have to say that Neverwinter Nights is by FAR the best of them all. Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale are primative compared to this roleplaying revolution. The adventures never end! Even when you finish the main plot you can play modules made by other players...or even make your own adventure.
Rating:
Summary: Better Than Dungeon Siege
Review: First I bought Dungeoun Siege thought it was great. Know shortly after me and a brother of mine who have been playing games like these knew that somehow this game would beat Dungeon Siege. It did much more features for your character. Straight Advanced D&D rules which makes things more understandable (if you don't happen to figure out in the manual about your characters abilitys or a monsters look it up in a D&D book). Great graphical performance and I find alott less erorrs with this game than the aposing Dungeon Siege:-(. It's also very multi-platform and is able to be played on Linux! You won't ever be able to say that with Microsoft:-(. Very great story these guys always surprise me with a new and original story each time. This game seems allot longer than Dungeon Siege too I beat Dungeon Siege much faster than this one! You can also keep going with a great and easy level creator that blows the time consuming and very buggy Dungeon Siege:Siege Editor. A must be but only if you got the time if not don't waste your money on it especially Dungeon Siege.
Rating:
Summary: nice game but a bit too tame
Review: played the single player part of the game, nice but none too original storyline, would have been more interesting if the developers went all out make it really gutsy, i find it too tame and perhaps ok with pre-teens, would have prefered if the developers added a language filter, some random events and generaly make it less homey. would like to see a bit more gore, the dialog is lame, and some of the henchmen's battlecry is too annoying example is Linu. this is stableto run, never had any problems with crashes, would be realy cool if this game is just as naughty as Fallout 2
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