Neverwinter Nights 2 had a mixed reception. Some people believe that Bioware will always be king when it comes to the Dungeons & Dragons licensing of CRPG games, and others believe that Obsidian takes what Bioware does and makes it better. These are arguments of the past, however, as Bioware lost the Dungeons and Dragons license midway through the aughts and has since had breakaway hits and failures with their own IPs. So we leave it up to companies like Aspyr to take these great games and make Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition.
Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition
Developer: Aspyr Media
Price: $29.99
Platform: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch (reviewed)
MonsterVine was supplied with a Switch code for review
There was no question whether or not I’d be playing this game. I love Neverwinter Nights, and I have strong memories of playing the game back on release in 2006. When Beamdog came along and started working on remasters of Baldur’s Gate and the like, the initial reception was mediocre, but Beamdog worked on the games and made them better, more palatable for a modern audience.
Aspyr really struggles with modernizing these old CRPGs. Other developers are taking these games and making them better, more modern, and easier for players to get into. Aspyr really just feels like they’re porting these games and signing off on them as done. Much to the detriment of the player.
Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition feels like it was given console controls, a slightly updated UI to work with those console controls, and the game working on modern systems with multiplayer functionality, and that’s it. Not to discount the work they put into the game, I imagine they were given a tight schedule and not nearly enough resources. Unfortunately, it shows.
While boasting on the Steam page ‘A Relic, Restored’, there are no promises of bug fixes, stability issues resolved, or fixing of any issues that held this game back on its initial release. Let’s face it, one thing Obsidian wasn’t known for back then was stability. And yet, we see no attempts at fixing some of these issues.
I had dozens of game crashes, the occasional soft lock, and so many times where I had to fix the party AI because it just stopped working. And it’s hard to point the finger at Aspyr and pin them as the buggy developers because we know it wasn’t them that made the game buggy. Nearly every single issue I ran across, I would Google and find decades-old forum threads with information about workarounds and mods to fix the issues.
Aspyr Media didn’t add these bugs into the game, but it was their charge to fix or patch. You can’t just slap ‘enhanced edition’ on a game and hope that’s good enough. When I see ‘enhanced edition’ my hope is something beyond a slight graphical update and porting to modern platforms.
Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition does have a graphical update; it looks about as good as it’s going to look on modern screens. Likewise, it’s kind of a steal. $30 and you get the base game and all three premium expansion packs that were released for the game. That’s an incredible bargain, even for a two-decade-old game.
Neverwinter Nights 2 is an incredibly fun game with an extensive story, one really good expansion, and just a ton of game to play. With different endings based on your alignment and different paths through the story, it’s one of the greats. I imagine some of my issues could be resolved, too, with mods enabled through the Steam Workshop. Alas, I played on the Nintendo Switch, aiming to see what it’d be like for the gamer with the least likelihood of being able to deal with these issues.
Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition can be played the whole way through. It has a lot of the same quirks as the original and exists in a relatively stable way with the full gameplay, story, and expansion intact. It’s just disappointing to see how good some remasters can be and see one of my favorites relegated to this ‘good enough’ job.
I refuse to comment on the quality of the story or gameplay, as those have remained untouched, and there are plenty of great reviews already about those things. I focused on the quality of the port and the remaster.
The Final Word
Fans of Western RPGs, Dungeons & Dragons RPGs, and CRPGs will find much to enjoy about Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition. Players new to the game and preferring to play on console, this is the only way to play it, and it’s a deal considering how much content is in this game. But if you’re on PC, a modded version of the original might be better.
MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average
