Review: Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition (Switch)
By Dungeons & Dragons has had a long and checkered history with video game adaptations, with every ascendant Baldur’s Gate 3 being matched by an equally disappointing Iron & Blood: Warriors of Ravenloft. Then there are the games that fall firmly in the middle, like Neverwinter Nights. After the success of the first game in 2002, Bioware passed the buck to Obsidian for Neverwinter Nights 2, which went on to become a modest success in its own right.
Now Aspyr has seen fit to do a modern remaster of it following on from the middling re-release of its predecessor a few years ago. Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition isn’t exactly a comprehensive overhaul, but the polishes and tweaks here make this overall the definitive way to play this flawed gem.
Neverwinter Nights 2 follows your character who you create from a whole host of races, classes, and backgrounds. They live a simple life in the quiet village of West Harbor along the Sword Coast. Years ago, West Harbor was the site of a climactic battle with the King of Shadows. Shortly after participating in an annual celebration of the King’s death, your town is attacked by a gang of monsters and minions in search of something. After fending them off, you come into possession of a mysterious silver shard that has some connection to the King of Shadows, and you’re told to travel to the titular city of Neverwinter to find answers.
It’s a pretty traditional DnD story, one buoyed by branching paths based on the player’s choices and moral alignment. In most conversations, you’re given a few different dialogue options that will alter your character’s alignment over time, which in turn will affect your influence with various party members and how certain quests play out. It’s not an incredibly deep system, but there’s just enough choice to feel like you can really shape your character and I think it—when combined with the deep character creation system—allows for pretty decent replayability.
Gameplay follows traditional CRPG tropes in which you form a party, crawl through some dungeons, and fight a whole lot of baddies as you slowly develop your character into something special. The ruleset is based on the divisive 3.5e DnD book, meaning that there’s a lot of granularity you can get into with the skills and multi-class systems. Combat technically follows a live action turn-based system, but you’re free to pause the action at any time if you need more time to strategize. Meanwhile, the world itself feels expansive and mysterious and though its depth and size pales in comparison to more modern analogues like Baldur’s Gate 3, there’s still an awful lot of game here to explore across a single playthrough.
In addition to the main game, all three post-launch expansions are included in the package. Mask of the Betrayer is the standout inclusion here, offering a sizably excellent narrative that picks up right where the main game leaves off while introducing some interesting new gameplay mechanics. Storm of Zehir and Mysteries of Westgate are a bit smaller and less memorable, but they help to flesh out the setting a bit further while giving you more content to explore.
As an older game, however, a lot of modern quality-of-life features you may be accustomed to in modern RPGs are either diminished or completely missing, leading to an experience that can feel a bit janky. A good example can be found as early as the first hour of the game. After successfully winning a tournament to progress the story, you then talk to the quest giver for your reward and instead of immediately jumping to the ensuing cutscene, you instead have to walk behind him as he slowly ambles his way towards a stage in real time to trigger the cutscene.
The camera is also a bit of a mess and is way too sensitive, which can lead to instances where you have to fumble with it for a bit to get a good view. Such issues are far from game breaking, but they stick out a bit and make for an experience that can feel antiquated and awkward. I wouldn’t say they make Neverwinter Nights 2 an immediate ‘pass’, but I think it’s important to set the proper expectations of what you’re getting into here.
As part of this being the “Enhanced Edition”, various little tweaks have been made to bring the game a bit closer to modern standards, however. The resolution bump and up-rezzed textures are certainly welcome, but it feels like Aspyr went with the absolute bare minimum for bringing these visuals up to snuff. And while the team did an admirable job with creating a controller focused UI, it can still feel a bit awkward navigating controls that were clearly designed for keyboard and mouse.
The original release was infamous for some of the bugs and glitches present due to its rushed production, and while it seems like Aspyr has gotten many of these ironed out, there are unfortunately a variety of new glitches here that drag things down a bit. Though I haven’t encountered as many bugs as the first Neverwinter Nights on Switch, things like getting hung up on the scenery are still present and can negatively influence the experience.
Conclusion
Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition is a decent port of a decent game. The branching dialogue options, deep character customization, and wealth of content to discover make this an appealing offer to CRPG fans, but the occasional glitches and overall jankiness prevent it from becoming an all-time great or an easy recommendation for anyone. If you were a big fan of this back in the day, I’d say this is certainly worth picking up just to see it a little more polished up, but if you’re a newcomer, I think it might be better to wait for a modest sale before taking the plunge.