Neverwinter Nights 2 : Storm of Zehir

After roughly 20 hours of play, I’ve just finished Obsidian’s latest expansion for Neverwinter Nights 2, called Storm of Zehir. I’m writing literally minutes after reading the closing credits. The experience is still  fresh in my mind and so I think that now would be a great time to give my brief impressions on some aspects of the game.

Continuity : This title is not a direct continuation of the Original campaign and Mask of the Betrayer. It has some tenuous links with them but overall it is a fairly self-contained entity story-wise. After reading the official game forums, I learned that this seems to have bothered a lot of people, who I guess were hoping to pick up where MotB had left off, and were looking for a similar experience as the one they had had with NWN 2 in the past. Personally, I feel this new storyline is quite refreshing, although it is not as epic and grandiose as previous offerings, I still think, in it’s own low key way, it is just as compelling. Bigger is not necessarily always better where story telling is concerned. The whole mercantile and economic struggles backdrop to the SoZ campaign was for me a very refreshing departure from the standard fantasy RPG fare, indeed quite an original take on the genre. I would welcome more of this kind of atypical approach to storytelling in an adventure game.

The Overland Map : Another bone of contention on the forums. I liked it very much. It adds another layer to the game and points back to the overland travel component that featured in such classics as the Ultima series and Baldur’s Gate. It definitely pushed some old school nostalgia buttons for me. I also appreciate how it made a variety of hitherto more or less useful character skills a lot more valuable to a party. I think SoZ made rangers and druids shine, justifying their status as an adventuring class, which was not something that was easily done in a pure dungeon crawl type of game.

The small dungeons : I loved these ! Short, sweet and to the point ! A great many of the explorable dungeons that are found on the overland map would more properly be classed as ”interior encounters”, taking up about 10-15 minutes of playtime to complete for a well balanced party. I love this direction in game design. I admit to having over the years gotten a bit tired of some of the bloated, stretched-way-too-long, dungeons found in past Forgotten Realms games. Good on Obsidian to have moved away from this!

The music : Absolutely fabulous ! A few people on the official forums have commented quite positively on this aspect of the game and I have no qualms in following their lead. The soundtrack to the game is fantastic and very atmospheric, with nods to a plethora of adventure movie music scores. One forum poster mentioned a certain Indiana Jones vibe to SoZ’s score and I think that this person is spot-on. A standout for me as far as game music is concerned.

So that’s pretty much what stood out for me after playing SoZ. I think that I may have enjoyed SoZ more than other people have simply because I came to it with no preconceived notions and expectations about it, having only read one preview of the game. When I picked it up, I was simply looking for a little diversion from the MMO grind burnout that is starting to afflict me this holiday season and SoZ hit the spot quite nicely. I would recommend it to anyone just looking for a good DnD 3.5 fix.