I've been a huge fan of neverwinter games and I'm an old school D&D guy. This is a great great game. Originally I expected much more from the graphics mostly because much of the pre-release shots were a bit misleading. But I got over that. I have a short attention span so most games start well for me and I get bored and stop playing them after a while. This game I'm playing through the SECOND time around, and I may even play it a third at some point! The main positives in this game are that it has a great story so that your actions actually have a purpose and it makes sense. The development team obviously put lots of effort into that. The player characters are different enough that it is highly replayable. The cut-scenes are engaging and very well done. The gameplay itself is good, though it can be improved. Some of the player mods have improved it but the game itself is a bit tedious for access to the multitude of abilities and items characters can use and I'm tired of individually giving orders to every party member every time I want to "stand their ground". But really these are relatively minor gripes. The game is extremely linear, you pretty much have to complete given tasks with some side quests of relative unimportance in each "act". Each act gives you access to several spots to visit, but really there's little to do in most other than where you need to go. The maps temselves are also linear. There's a road (albeit a curvy one) in each map and you pretty much have to walk from point A to B. The previous neverwinter games had a fog of war and you could have searched the entire map but this one isn't like that. The dungeon maps are not overly elaborate either. The lnear gameplay is actually welcome after months of playing Oblivion and finally getting tired of the hugeness of it. Finally a word of caution. I'm guessing anyone whose played Neverwinter games has already got this. If you're reading this you may not be very familiar with Neverwinter or with D&D. If you're not familiar with D&D, the learning curve is big.... you really need to know something about D&D characters to get the best out of this game. Even for us it can get complicated, but luckily there's lots of player "character builds" available on the net if you don't want to figure it out for yourself.
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