Product Details
 | Neverwinter Nights 2 Expansion Pack: Mask of the Betrayer |
| List Price: | $19.99 |
| Price: | $6.95 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details |
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Product Description
Neverwinter Nights 2 Expansion Pack (PC DVD-ROM), Product #27559Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #3433 in Video Games
- Brand: Atari
- Released on: 2007-10-09
- ESRB Rating: Teen
- Platforms: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .75" h x 5.00" w x 7.50" l, .20 pounds
Features
- Mask of the Betrayer - Challenging 25 hour adventure complete with strategic action, rich story and deep characters
- Advance to Epic levels (above level 20) and choose from over 100 new spells and feats
- New toolset features and improvements make creating your own adventures easier than ever
- Includes new monsters, weapons, items, classes, races and environments
Customer Reviews
Stab the Betrayer...
...An Epic Adventure with
Sneak Attacks
UPDATED: 28 Jan 2008
As buggy as it was,
initially, *Neverwinter Nights 2* brought together some of the best
elements of the first series into an involved adventure. Now Obsidian
Entertainment brings us *Mask of the Betrayer*, which extends both the
story and the life of player characters. Though it does suffer from some
balance issues.
Unlike the expansions in the first series,
*Mask* is an actual sequel. After the climactic events of NWN2, your
character awakes deep within a haunted barrow. Your inventory has been
stripped of everything other than the armor and jewelry you wore. And
the wizard in red isn't forthcoming with answers, as she approaches your
stricken form...
Otherwise, MOTB feels a lot like those older
expansions, particularly *Hordes of the Underdark*. It's a moodier, more
mystical journey than NWN2. And no wonder--your character talks to
gods, deals with witches, and exorcises ghosts. The undead play a much
bigger role, as do spell casters, and players should invest in silver
and adamantine weapons immediately. Paladins and clerics will perform
well here.
The engine performs better too; with the 1.10 series
patches, the memory leaks and frame-rate issues have been resolved on my
power rig. However, it might be necessary to reinstall NWN2 before
loading up MOTB--otherwise the Official Campaign (OC) might suffer some
quest bugs.
The expansion enjoys more graphical options.
Characters trip through monochromatic Planes, dank dungeons, and fuzzy
dreams. Spot lighting also sees more use, and objects appear to cast
stronger, more impressive shadows.
These colors cast upon new
tile sets, including: a richly textured estate and a sewer-like
underwater city. But the main setting is the cold, gray nation of
Rashomen, styled on a combination of Native American and Scandinavian
culture. It's not glacial like the lands in the original series
expansions, but the landscape is not for those who suffer from Seasonal
Affective Disorder!
Nor is the soundtrack. Obsidian introduces a
ton of dreamy, often somber scores, both for Areas and for Battles. As
far as sound effects go, MOTB reuses the files of NWN1 and 2, but it
also uses a few custom creepy tracks.
Ultimately, however, the
effects rest upon the story. And *Mask* is an odd one. The character
falls into a maelstrom of curses and conspiracies culminating into a
confrontation with Death itself. Along the way it questions both
religion and nature, while the player puzzles together a mystery to the
bitter end. To this end, the story entwines in themes of masks, costumes
and theater. By afflicting the player with a curse, which affects a
much wider conflict, the expansion also expresses a dramatic urgency in
place of NWN2's casual journey.
But in achieving that drama, MOTB
is also more linear than the OC. To navigate it, I was able to call
upon a much smaller band of companions, and the four-member limit is
rigidly enforced. At 25 hours in length, I beat it in about three days.
This
can assure customers worried about the curse. Because the expansion is
so straight-forward, there's not much to explore. Also, companions and
items retard the curse anyways. Thus, only an incompetent player is
going to have difficulty managing it.
Managing character itself
is another matter. Prior to the latest patch, *Mask of the Betrayer*
forced characters towards Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil alignments.
Whenever the character acted upon the curse, it assigned a minimum
two-point shift in lawfulness--shifts which rapidly add up. Bonuses come
with these extremes, including uber weapons or stat-boosting feats.
Otherwise,
this conflicts with most alignment-restricted classes.Thus the 1.11
patch removed the alignement shift entirely.
Another balance
issue--the expansion is too short to justify its rewards. Nearly every
chest bulges with thousands of gold pieces. While nearly every quest
awards thousands of xp. This is out of scale with the OC, and causes
characters to become too powerful too quickly.
Speaking of power,
I come at last to the revised item enchanting system for *Mask*. Gone
are the need for recipe books, ingredients, and even magician benches.
With a few exceptions, every "recipe" is found in the item description
for three new classes of essence: Volatile, Brilliant, and Pristine. The
multitudes of undead drop these by the bucket load--no distillation
required. There are also a handful of superduper essences that boost
your weapons to absurd levels of elemental damage.
The
enchantments focus heavily on elemental damage and stat-boosting. So you
can forget about making Holy Avengers or Fortified Armor. You can boost
weapons, armor, gloves, and shields up to +10 if you've acquired the
right stuff from the Evil game path. And epic casters increase the
maximum number of enchantments to four. But for some reason you can't
enchant bracers, and there are no ingredients for bomb flasks or traps.
While I appreciate the big boosts overall, I don't appreciate the
limited selection of recipes.
But apart from these funky balance
issues, I enjoyed playing this epic in a small package. Bioware never
published a follow-up for veteran characters of the first NWN, so I'm
glad Obsidian took on an actual sequel. A lot of performance issues are
resolved and the enchanting system is simple and powerful. Obsidian also
gave me a powerful character, and I hope another expansion comes along
which can put it to the test.
-* for play balance problems.
I like it, except...
I was late getting
Neverwinter Nights 2, and I was very happy with it. I'm running Vista
with an NVIDIA 8500 graphics card, and it's super smooth. The look and
feel and play of the game is great. I have to say that I haven't played
any other games since I loaded this on my computer about a month ago.
For
the expansion, there are some new races, new classes, new feats, new
spells, and new areas to explore. These are all top notch. I love most
of the game. My only real beef with the game is that they did not really
stick to the 3.5 D&D rules, but came up with a different rule set
where the player is cursed with a spirit energy addiction that requires
feeding on the energy of spirits and undead. It forces the player to
either suppress the addiction, making your character more LG, or indulge
in the addiction and eventually need to kill everything that moves to
live and feed your addiction. It doesn't really support LE, CG or TN
alignments very well, since there is not much middle ground due to this
spirit eating addiction. If you normally like to play as LG or CE, then
you will love this game. I prefer more middle ground, frankly, but I
still give it 4 stars. There are plenty of mods and other things
available with the gaming community. After you have finished the
official campaign, if you want you can download modules created by other
players. Many of them are very good.
Improves
the Original by Leaps and Bounds
As one of the many who were
somewhat disappointed with NWN 2, I approached this expansion with a
little hesitation. Deciding to let this be the make-or-break game for me
in regards to Obsidian Entertainment (the developers of this game), I
went ahead and bought it. And boy, am I glad I did.
This
expansion tremendously improves the original NWN 2. I loved the story of
the campaign - it's more mature, the writing is better, the pacing is
better, and the characters are all more enjoyable. I wasn't sure how
they were going to incorporate the story of the first campaign into this
one, but they managed it quite well. If you miss some of the dialog it
may not seem to mesh, but trust me, there are explanations in-game.
The
environments are absolutely great. Some of the new tilesets and
placeables should add a lot to those that are making modules. The music
is fantastic as well; each piece suits its location perfectly, and
really helps add to the atmosphere.
The additions are both good
and bad. As the other reviewer noted, the Genasi race are pretty crummy,
and the half-drow are basically half-elves with darkvision instead of
low-light vision. The new base classes are interesting, but the prestige
classes are where the new additions really shine. Sacred Fist,
Stormlord, and the Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep really add options to
some base characters in regards to builds. There are some others as
well, but I'm typing this review too early in the morning to remember
'em. :-p There are also new feats (epic, mostly) and a lot of new
spells, some of which come in really handy during the tougher fights.
As
for performance and mechanics, it's much improved. The gameplay is
smoother, the graphics are better, and overall it's got all of the
polish that NWN 2 should have had. The new camera takes getting used to,
but once you do it actually comes in quite handy.
Before this
gets too long (Amazon recommends between 75-300 words...hah), let me
close up by saying that if you thought the original NWN 2 was even
halfway decent but were annoyed due to its feeling rushed and the myriad
bugs and issues, you really should get this. It's a fantastic RPG, and
it's one of the best new RPGs I've played in years.
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