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30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you are an NWN fan, you must buy this. Superb. Lots of fun., 1 Dec 2008
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
I have to say that I'm amazed. Unlike with the original game, the two campaigns in the expansions to NWN2 really feel like they're something new and original as opposed to something anyone could have created using the toolset. The new overhead map feature is a remarkable thing; exploration is encouraged as the marker points on the map don't appear until you've actually found a place. Also, skills such as 'Spot', 'Listen' etc actually have a purpose now as they improve your ability to move on the overhead map and find hidden secrets and places. A minus point here is that all the secret places to find usually consist of about one or two rooms instead of the vast places of Baldur's Gate, but they're still nice to pop into on your way back to a quest giver.
The trade system is quite innovative too, although it can be a drag to be asked for trade bars instead of gold, and it does feel slightly like a severely melted down version of Patrician. It's also not quite as ignorable as the promo material might lead you to believe, but it can actually get quite engrossing when you realise one of your trade carts has been waylaid and you dash off to help it.
Overall, the campaign is not quite as engrossing as Mask of the Betrayer but still well worth a play. The ability to create the majority of your own party is a welcome addition, hailing back to the days of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, and let's you ignore the fact that the majority of the NPC companions are irritating and spineless. There's also a harsher death system; no more 'waking up' at the end of battles so there's finally a use for a Cleric to have Raise Dead learned. I found that I was using my Clerics/Druids etc a lot more for healing than I have in previous games, which is probably a good thing.
I haven't been able to play this campaign online yet with my friends, but it feels like it would work quite well. If you are a NWN fan, you must buy this.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Laborious and disappointing, 5 Mar 2009
Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars
Firstly I'd like to point out that the original, Neverwinter Nights 2 (NWN2), was excellent. The game had a deep, engaging and epic plot, interesting NPCs, and some extras like the "create-a-keep" mini game which was really fun.
Unfortunately things have gone wrong with the subsequent development of Storm of Zehir.
From the moment I started the game, stood on the deck of the ship and instantly went up four levels, I should have known things weren't going to be good. From that point on, unfortunately things got little better, and in many cases got a lot worse!
The main problem in the game is that at heart it is really a poor-man's trading game in the guise of a roleplaying game. Bear with me on this and I'll explain further.
The main component of the game is the World Map, which allows you to explore the whole regional area rather than only being able to visit pre-determined areas as was the case in NWN2. I can see the rationale behind this idea; players of NWN2 felt that they wanted more freedom to explore the world rather than being limited to the set locations. However, the reality of the World Map in Storm of Zehir is that there is really little of interest to do there. The three things you will find are:
(i) Mini dungeons.
(ii) "Items".
(iii) Wandering monsters.
(i) The mini dungeons are simple 3-4 room affairs with a bunch of monsters and usually some boring treasure. No plot at all - in reality no departure from the original hack & slay days of D&D - kill monster - take loot. Not really interesting enough to warrant exploration.
(ii) The "items" include crates of goods, traps (where you get ancient trap parts), and ruins where you are told that "after negotiating the obstacles you found a ruby". The point here is that the developers in an attempt to try to utilize the less combat-oriented skills in the D&D boardgame, have created something of absolutely no interest. there is no interaction with any of these finds, you just get them or don't. As a result, as you feel absolutely no sense of achievement in getting any of these.
(iii) The wandering monsters when met will result in a load into a standard small combat area where you fight and then loot them. At first glance not badly done, but the problem arises with the time taken to load these combat areas, and the frequency that you are forced into these fights.
The game load times are appallingly long (30 seconds - a minute long, and my machine is no lightweight). Whilst traveling the World Map you will be accosted by many wandering monsters, and unless your current party lead has a high enough hide skill, you will be forced into a load screen.
When this happens four or five times in succession, you will find that for 10 minutes of gaming, 5 minutes of them will be sitting looking at a load screen.
This gets worse as the only place you can rest is on the World Map, and at least 50% of the time you rest wandering monsters will attack and force, you've guessed it, you will be looking at another load screen. In fact it often takes three attempts or more trying to rest (with the accompanying load screens) before your party gets their hit points and spells back. Paralyzingly boring.
I eventually worked out that putting my thief character in charge when traveling (okay he was incredibly slow in moving on the map) to allow my party to travel unmolested (by the load screens). However, even this strategy did not always work. When you leave dungeons, especially after a game load, Storm of Zehir often puts your main character (in my case a fighter) back at the front of the party. So as soon as you hit the World Map, you get hit from all sides by wandering monsters who nail you with a load screen because your fighter just hasn't got any hide skill.
Finally moving away from the load screens (I never want to see one again!), my other grumbles about the game are:
(iv) The artificial resting system.
(v) The lack of interaction with the dungeon "furniture".
(vi) The lack of overall plot.
(iv) You can only rest on the World Map. Even when you have killed every single creature, insect and bacterium in a dungeon, you cannot rest there. Instead you have to endure the load screen to the World Map, and then the subsequent five wandering monster load screens before you get you party back in fighting shape. The problem is, that as some of the major fights in the game at D&D Hardcore rules level are really tough, you find yourself constantly needing to recharge all your buffing spells (buffing spells being the ones that turn your average fighter into a weapon of destruction). So all the major fights result in minutes of staring at load screens.
This unfortunately got worse as I got towards the end of the game. The final fights with the Yuan-Ti involved multiple levels (each requiring a load). After each fight I found I had to go back through all of the previous dungeon levels (with accompanying load screens) to get to the World Map before I could rest. Painfully boring!
(v) By dungeon "furniture" I mean the lavish artwork you see in dungeons, log cabins, Yuan-Ti strongholds etc. The artwork is fantastic - don't get me wrong!. However, I found it annoying that whilst looking at a room showing hundreds of gold vases, beautiful paintings and piles of coins and gems, the only thing I could interact with in the room and pick items up from was *one* chest. It just made all the detail and artwork pointless. Add to that the standard camera views you get in Storm of Zehir (either top-down so you are too far away to appreciate the artwork, or close up where your character fills the whole screen blocking all the artwork), and you get very little time to appreciate all the effort the artists put in.
(vi) Overall the plot was weak. Even the final levels of the game where you met and fought the Yuan-Ti were just hack and slash dungeon type affairs. With few and uninteresting NPCs (most of your party will comprise characters you created), there is nothing like the depth of plot and interaction you found in NWN2.
Ultimately that was the killer for me. I got right to the end of the game, fighting through the final Yuan-Ti stronghold, and after the 200th load screen I just felt that the game wasn't interesting enough to offset the boredom. So I gave up just before the end.
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10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Quite dissappointed, 15 Jan 2009
Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars
I was quite dissappointed with this game, to be quite honest. I'm a big fan of the D&D R.P.G. on the P.C., going right back to Baldur's Gate. I've literally bought every single D&D P.C. game produced in the last ten years, but since Obsidian took over the genre, with Neverwinter Nights 2, I've noticed a decline in quality. Neverwinter Nights 2 was extremely buggy and had quite a few annoying unnecessary features. But despite this I felt Obsidian had redeemed themselves with Mask of the Betrayer, a classic R.P.G. game. Thus, thinking Obsidian had finally got their act together, I quickly purchased a copy of Storm of Zehir the second it came out. It sounded so promising, a classic D&D battle against evil, plus the chance to control a trade empire across Toril and the ability to make, not just one character, but an entire team, who would be joined by in game characters. But, alas, the game simple couldn't deliver. The main story line, revolving around a Yuan-Ti plot was okay, but the game desperatly lacked side quests. Despite being given a huge new map to roam around, the game lacks depth, with most of the maps features being simple, one room dungeons, home to only a handful of undead or a few gnolls and nothing much less. The towns littering the map are equally dissappointing as your not permitted access most of the town, only the inn, which inevitably contains only one simple quest (find my easily findable lost amulet, etc.) There are exceptions to this rule, such as Neverwinter, but your limited to only one district of Neverwinter which is pretty much devoid of anything of interest. And travelling to and from these town can be a serious nightmare, if you have the misfortune of creating a slow group, as every journey will become an excruciating, seemingly endless, battle against constantly re-spawning random encounters. The ability to create a party is a somewhat useful feature, as these additional party members fill pretty much every role, allowing a well rounded group. They also contribute to conversation, dependent on their abilities, opening unique dialogue options. This means that you don't have to play the entire game through a couple of times, just to see these slightly various dialogue options. But the in-game characters are quite dissappointing, as they cease to say literally anything after they join you. They cease to be well rounded characters and instead become lifeless tools, only contributing the odd piece of dialogue here and there. This makes the narration at the games end, about their lives since the last battle, pretty pointless. The trade feature of the game is another problem. The concept is interesting, but in practice I found it too limited. I'm not particularly good at the economic side of most games, but even I was able to amass a small fortune over night. On the whole trading wasn't that bad, but needed to be expanded upon. The only other feature of the game that was dissappointing was the ending. Throughout the game there had been hints and rumours about an apparent new evil threatening Toril. I had been expecting to face this evil by the games end, only to be informed that the new enemy would have to wait till the next game! Instead I was faced with the task of slaughtering a few irritating lizards. All in all Storm of Zehir was an acceptable game. The story line that there was, was enthralling. And some of the new features, although definately in need of improvement, enhanced game play. But the over-all feel of this game is that it was released before it was finished. Like a number of other games, Obsidian seems to have once again bitten off more than they can chew, have failed to properly tie all the games complex features together before the realease date and left us with this half finished game. The sad fact is that, properly finished, Storm of Zehir could have been brilliant. Fully accessible towns, deep, enthralling side quests and, interesting side characters could have made this game a classic. But in its current state Storm of Zehir deserves only an average rating star rating at best. A potentailly good, but flawed, game.
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