Mareus, your comparing your play through on at least 5 patches and 6 months AFTER the review was made.
Well every story is vastly superior to oblivion, but still the effect playing a game in a broken state, (which NWN2 OC was) is impossible to gauge a games story, if your pulling your hair out at every location due to bugs, broken mechanics and poor design.
Yes, poor Corwin thinking this was going to be like oblivion combat.
Most times he thinks he is playing Doom and wants a Rocket Launcher, too.
Glad you had a great experience 6 months later.
Well i just wanted to comment his review because i finished the game 2 times before buying the original and only few days ago being able to install all the patches(i didn't want to buy the original until i tested the game first, because of all the bad reviews out there). And let me tell you i was really surprised with the game, because i really didnt feel the game was in a broken state, even in 1.0 version. Sure it had some issues, but no need to pull your hair over it.
I mean if the problem is AI, lets talk about AI in Oblivion! So many people are pulling their hair over AI in NWN 2 while rarely anyone speaks about the 10 x worse AI in Oblivion, and i feel that is not fair. For example:
In Oblivion you dont have a party, but on some occasions soldiers and alike join you for a while and then they charge into battle like madman, even killing eachother in the process! If you hit and kill one of your party members in the heat of battle by accident, they turn on you and kill you where you stand! Now how is that for terrible AI, but no one is talking about that?! In NWN 2 you can atleast customize it and even play it alot like Baldur's Gate(although its not so simple because of 3D graphics, but its also not terrible).
In Oblivion dialogs make you wanna puke! Characters are without charisma or personality! Game is 10 x times more buggy than NWN2. For example:
When i rescued Kvatch i returned there after two months and to my surprise the city was still burning in flames!!! I mean the rain in two months could have at least put out the fire??
Let no one here think i have personal issues with Oblivion because i am a huuuuge fan of Morrowind, and i was expecting Oblivion will bring everything Morrowind had, just with better graphics.
But i don't want to talk about Oblivion, because this is about NWN2. Its just i feel the two games didn't get the same treatment from reviewers.
Reviews like Corwin's made me test the game before buying the original, while good reviews Oblivion got made me spend my money for a game that has alot more issues than NWN2. Let me tell you this is the last time i will buy an original game before testing it out thourghly.
NWN2 is a rare gem that brings out all that is good about RPG genre. In the last 7 years (with exception of KOTOR 1&2, and Vampire Masquarade: Bloodlines) i was really missing a good story, great characters with a great plot and dialogs. It was always about graphics! Long are the days over, when games like Morrowind, Baldurs Gate and Planescape Torment came out year after year after year and its really a shame that with the technology we today posses, we have to play old games to get what we want. NWN2 is a step back to the good old days and that is why it makes me very pissed off that some people value good graphics over everything else and they make huge issues over things that are in other games made far worse, but they are forgiven cause the game looks good! I just hope NWN2 is selling great, so we could expect more such great games from Obsidian and Bioware, because they are the only two in who i still have faith. Its like they are the only ones who still value things that really matter over good graphics.