NWN2: MoW - Retrospective Blog

Dhruin

SasqWatch
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August 30, 2006
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Ossian's Alazander has kicked up a blog post that looks back at Mysteries of Westgate, with a year having passed since the release. It's an interesting and frank piece, along with welcome hints of some sort of new development coming soon. A snip:
If I detach myself from the controversy and unfortunate circumstances surrounding the game's release, what I see what I look at MoW is a solidly designed campaign that has some great quests and characters but a somewhat patchy story and mixed production values. It's always tougher to present a constant narrative when designing a wide-open city adventure and I don't think we did a bad job of it, but there were things which could have been improved.

Firstly, the game started slow. It's quite possible to play an hour or more without a single combat scenario. Some players will love this, but in the main, it's not conducive to drawing a player into the game. Ideally, an opening action sequence should itself help advance the narrative -- the two are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps stepping off the docks and stumbling instantly into a gang war would have been better than just handing the player a license to roam.
More information.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
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I kind of liked just roaming around at the beginning, getting my feel of the place. I need to go back and finish this (as well at MotB). I think I got about halfway done when I moved my PC to Win7 and I didn't keep playing after I reloaded it.

I kind of lost interest in it. I was in the really hard fight in the pit and kept getting destroyed. I looked at some of the boards and discovered that even trying to win that fight at the very end of the game was damn near impossible for most players. I really don't like that. I guess some people like the challange, but to me, that basically means there is content there that I'd like to see but likely won't get too.

Addittionally, I do realize it is a small game, but there weren't that many characters to choose from to add to your party. IIRC, there isn't a single mage to choose from. I played for a while when I figure this out, then went back and created a new character that was a mage to make sure I had one in my party.

All in all though, I thought it was pretty solid from where I played too. I'm glad I purchased it, if for no other reason than I like to support these types of companies in hopes that they, and others, will be able to produce more work.
 
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
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This was possibly one of my favorite add-ons to NWN2 that I ever played. I loved all the exploration, the relaxed combat feel, and being able to spend the adventure in the city. I played a Ranger and found I had little trouble playing without a mage. The big arena battle took me like three tries to succeed. However I always play on normal and if I get frustrated I will go to easy mode. I don't play games to get frustrated in combat.
 
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