NWN 2: Storm of Zehir - Review @ rpg codex

The Codex does a lengthy,scoreless review of Obsidian's Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion, Storm of Zehir. Here's a snip about the overland map:

Storm of Zehir adds a lot to the original formula of Neverwinter Nights 2 and I shall start with the overland map. The map allows the player to interactively travel through the gameworld, as opposed to the original campaign, where you just clicked the destination you wanted to travel to when you left a location. The map is filled with various locations such as towns, dungeons, caves, crypts etc, that you can uncover during your travels (although some locations are ‘unlocked’ only through quests). It also holds a lot of hidden goodies that will be discovered only by characters with enough ranks in certain skills (for example: if the character you’re controlling on the overland map has enough ranks in ‘craft armor’, you may find a tree with a unique breastplate, enough ‘heal’ will let you find discarded baskets of clothes from which you can scavenge some bandages etc). However, it mustn’t be ignored that the Forgotten Realms are not a safe place,and there are numerous bands of various monsters roaming the roads and wilderness, which makes certain abilities absolutely vital to avoid the random encounters. Encounter related skills are: 'hide' and 'move silently' (to avoid detection on the overland map), 'spot' (to detect monsters from afar) and 'survival' (which increases your party’s speed. Useful for a quick getaway but its main function is just making the trips faster). Each random encounter has an encounter level (EL) assigned to it, which indicates how tough will it be for your party to make it through.

More information.

So I got this for Christmas. I finally started MotB a few weeks ago and about 10 hours into it. It has failed to grab my attention, but I will probably finish it anyway (I've been playing Ultima VI the past week or so as I'm intrigued by the scaler Jemy showed in one of the other threads!).

But now I have SoZ and I REALLY want to install it and play it. I'm thinking I might have to push MotB to the back burner for a while!

I've played about a dozen hours of SoZ (I play slowly) and am enjoying it quite a bit. At some point the lack of a powerful main storyline will likely get in the way (though hopefully not too much in the way) but I like the way skills matter and I'm re-enjoying the whole NWN2 system party-based pause-combat etc. after many months of much more simplistic-combat games like Fallout 3 (which is a great game). I like the overland map a whole lot. It's too early for me to recommend the game but so far so good.

I didn't enjoy MotB either, but can't explain why it didn't appeal to me. Therefore, I haven't even considered getting SoZ. The comments about no strong story have further cemented my disinterest!!

Heh you know whats funny about this…is if you look back at the truly classic crpgs they really had no story that was coherent. I know off topic but it struck me as funy.

Ultima 5 had a great story!!

Originally Posted by Corwin
Ultima 5 had a great story!!

exception to the norm

Betrayal At Krondor!!

Is there any news on when the Tony K AI fix is being put in place? I know they left it off the last patch.