Games: Neverwinter nights 2 – Mask of the Betrayer

I was so excited for this expansion pack – it promised to fix a lot of what irritated me about the original campaign. It didn't help that it seemed to take forever to get here. And I got it, and I've played about the first half hour.

The camera angle is stuffed. It takes about 10 minutes to get to the save / load menus. It has impossible battles, which become more frustrating when it takes longer to load a game then it did to die. I can't quicksave.

So I downloaded some new mods for Baldurs Gate 2.

Spent more time, and more enjoyable time, starting a new run through on that then on Neverwinter nights.

I don't think I'll be going back to NWN any time soon. I've just got the Witcher, and first impressions there are very good. I've also got some new quests for my favourite game ever, Baldurs Gate 2.

It's a pity. I don't know why the save/load times are so long; I haven't had the energy to go and look at the forums. I do know that I play games for the story, for the puzzles – I don't play at the tactical level. So a game that forces a highly tactical style of play, and makes some battles almost unreasonably difficult is going to frustrate me. I think this is the biggest problem with NWN – the makers lost sight of the fact that not everyone is going to enjoy the fights, and that some people want to play on easy level. NWN had so much promise, looked like it could be such a great game, but there are so many good games out there, why must I waste time getting frustrated, when I can load up Baldurs Gate, or the Witcher, or Icewind Dale, or even some of the old school adventure games such as Quest for Glory.

Relatedly I must give some serious credit to the makers of the Keto (http://www.pocketplane.net) and Kivan (http://www.gibberlings3.net) mods for Baldurs Gate 2. They feel as though they could be part of the original game, and as yet don't feel out of place. The Keto mod in particular is likely to be part of my default install for a while yet.