Is Neverwinter Nights 2 playable now?

Considering that I own the entire collection of the first game + all expansions, I consider myself a huge fan of the series. So obviously I was hyped when the second game came out. However, back when NWN2 first came out, the game was soo bugged that even the best desktops couldn't max it properly. In late 2008, I downloaded the game with intention of buying it if it ran Ok. The desktop that I used, and am still using, contains a Q6600 2.4Ghz quad core, 2gigs of ram, and a 4850. The result was that the game ran like crap. I guess my question is "can NWN2, with decent settings, be playable now with a few patches?" I really do want to play it.

 

The game plays fine now and, frankly, it was not that buggy when compared to the first game in the series (you should know this if you were playing since the beginning).

 

The answer is:

Yes.

The game used to be unplayable for me on my Clevo D901C when I first got it, but after installing the needed patches released up to date, the graphic performance issue is gone.

The issue was related to a bad programming on the camera of the game, which other than causing skipping, caused some serious losses in FPS, especially in the original release of the game. (Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir do not have this issue, however, I believe that Mysteries of Westgate has it.)

 

@the green fairy
I only started playing the first NWN at around 2004-05 lol Although I was a little late in the series, I still loved the game. It was just odd that NWN2 played real crappy on a 4850, a card that can play a lot of games maxed out right now.

 

Yeah, by then most of the bugs had been worked out - no worries.

No problem there either, in fact it's one of the first things I install on a system.

 

Hmm. How recent were these... "graphics performance bug fixes"? I was playing NWN2 about a year and a bit ago on my notebook, and I was pretty disappointed with how laggy the damn thing was. Playable, but laggy.

 

I played it on 8600M GT and it looked fine. Not great but OK. And it wasn't so buggy as you say.

 

The only bug you need to watch for is the familiar bug. Turn off "use abilities" in the AI menu for all your magic users, so they can't summon their familiars (which are useless in this game anyways).

If you don't, characters can straight up disappear.

That being said, the main campaign and MoB are amazing experiences. I've done both numerous times.

 

Same here, just kept down the usual 'downer' settings like shadows, everything else was on high.

 

Also... considering your laptop you should have no worries at all.

 

I noticed a good performance increase when I installed Mask of the Betrayer!
Now that was a great expansion with a great story!

 

I played it on my old laptop (2.8 GHz P4, Mobility Radeon 9600) back when it first came out and it was quite laggy, but it ran perfectly fine on my new laptop (2.5 GHz T9300, 8600M GT). I think the only problem is that when you try to max out all of the settings, your GPU can't keep up because the engine doesn't allow for not calculating the details for objects that are out of sight or something like that. As long as you keep the shadow and draw distance settings reasonable, even a moderately powerful machine can run it.

 

I second that. Shadows and draw distance have the biggest impact on performance. Go easy with that and you're good.