NWN was a must for any fans of the RPG genre, the successor to the superb Baldur’s gate series and long forgotten, eye of the beholder classics. Full 3D view and slick interaction justifiably made it the flagship for next generation RPGs. NWN II was initially staggeringly in its depth of character development, items, monsters and looked very good, performing well with even a small army on screen.
Its fatal flaw, which NWN did not suffer from, was the number of bugs. The game seemed overly complex, with simple cut scenes causing your game to crash and resulting in the campaign having to be re-started. In fact, there was warning on the loading screen telling you to save your game as often as possible. These bugs put a lot of players off what was ultimately a good game, if a little stretched.
The add-on pack is just that, new levels, monsters, classes, items and effects. It’s the usual price for a non-independent game and is designed to allow you to import your NWN II character. Curiously, there is a welcome note in the manual in which the producer basically says that they released NWN II too early and that Mask was how the game should have looked and played.
As you’re playing a character that was able to complete NWN II (you have to create one otherwise), game play is more complex from the offset then a standard RPG. You need to know the game to play it, as your using a powerful character. But immediately you can tell that the developers have worked hard on the engine, its seamless and bug free. The loading time between maps is reduced and levels are kept to a reasonable size to ensure your PC isn’t unnecessary taxed. If NWN II had looked and played like this then it would have made a much bigger impact.
The main campaign is tough, well paced and just the right length (about 10 hours). Character development to “epic levels” is possible, allowing your character to become a juggernaut of destruction. There are dozens of new feats and spells (you do need to play with the manual open to figure out what they do) which allows new ways to win battles and solve problems.
The game only falls down in its plot devices. Most games in the Baldur-NWN series have complex plots with the protagonist central to the story. Mask goes to far though, and has a horrid feature called the “spirit meter”. Not to give the plot away too much, it basically dictates how long you can spend on any map, how often you can rest, whom you can kill etc. It seems like the game creators wanted to limit your ability to regain spells or health by resting, so to make the game more challenging. It’s worked into the plot and very hard to get away from. Predictably, there is a cheat out there that doesn’t disrupt the game at all but drastically improves the game play. Its just a bad idea that could haunt the developer for some time.
This aside, the dialogue is also very heavy and you have to be careful what you say since your party members can get annoyed and leave. There are even dialogue sequences whereby you have no choice at the end but to kill the bad guy you’re talking with, therefore making the conversation totally irrelevant.
Otherwise the game plays well and looks good. I would have to recommend it to anyone who enjoyed NWN II and wants to see the game to its full potential. I would also welcome further add-on modules (the scope is unlimited with an engine like this) but no more spirit meters please.