Neverwinter Nights

After spending a good 25 hours finishing this I can honestly say I mostly did not enjoy my time playing.

The initial hurdle was in creating a character. As this is a D&D game there are an absolute fuck ton of options. I initially started going down the path of creating a Wizard or a Sorcerer, a very bad choice. After reading up and what you're supposed to do, poring over spells for what seemed like hours I finally started playing. Then a good 30 minutes into the tutorial area I restarted and made a Fighter. It was way simpler and I could just focus on getting good gear and killing shit with auto-attacks.

And I was actually in. The story, the plague spreading that you're trying to hunt down these freed monster to cure was kind of cool. They hint towards some sort of darker force pulling the strings and you go off into Neverwinter.

Very quickly, even in this first act I was hitting a wall continuously in combat. The game is just too hard. Even turning on "Easy Mode" which is supposed to make the rolls easier I was forced to reload endlessly AND kite enemies to actually be able to win. After a certain point in the 2nd or 3rd act I turned on god mode and never looked back. And even after doing this combat took forever.

But I stuck around and finished the game. And the story was kind of cool. The writing is nothing to write home about. Some of the characters are well written. I enjoyed Aribeth's arc where she's a paladin who falls from darkness. But a lot of it is pretty weak. I read a couple of books and the writing left a lot to be desired, like the author had never learned "Show don't tell" in middle school.

Overall I'm happy I have the perspective on where these types of games where at this point in history but I really didn't enjoy myself.