Tried Neverwinter: Opinions and micro-review

Mendel

I took time to download this game this weekend and set it up.  Here are some comments and opinions concerning my experience.

Download of the loader and installation of the game took about 7 hours to complete on a typical DSL connection.   It was definitely an overnight process.

Character creation:   Very interesting process, but a little unusual.  Class selection occurred before rolling dice and it appeared only 3 values were randomized.   In the case of a cleric, these were Strength, Wisdom and Charisma.   This is a roll until satisfied situation, so I rerolled a number of times until I got one I wanted.   There is a pretty lengthy selection of home city and deity, but there is a disclaimer stating that these are just for flavor.   Okay, don't make me think that the god a cleric worships actually mattered in game.   While there was all manner of adjustments to face, features, etc., I wanted a choice of outfit, not the standard human male cleric in plate mail look.

Into the game   I started as a shipwrecked character with no equipment and a nearby "find your starting gear quest".  Annoying and a bit of a time waster.  I hated the mouse look feature, with the targeting reticule in the direct center of the screen.  I would try to use an overhead perspective, but had to adjust the image to center the reticule on the target every time something wanted to attack me.  I ran a few quests and noticed that I could just about finish a quest before the quest-giver's audio finished.  The reticule kept getting blocked by my character;s graphic, especially if I backed up against something (a cliff).   The auto-adjusting feature decoded to scale in and blocked my view at inopportune times.

When the video behaved, the constant movement caused by the overly sensitive mouse-look feature quickly gave me a headache.  I tried adjusting the mouse-look sensitivity, but nothing seemed to have any affect on the speed (new system, nVidia 650 Ti 2Gb card).  Soon after the headache, the motion sickness started.

I made 2nd level and decided to quit.   I uninstalled the game.

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While this could have been an interesting game, the entire interface system seemed dependent on the mouse-look / reticule mechanism.   There didn't appear to be an alternative, like a 1st or fixed 3rd person viewpoints.   There was not even an option to remap the a-d keys to Turn instead of Move so the camera could follow my facing.   Put the reticule over a target, hit a key (or mouse button) to activate an ability.   The recipient must always be in the center of the screen.   A few pixels off, and there's no healing spell for the target.   This system must make selecting party members incredibly difficult.

It wasn't much of an investigation, but if you are slightly sensitive to induced motion sickness, I would suggest skipping this one.

enik3

Mouse acceleration is definitely weird in this game, and it took some tweaking to get it to work properly.

 

It is an overall fun game however, so I will make one suggestion: Try a gaming mouse with adjustable DPI settings. I am able to slow my Logitech G700 to a crawl if necessary. And with on-board profiles you can have it kick in only when the game is active.

Lanessar

Having been an old-school gamer of NWN (I suppose like yourself), I understand how you feel about the reticule. 

 

That being said, it takes a lot of time to get used to. But it is a superior "action" combat system to the several I have played thus far, and I do admire how the interface works. I hope to see it in more actiony games. GW2's in comparison felt clunky and just bad for making you feel "in the combat".

 

I'm not a fan of the game for other mechanical reasons, but I do enjoy the targeting and combat. Again, it does take a period of adjustment if you've played other games (quite a while for this old dog).