So I spent around 2 hours last night messing with the character creation for the Storm of Zehir expansion of Neverwinter Nights 2 for the Personal Computer and I must say that the payoff is a bit disappointing. Before I got the game, I knew that the expansion is trying to do something different to the gameplay by introducing an interactive "overland map" but the implementation of this feature, cool as it may be, is flawed.
A beautiful map... with a deadly secret.
When you leave town in the game, you are presented with the said map and you see one of your characters walking around it - before this, you just have to select different points on the map where you can be transported to. Enemies would then pop up at random and when your character touches them, you can choose to participate in battles. Though I thought it was fun the first several times it happened, things got old rather quickly because the battlefields where the fighting takes place are big and you then have to run to the end of the area to go back to the overland map. The obligatory loading screens before and after these random encounters also don't help alleviate the situation. I really want to play a great western role playing game, not a weirdly conceived JRPG. Fortunately, the regular encounters that can be found while entering explorable areas are still there but that overland map thing just doesn't work for me at all. I really don't want to abandon the characters I have so lovingly created - you never know, I may eventually get used to this new design. Still, it may actually be more fun to go over the original and the Mask of the Betrayer campaigns again instead.
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