The graphics are merely okay. They're good enough for this type of game and the spell effects are clearly a bright spot, but there's a lot of model bleeding when you look at a character up close, and even on a top end PC setup the game has a tendency to chug along at certain parts of the game. When near the docks in Neverwinter, the presence of the boats take the frame rate into the single digits. The game's performance seems to degrade the more you play it so perhaps there are memory leak issues? It's just a guess, but unless you have a very powerful rig, you need to turn down almost every technical doo-dad in order to get it to run at an acceptable speed.

It's also not terribly difficult. It is strongly advised to play the game on at least the "Hardcore D&D rules" level. Playing on normal is way too easy and you'll be hard-pressed to ever lose a fight. Part of the problem is that you are allowed to rest too often and if a party member dies she is merely knocked out and will recover just fine if the rest of your party survives. So if a mage blasts your rogue point blank with a fireball…it apparently just conked her on the noggin'.

Multiplayer is a huge part of the game and it succeeds in a big way, especially if you have a regular group that you can play with over as LAN. Playing the campaign in co-op mode is an absolute blast. It's way too early to do any sort of real critique of the powerful mod tools and editor that comes with the game but the community is hard at work making new adventures, so we'll have to wait and see how that all pans out.

Neverwinter Nights 2, technical issues aside, is a fun ride that is sure to please old-school RPG fans who want to play a classic party-based adventure. It's still a patch or two away from being all that it can be, but with party-based RPGs being so few and far between these days, it's definitely worth playing. - William Abner