Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer (PC)

The best Dungeons & Dragons story in years features a drug addict and a rainbow-colored bear?

Ignoring the various technical issues that marred Neverwinter Nights 2, you can see that it was a pretty safe game. It had a traditional high-fantasy storyline about the player working to gather some shards to make a powerful sword to take down the intimidatingly named King of Shadows, and it had the usual array of dungeons, forests, castles, orcs, elves, and so forth. Now after having played the expansion, NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer, it feels like the original NWN2 was just a high-fantasy contract job that Obsidian had to fulfill, and that Mask of the Betrayer is the product that Obsidian wanted to make. Instead of saving the world from a massive menace, you'll find yourself figuring out who's placed a nasty curse on you and why. In the process you'll explore people's dreams (which are a shadow version of the normal NWN2 universe), try to cut in line in a sort of interdimensonal version of the DMV, and even take part of a sort of Paradise Lost-style uprising. Simply put, Mask of the Betrayer is quite possibly the most original, and best, Dungeons & Dragons game since the days of Baldur's Gate II and PlaneScape: Torment.

Mentioning those last two titles is quite appropriate, as Mask feels like a fusion of those two. It takes the epic, high-level combat of Baldur's Gate II (notable the Throne of Bhaal expansion for that game), and fuses it with some of the storytelling and role-playing concepts of Planescape: Torment. Without getting into too much spoiler territory, it takes place immediately after the end of NWN2, where you suddenly find yourself trapped in a mysterious cave in the land of Rashemen. You can either start Mask with a "newbie" character of level 18, or you can import your original NWN2 character (which is the better move, as it feels like the game is tuned for players who finished NWN2 at level 20). Going from this weird underground cave all the way to a battle for your own soul can easily take 20 hours. especially if you scour the optional areas for more quests and loot.

On a pure feature list front, Mask adds six new subclasses (more types of elves and planar beings), two new classes that are essentially sorcerer-variants of two traditional classes (the favored soul is a "sorcerer for clerics" while the spirit shaman is a "sorcerer for druids"), and five new Prestige classes. Additionally, the level cap has been raised to 30, and along with it are several new epic feats to further make your characters into godlike deities. By the end of this game, it's not unusual to have your character do stuff like summon a demon from another dimension, or transform into a dragon, or to simply banish an enemy to Hell.

You're not a lone badass, as Mask provides five new companions. Since there are only five, each one feels more fleshed out than a companion from regular NWN2. Their dialogue trees are more interesting, and their personal goals lead to cool side quests; there's also a more interesting use of the influence system, which dictates their behavior around you. One side effect of these deeper characters is that they are a generally more serious lot than the ones in NWN2. While I miss a goofy companion like Khelgar Ironfist--a dwarf that loves fighting so much that he wants to become a monk so that he can spend his days punching things--these new ones make up for any lack of explicit comedy.

I swear, this is the best fighter I've ever seen in a D&D game.

This is one of the rare games where I don't click pass the dialogue.

While a Red Wizard of Thay turns out to be pretty normal for a companion, you also get a humble half-celestial cleric, who's an angel without the holier-than-thou attitude; a spirit shaman who’s a sort of mix between Morpheus (the god of dreams) and Casanova (the classic lady's man); a rainbow-colored bear god; and a ghost with extreme dissociative identity disorder, as his ethereal form houses the souls of various sociopaths and victims that have been burned in the furnace of an interdimensional dungeon. Whew. While you can easily get the first three during the course of the game, the last two are alignment specific, as getting one prevents you from even recruiting the other; it's totally worth it to replay and check out both.

While there is plenty of epic combat against powerful magicians, liches, spirits, and even gods (along with crazy-colored spells to make your screen pretty), there is also a fair share of dialogue and puzzles. Combat is usually inevitable, but quests like a prism puzzle in a twisted wizard school, or a contract dispute between a demon and a wizard over the wizard's soul, break up the combat and help for a better, well, role-playing experience. Similar to how two of the companions are tied to your alignment and actions, several quests have distinct "good" and "evil" solutions to them.

Everything sounds hunky-dory, but there is one element that left me ping-ponging between outright hatred and resigned annoyance: the spirit-meter. Without getting into story details, it essentially turns you into a drug addict. You get an extra meter to watch over that continually declines no matter what you are doing. As the meter runs low, you experience various side effects, and if it runs out, you die. To fill the meter, you either have to give in to cravings (which lock you in a cycle of needing an, er, spirit fix even more frequently) or use other abilities to satisfy your cravings.

This sounds interesting in theory, but I got annoyed that when I would rest to recover life and magic, the spirit meter still drains. My evil character was forced to "eat" to raise the meter, as the other way of combating the hunger results in your character becoming good, which can screw with certain classes that have alignment restrictions. And because you're forced to wait five minutes between "eatings," I found myself not "eating" fast enough due to the cooldown period, and was even forced to give up experience points to stave off my hunger. Sometimes, it's a mild nuisance, but for me, it was a major headache. Then again, if you're playing a goody two-shoes like a paladin, the spirit meter might be less annoying.

On top of that, while the quest and story are world class, Mask still has a fair number of technical flaws. It's not as flat-out broken or buggy as NWN2 originally was, but I still had a fair share of quests that didn't work, and disappearing text and items. Also, man alive, the new camera system, while technically better than NWN2's, is still a total pain. It's too easy to lose your orientation, and while it works fine for outdoors, the limited camera angles you have for interior dungeons translate into getting lost frequently. Then again, your companions also tend to get lost just following you.

It's a bit of a shame that some technical quirks, and a gameplay mechanic that I personally found extremely annoying, are present. Because Mask has all of the hallmarks of a new D&D classic: It presents epic high-level combat wrapped around a personable and intriguing story that ditches most of the traditional fantasy trappings. Even with significant flaws, it's still easily the best D&D game I've played since the power-duo of Baldur's Gate II and Planescape: Torment.

Pros: High-level D&D fun; great story; improves even the original NWN2.
Cons: Still a bit buggy and glitchy; spirit-eater mechanic feels incomplete.

This funky incident is one of the things I just plain hated in the game.

Combat is filled with all sorts of crazy spells and creatures.

Don't adjust your monitor, sometimes you visit the Shadow-plane, which is the "dark" version of the regular universe.