Hey, any chance to add Neverwinter Nights 2 to the awesome list of games?
Thanks.

I've never played the second one. Is it as good as the first one?

Game mechanics are a definite improvement on the first- wider selection of classes, feats, and skills; spellcasting and skill use is easier to manage; and party management is much, much better (as you can individually control your party members). In terms of campaigns the OC in NWN2 is better than the OC in NWN1, but still pretty mediocre. However, the campaign in the expansion, Mask of the Betrayer, is excellent and highly recommended. The second expansion is a bit of a different experience, more along the lines of the IWD games in that you create your own party rather than having a single main character you create then being given companions to help you out. However, it's still quite enjoyable and well put together assuming you enjoy party-centric rather than character-centric gameplay. The only real place where NWN2 falls down when compared to NWN is the quality of the user-made modules; NWN had a ton of really great community-made modules for it, but while there is some good stuff available for NWN2 there isn't anywhere near as much as what's available for NWN (I'm guessing this is because the increased graphical complexity makes putting together modules a much more involved process).

Thanks for the info. I like having more control over my party like in BG & BG2. May have to hunt this up sometime (if it don't end up here first. hint, hint)

For some reason it seems to have dropped off nearly every digital distributor, and while the physical copies of the original and the MotB expansion can still be found pretty easily the SoZ expansion is a bit more difficult to come by (with ridiculously high prices due to the scarcity). I'm guessing Hasbro and Atari decided to have a pissing match over the rights to the game, and as a result no new copies are being put up for sale. Of course in a situation like one might consider it perfectly reasonable to hoist the jolly roger- just sayin'.

Thought I might mention that the engine for NWN2 seems not so good. Maybe on modern computers it would work perfectly. I just remember it looking worse than most of my 3D games, yet ran slower. And that was after using tweakguides to turn down/off some features.
Again, who knows, it came out awhile ago. Maybe it's of little concern now.

I didn't really like NWN2:
_ you play a squad, and not a character: it is less immersive than NWN1
_ good ideas, but some badly developped: the game would have been far better if done by another studio

My rig can run Max Payne 3 at higher resolutions fine, but NWN2 shadows make the game choppy and weird, I think there's some bad coding at work. The expansions are great and the OC is alright, and there are a ton of Prestige classes and combos to play with, so I don't mind the weirdness.

Hmm, I don't know about that. You ARE the main character. Switching to other party members is handy sometimes, but you can mostly skip it.
When I think of a squad based game, I think of needing precision coordination. This isn't really the case. NWNs are a bit... hmm... relaxed by comparison.
Not trying to be snotty, just my impression of it.

The only place where I could find a digital copy of NWN2 was on Gamersgate.

It's something of a NWN master pack, including NWN and NWN2, plus all their expansions(apparently incl. the MOW expansion for NWN2). It's on sale now for 30$. Keep in mind that I haven't bought it, I'm perfectly willing to wait for a GOG version. If you do want to get it though, this is the only place I could find it..

Gog would have a tough job making NWN2 run well on current machines, given how it never ran well to begin with. First it was too much a resource hog, and then it couldn't use the resources of new machines. I think it would have required something like single core 5 GHz processor and a super overclocked directx8 gpu. :(

And the gameplay was clunky and camera controls horrible.

But the story was imo great, particularly in the MotB expansion.
Well worth grabbing and playing through, no matter everything else.

It's a really good game imo.

I was put off by all the negativity around it but I played it earlier this year and I was impressed with it. As said the OC is better than the NWN OC and MOTB is fantastic, it ran perfectly fine on my PC and I'd imagine most modern PCs have more than enough grunt to play it well, the shadows are a huge resource hog though and are the first thing you should tone down if you are having trouble.

I never saw the problem with the camera myself, I just put it into free mode and bound the look key to the thumb button on my mouse which left me with complete and total control of it and really easy to manipulate.

I was very happy to see a return to full party control in the game as I much prefer that over the NWN hench-man system. I adored the keep upgrade and the crafting system is pretty in depth if over powered.

My only real complaint is that it's too easy, but you can say that about most games these days. Get Kaedrin's class pack and you can spend a week just creating your character!

BTW, for those with NWN2 and MoTB, Harp & Chrysanthemum is one of the best RPG experiences I've had. Not very long, some combat, lots of greatness.

Dark Waters is my personal favourite, but there's a myriad opportunities to run into game breaking bugs and it requires you to be able to enjoy the epicly weird stuff as it comes along. Like Lute Hero or Pirate Cards which are just parts of the whole awesome package.

As mentioned before there's something funky about NWN2 & shadows. I think there was a toggle for "render far shadows" or something similar and disabling it made the game run much smoother (for me anyway). I've never beaten the game though. I've heard the story is pretty good once it gets going..the problem is it gets going really slowly. The beginning of the game is only somewhat interesting. Still, I'd say it's worth getting, for the fine expansion alone.

NWN2 is a fine game. I was disappointed that they didn't do more with it. They improved party control, but other than that it's really not very different from NWN. It's just the same game with better, if clunky, graphics. NWN2 has MUCH better OCs, but I'm in NWN for the MP campaign play so I do prefer NWN. Still, measured against itself it's a good game. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it and sincerely hope GoG can find a way to pick it up. The loss of a legal retail outlet for NWN2 would be a grievous one for the RPG community.