Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition

Neverwinter’s war with Luskan is barely over. Now it’s moved on to street brawls between the Watch and organized crime. I'm just a Harborman from West Harbor, carrying an artifact that does little but attract betrayal and give away my position to the enemy. This artifact takes lives and leaves destruction.

And my enemies’ strategy when in doubt? Enlarge.

Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition comes with all the conventions of RPGs from the time of its 2006 release: invisible walls, getting stuck on geometry, vague directions, gridlocked inventory, full-sentence dialogue from a mute protagonist, taverns that echo like sports arenas, and dynamic soundtracks that need a few extra seconds to wind up and wind back down.

But putting NWN2 in context isn’t easy, especially when you stack it against another 2006 release. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered makes it difficult to judge NWN2 on its own merits. Oblivion got the prestige treatment: incredible modern visuals, new voice acting where needed, atmosphere, everything. In stark contrast, NWN2 got the preservation pass: bundled DLC, scaled resolution, gamepad support, and not much else.

And yet they launched the same year originally. The differences are mind blowing. Which makes it all the more important to look at what NWN2 actually improves.

What’s “enhanced” here is more subtle than it sounds. Textures are slightly upscaled but wouldn't make for an impressive side-by-side comparison video. Armor and robes look a little sharper, but the architecture and environment seem mostly untouched. You'll barely notice the lighting effects without squinting.

This Enhanced Edition doesn’t remake the game. It preserves it. Gamepad support is fully integrated with redesigned UI and button mapping, which does improve camera control. Load times are reasonable. Frame rates hold steady. But many legacy bugs remain untouched. I learned the hard way that you never save over an older saved game in NWN2. I nearly lost my first 30 hours.

Despite moments like that, NWN2’s fidelity to Dungeons & Dragons makes it hard not to admire what’s under the hood. Despite its age and quirks, NWN2 genuinely feels like D&D. Yes, everything’s sped up in a video game compared to its tabletop counterpart. But from encumbrance to dice rolls, it pays attention to the right things. Including the ones very few tabletop groups like to track. Seeing “critical hit” float quietly upward when you roll a 20? I can appreciate the old-school charm. There's no flashy d20 spinning on-screen like Baldur’s Gate 3, but the spirit is there.

That love for tabletop rules extends into the worldbuilding—though roleplaying sometimes takes a backseat. You’ll get three to seven dialogue options most of the time. Choices don't always feel like roleplaying. More often than not, you’re just clicking through lore trees. Sometimes it's a 10,000-foot view of the Forgotten Realms. Sometimes it's Jorik the innkeeper who “doesn’t believe in ghost stories,” despite living in a world full of literal undead. When roleplaying is an option, it’s often as blunt as choosing to feed the puppy or kick the puppy. Worldbuilding usually takes center stage. You'll learn about gangs, guilds, and the church's grace. Whether in the back alleys, the merchant tents, or the temple of Tyr, you'll get to know Neverwinter's nooks and crannies. 

Sometimes mission cues are not dumbed down enough for me. The journal updates inconsistently. I once cleared out a whole Swamp Cave with no comment, then wandered around afterward wondering if I’d missed something. I hadn’t. The game just ghosted me on feedback.

That lack of polish echoes elsewhere—especially in how the game handles sound. Whether playing co-op games or recording a podcast, we know that audio is hard. We get it. But the audio mixing in NWN2 is a rollercoaster. Voices whisper, then shout. The orchestra sometimes washes out entire lines of dialogue. You might see three people talking in the street and it sounds like a school cafeteria. And it’s not just the sound design that stretches beyond its limits.

Cutscenes mention things the engine can’t show. Like Neeshka joking about the Watch cleaning up bodies that have already despawned. That’s not a quirk—it’s the engine reaching beyond its grasp. Then I remember that the developers in 2006 were actively trying to solve the problems of that day. 

Sometimes, glitches add character. I spoke to a shopkeeper worried about thugs. The shopkeeper's daughter was sarcastically thrilled the Watch finally showed up to deal with the criminals. That’s when the rogue from my own party picked their lock and chirped, “All done!” Nobody noticed. I looted the chest and walked away with impunity. Still, where NWN2 shines most is in its approach to combat, grounded in the complexities of 3.5 Edition rules.

The battle map is a complicated place in Dungeons & Dragons. NWN2 is based on the 3.5 Edition of D&D—a famously complex and rules-heavy combat system. NWN2 is more faithful to those tabletop rules than most other D&D video games. While there is pausable real-time combat, a timer ticks away with each swing of the sword and casting of a spell. Who you target is important, but whether you hit is based on the rolls of 20-sided dice. You can roam through town and country as a lone wolf. I wouldn't recommend that, however. It's best to form a balanced party featuring a warrior, a rogue, a healer, and a spellcaster. Classic D&D: someone to tank in a fight, someone to sneak about and pick locks, someone to top off your hit points, and someone to drop fireballs into the middle of a dungeon.

Tactical depth isn’t just theoretical—enemy AI and positioning make every encounter a challenge. Enemies know they get an attack bonus if they flank you. They slap your spellcasters to break their concentration. They shoot you with arrows from off screen. And they hit you with attacks of opportunity if you shift your position. Combat can be brutal, and the tide turns quickly. Keep your pause button handy, whether you're going classic with the space bar on your keyboard, or hitting the tiny pause button on your gamepad. Pausing often means the difference between life and death for me in many encounters.

Outside of battle, Neverwinter itself offers quieter moments of exploration and political tension. The city of Neverwinter introduces a sleepier pace, at first. You’ll roam back alleys, merchant tents, and the temple of Tyr, soaking in lore. Then I’ll turn a corner and be woken up by another pack of thugs. It’s wolves in the wilderness, gangs in the cities. The only difference is that you can see the wolves coming from further away. Political and social corruption runs from gate to gate. It’s impressive how much story they wedge into this city-state. 

That richness is offset by visuals that haven’t aged quite as gracefully. High-res support is the biggest win. You’ll get scaled UI elements and native resolution options that at least reach both sides of your screen. But character models and animations look unimpressive as ever. Mouths flap out of sync, limbs move like mannequins, and all of this was created when motion capture wasn't as widely implemented. 

The game crashed during the City Watch siege. Salvaging the save was nearly a lost cause. Welcome back to the “save early, save often” era of gaming. Switching to gamepad gave the notoriously poor camera a second life—at least until the next hard freeze. That "poor" camera, however, was implemented in one of the first RPGs allowing players to switch between a traditionally static isometric view and a freely rotating third-person view. Yes, the camera requires a ton of babysitting. But Obsidian was pushing the envelope. For that, I don't fault them. 

Yet despite it all, NWN2 survives—and its return from licensing purgatory carries weight. For all its problems, that alone makes its return a win. It comes with all of its DLC: Mask of the Betrayer, Storm of Zehir, and Mysteries of Westgate. It's a couple hundred hours’ worth of content. Too bad it also comes with so many tired, known issues, making this Enhanced Edition only good enough.