It’s time for a return trip into the world of Dungeons & Dragons with Neverwinter Nights 2 Enhanced Edition bringing the 2006 RPG classic up to date. Or does it?
The tricky world and wording of remasters and remakes. What constitutes a game being classed as a remaster over a port? How much needs to change to be considered a remake? These are questions with answers that are occasionally quite simple, and yet time and again, we get some murky middle ground that calls the effort put in into question.
Here’s a more straightforward question to answer. Is Neverwinter Nights 2 a great RPG? I think we can confidently say yes to that one. Obsidian, in its earlier days, took up the baton from BioWare, and ran with it. So the question to follow up with is, does it have a place in modern gaming? Well, the co-op old-school party RPG experience is very much in fashion thanks to the modern takes on it, such as Baldur’s Gate 3, so it stands to reason that we should bring Neverwinter Nights 2 and games like it to contemporary audiences with a bit of spit and polish.
Unless, of course, it’s already been done. And Aspyr Media’s Enhanced Edition finds itself competing against a GOG release of the game, and like a video game version of a Rocky storyline, the ragged veteran can knock the more youthful upstart off balance more than a few times.
But before we get into that, a bit of a Neverwinter Nights 2 recap for anyone not too familiar with it. In Faerûn, a dark force is blanketing the land in search of a mysterious artefact. The player naturally comes into possession of this, and as the Shard Bearer, it’s up to them to stop the King of Shadows from destroying the world with his army. But the artefact has a dark allure, and the player is just as capable of shunning salvation for all in favor of a bit of absolute power.
The story is standalone, so you don’t need to have played the preceding game to get the most out of Neverwinter Nights 2, and for newcomers who may have been dazzled by more modern takes on the formula, it’s still a pretty accessible game by 2006 standards.
Neverwinter Nights 2 Review: More Questions Than Answers?
This version comes packed in with all three main expansions. Mask of the Betrayer, which sends us to the Shadow Realm, Storm of the Zehir, which leaves our crew shipwrecked on the beaches of a jungle nation that isn’t up for being friendly. And finally, there is Mysteries of Westgate, which explores the titular city and its no-holds-barred governing.
The ruleset for this RPG might feel a little different ot what you might expect if you’ve come from other D&D-based games, but a quick brush-up on the D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder ruleset should get you up to speed. To be fair, if you’re that into RPGs to come and play Neverwinter Nights 2 in 2025, you’ll pick it up as you go anyway.
The best way to experience all this is in co-op, and you can play Neverwinter Nights 2 Enhanced Edition together across consoles and PC. Replicating the tabletop experience feels crucial to a proper D&D RPG video game, so it’s pleasing to see it so well integrated here. There’s even some neat modern touches to tailor your co-op experience further, ensuring it’s not ludicrously imbalanced.
Back to the elephant in the room. On GOG, there exists the Complete Edition, which Aspyr hasn’t ignored because you can use those saves on the Enhanced Edition. The question here would be, ”If you already have the Complete Edition, why would you want to?”
That’s because if you’re going from PC version to PC version, there’s little reason to make the jump. Not only are they quite similar in content terms, but the Enhanced Edition doesn’t even manage to make all that much in the way of improvements.
Apart from some aesthetic changes to the UI and the textures (back to that in a bit), Neverwinter Nights 2 Enhanced Edition’s most notable feature is a bug. Or rather, lots of them. There’s not anything significant going wrong here, but an alarmingly consistent outbreak of small-scale snafus pockmarked my time with Neverwinter Nights 2. Whether it’s missing sounds, jittery visuals, or animation freezes, this Enhanced Edition sometimes seems more like a demake of the complete edition.
Coming back to the improvements, and the most significant upside comes for console and controller players, where the most work seems to have gone into translating the game for that platform. Modern RPGs of a similar ilk have led the way in ensuring that this kind of game can work with a controller; nonetheless, credit must be given for a thoughtful application of an alternative control set.
The UI changes do make the game easier to read and, obviously, more accessible to a modern, broader audience. Still, the downside here is that the slightly unwieldy layout of yore plays a significant part in establishing the game’s identity. Cleaner? Yes. Fun? No. It reminds me of when people take old houses oozing with personality and turn them into sleek-looking blocks of grey plastic.
So for PC players already in possession of the Complete Edition, there’s almost no reason to take the plunge with the Enhanced Edition, and as that’s the one I’m reviewing, that’s a big knock on Aspyr’s effort. Console players have less to worry about, and if you play with others, the technical issues are rarely the factor they might be in solo play.
Lots of caveats there, but there’s only one actual question that needs answering regarding Neverwinter Nights 2 Enhanced Edition; ”Does it enhance the game?” The answer is, Not nearly enough” whether you own the Complete Edition or not.
A great game that deserved a more careful and thorough suite of enhancements.
Score: 6/10 – Decent
Developer: Aspyr Media (originally Obsidian Entertainment)
Publisher: Aspyr Media (originally Atari)
Reviewed on: PC
Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition review code provided by the publisher.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition is out now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam.
