Trying To Get Into CRPG's: Suggestions?

[Eclectic Dreck]

Not really sure I'd put the original Neverwinter Nights under 'excellent stories'.

I'd agree that no part of NWN1 holds up to the story presented in Baldur's Gate and NWN 2 certainly starts slow (among other oddities), but the epilog campaign (who's name escapes me at the moment) is certainly on par.

That games main campaign is the worst sort of boring padded crap

I think we need to be fair about the context when we discuss "padding". Baldur's Gate and expansions tells a thin story at best and on a first play though it can easily take 40 or more hours to play. Baldur's Gate 2 and Throne of Baal can easily take 200 hours to play. While there is lots of good stuff in there, you can't really throw stones about padding when the vast bulk of what you do in the Infinity Engine titles is just padding in the form of combat.

Both NWN and NWN2 have some amazing fan campaigns out there but then you've got to deal with downloading and installing them and if simple is the key word here, perhaps that's best left for later.

I'd agree that the modding community has done much to expand upon the NWN franchise. And it is worth noting that simplicity goes well beyond just ease of making the damn thing work. D&D 3.5 rules are simply easier to understand than the the 2.5 rules. Something as simple as understanding how well protected you are by armor is easier when AC represents the role you'd have to make to connect rather than the THAC0 system that always required mental arithmetic. Using the unified system of D20 for every check simply makes the numbers easier to understand at every turn.

But, that said, the rules are similar enough and the UI's share enough in common (nested menus for example) that they represent a good starter.

 

[The Madman]

I think we need to be fair about the context when we discuss "padding". Baldur's Gate and expansions tells a thin story at best and on a first play though it can easily take 40 or more hours to play. Baldur's Gate 2 and Throne of Baal can easily take 200 hours to play. While there is lots of good stuff in there, you can't really throw stones about padding when the vast bulk of what you do in the Infinity Engine titles is just padding in the form of combat.

Like I said before, the 'worst' sort of padded crap. It's not about having optional content, it's about purposely stretching a product out to the point where the story and gameplay begin to suffer as a result in order to artificially make it longer. I'd argue NWN2's main campaign has the same problem only that with NWN2 there's at least some payoff which makes it worthwhile and companion interaction and banter to make everything leading up to those points less tedious. The original games campaign by contrast is, well, it's just boring. Boring and predictable.

Otherwise I completely understand what you're saying. I just don't want anyone loading up the original NWN and playing the OC thinking it's a high point in PC rpg, with their inevitable disappointment then colouring their thoughts on the genre in the future.