Neverwinter Nights 2 Expansion Pack: Mask of the Betrayer | 
| From: Atari
List Price: $19.99
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Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 1058
Platforms: Windows 2000, Windows Xp, Windows 98
Genre: Role Playing Games
ESRB: Teen
Media: DVD-ROM
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Age: 12 - 20 years
Operating System: Windows 2000
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 1.1
MPN: 27559
UPC: 742725275591
EAN: 0742725275591
ASIN: B000R2WIE2
Release Date: October 9, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New! Factory Sealed. GET IT FASTER! We'll UPGRADE your shipping to FIRST CLASS FREE OF CHARGE & FREE DELIVERY CONFIRMATION!
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| • | Neverwinter Nights 2 Expansion Pack 1 Mask of the Betrayer |
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Product Description
Neverwinter Nights 2 (NWN2) is a computer role-playing game set in the fantasy world of the Forgotten Realms, one of the popular campaign settings of Dungeons and Dragons. It takes the player from the tiniest of villages into a sweeping tale of danger and war, chronicling their rise from a peasant to a full-fledged hero of the Realms, defending it against one of the greatest threats of the age.
In Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, players are transported back to the Forgotten Realms shortly after the events detailed in the original Neverwinter Nights 2. Following the climactic battle against the King of Shadows, the player awakens alone and stranded deep beneath the earth. Surrounded by a horde of evil spirits, the player embarks on an epic adventure that reveals his true destiny. Set in harsh, spirit-rich Rashemen, near the powerful nation of Thay, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer will present players with an exciting new campaign; epic levels; dozens of new feats and spells; new races, base classes and prestige classes; new companions; new weapons, armour and crafting options; hordes of new monsters; and enhanced modding tools.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 Stab the Betrayer... November 15, 2007
Brian M. Ranzoni (Albany, OR United States)
24 out of 26 found this review helpful
...An Epic Adventure with Sneak Attacks
UPDATED: 28 Jan 2008
As buggy as it was, initially, *Neverwinter Nights 2* brought together some of the best elements of the first series into an involved adventure. Now Obsidian Entertainment brings us *Mask of the Betrayer*, which extends both the story and the life of player characters. Though it does suffer from some balance issues.
Unlike the expansions in the first series, *Mask* is an actual sequel. After the climactic events of NWN2, your character awakes deep within a haunted barrow. Your inventory has been stripped of everything other than the armor and jewelry you wore. And the wizard in red isn't forthcoming with answers, as she approaches your stricken form...
Otherwise, MOTB feels a lot like those older expansions, particularly *Hordes of the Underdark*. It's a moodier, more mystical journey than NWN2. And no wonder--your character talks to gods, deals with witches, and exorcises ghosts. The undead play a much bigger role, as do spell casters, and players should invest in silver and adamantine weapons immediately. Paladins and clerics will perform well here.
The engine performs better too; with the 1.10 series patches, the memory leaks and frame-rate issues have been resolved on my power rig. However, it might be necessary to reinstall NWN2 before loading up MOTB--otherwise the Official Campaign (OC) might suffer some quest bugs.
The expansion enjoys more graphical options. Characters trip through monochromatic Planes, dank dungeons, and fuzzy dreams. Spot lighting also sees more use, and objects appear to cast stronger, more impressive shadows.
These colors cast upon new tile sets, including: a richly textured estate and a sewer-like underwater city. But the main setting is the cold, gray nation of Rashomen, styled on a combination of Native American and Scandinavian culture. It's not glacial like the lands in the original series expansions, but the landscape is not for those who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder!
Nor is the soundtrack. Obsidian introduces a ton of dreamy, often somber scores, both for Areas and for Battles. As far as sound effects go, MOTB reuses the files of NWN1 and 2, but it also uses a few custom creepy tracks.
Ultimately, however, the effects rest upon the story. And *Mask* is an odd one. The character falls into a maelstrom of curses and conspiracies culminating into a confrontation with Death itself. Along the way it questions both religion and nature, while the player puzzles together a mystery to the bitter end. To this end, the story entwines in themes of masks, costumes and theater. By afflicting the player with a curse, which affects a much wider conflict, the expansion also expresses a dramatic urgency in place of NWN2's casual journey.
But in achieving that drama, MOTB is also more linear than the OC. To navigate it, I was able to call upon a much smaller band of companions, and the four-member limit is rigidly enforced. At 25 hours in length, I beat it in about three days.
This can assure customers worried about the curse. Because the expansion is so straight-forward, there's not much to explore. Also, companions and items retard the curse anyways. Thus, only an incompetent player is going to have difficulty managing it.
Managing character itself is another matter. Prior to the latest patch, *Mask of the Betrayer* forced characters towards Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil alignments. Whenever the character acted upon the curse, it assigned a minimum two-point shift in lawfulness--shifts which rapidly add up. Bonuses come with these extremes, including uber weapons or stat-boosting feats.
Otherwise, this conflicts with most alignment-restricted classes.Thus the 1.11 patch removed the alignement shift entirely.
Another balance issue--the expansion is too short to justify its rewards. Nearly every chest bulges with thousands of gold pieces. While nearly every quest awards thousands of xp. This is out of scale with the OC, and causes characters to become too powerful too quickly.
Speaking of power, I come at last to the revised item enchanting system for *Mask*. Gone are the need for recipe books, ingredients, and even magician benches. With a few exceptions, every "recipe" is found in the item description for three new classes of essence: Volatile, Brilliant, and Pristine. The multitudes of undead drop these by the bucket load--no distillation required. There are also a handful of superduper essences that boost your weapons to absurd levels of elemental damage.
The enchantments focus heavily on elemental damage and stat-boosting. So you can forget about making Holy Avengers or Fortified Armor. You can boost weapons, armor, gloves, and shields up to +10 if you've acquired the right stuff from the Evil game path. And epic casters increase the maximum number of enchantments to four. But for some reason you can't enchant bracers, and there are no ingredients for bomb flasks or traps. While I appreciate the big boosts overall, I don't appreciate the limited selection of recipes.
But apart from these funky balance issues, I enjoyed playing this epic in a small package. Bioware never published a follow-up for veteran characters of the first NWN, so I'm glad Obsidian took on an actual sequel. A lot of performance issues are resolved and the enchanting system is simple and powerful. Obsidian also gave me a powerful character, and I hope another expansion comes along which can put it to the test.
-* for play balance problems.
I like it, except... October 18, 2007
Rutherford (VA, USA)
21 out of 24 found this review helpful
I was late getting Neverwinter Nights 2, and I was very happy with it. I'm running Vista with an NVIDIA 8500 graphics card, and it's super smooth. The look and feel and play of the game is great. I have to say that I haven't played any other games since I loaded this on my computer about a month ago.
For the expansion, there are some new races, new classes, new feats, new spells, and new areas to explore. These are all top notch. I love most of the game. My only real beef with the game is that they did not really stick to the 3.5 D&D rules, but came up with a different rule set where the player is cursed with a spirit energy addiction that requires feeding on the energy of spirits and undead. It forces the player to either suppress the addiction, making your character more LG, or indulge in the addiction and eventually need to kill everything that moves to live and feed your addiction. It doesn't really support LE, CG or TN alignments very well, since there is not much middle ground due to this spirit eating addiction. If you normally like to play as LG or CE, then you will love this game. I prefer more middle ground, frankly, but I still give it 4 stars. There are plenty of mods and other things available with the gaming community. After you have finished the official campaign, if you want you can download modules created by other players. Many of them are very good.
 Improves the Original by Leaps and Bounds October 15, 2007
Farhad Badri (California)
16 out of 18 found this review helpful
As one of the many who were somewhat disappointed with NWN 2, I approached this expansion with a little hesitation. Deciding to let this be the make-or-break game for me in regards to Obsidian Entertainment (the developers of this game), I went ahead and bought it. And boy, am I glad I did.
This expansion tremendously improves the original NWN 2. I loved the story of the campaign - it's more mature, the writing is better, the pacing is better, and the characters are all more enjoyable. I wasn't sure how they were going to incorporate the story of the first campaign into this one, but they managed it quite well. If you miss some of the dialog it may not seem to mesh, but trust me, there are explanations in-game.
The environments are absolutely great. Some of the new tilesets and placeables should add a lot to those that are making modules. The music is fantastic as well; each piece suits its location perfectly, and really helps add to the atmosphere.
The additions are both good and bad. As the other reviewer noted, the Genasi race are pretty crummy, and the half-drow are basically half-elves with darkvision instead of low-light vision. The new base classes are interesting, but the prestige classes are where the new additions really shine. Sacred Fist, Stormlord, and the Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep really add options to some base characters in regards to builds. There are some others as well, but I'm typing this review too early in the morning to remember 'em. :-p There are also new feats (epic, mostly) and a lot of new spells, some of which come in really handy during the tougher fights.
As for performance and mechanics, it's much improved. The gameplay is smoother, the graphics are better, and overall it's got all of the polish that NWN 2 should have had. The new camera takes getting used to, but once you do it actually comes in quite handy.
Before this gets too long (Amazon recommends between 75-300 words...hah), let me close up by saying that if you thought the original NWN 2 was even halfway decent but were annoyed due to its feeling rushed and the myriad bugs and issues, you really should get this. It's a fantastic RPG, and it's one of the best new RPGs I've played in years.
 Buyer beware! October 26, 2007
K. Kanitz (Upper Midwest)
13 out of 29 found this review helpful
I have played and enjoyed Neverwinter Nights 2, so I was looking forward to this expansion. First of all, I need to point out that it does not come on PC CD-ROM, as Amazon advertises--the only PC version is DVD-ROM.
After I installed the game, the first thing I noticed is that the camera is much harder to control--a real challenge. Graphics are somewhat improved, and the occasional jerkiness of the animations in the original game have been corrected.
But (and this is a BIG but) the Mask of the Betrayer expansion messed up the original install of my game! As the expansion provides new starting options, I designed a new character to play from the beginning. When I reached a critical plot point early in chapter 1, the game refused to acknowledge that I had achieved the goal needed to proceed. Loading an old saved game from later on in the story, I found more game-stopping bugs that had not existed before. I uninstalled the game, thinking to just reinstall the original MWN 2, but that game will no longer install properly. As a result, I cannot play any version of the game now (and my computer more than meets the specs for optimal performance).
My advice is this--don't risk the expansion until you have are thoroughly played out using the original campaign!
Great expansion, somewhat annoying gameplay... October 21, 2007
Acoma
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
Firstly, I played this on a dual-core 2.13ghz pentium, 2gb ram with a Nvidia 8600 GTS on Vista 32-bit.
Okay, I loved the vanilla Neverwinter Nights 2 and the expansion is great in terms of storylines and the involvement with your new buddies is superb. Rather than have a variety of NPCs that travel with you following traditional race/class lines you will gain very distinct and original companions, I'd say more but I wouldn't want to spoil anything!
One of the bad things mentioned countless places is the Soul-Eater "feature" that rears its ugly head at the end of ACT I. I have mixed feelings, in that it makes the game more challenging but really detracts from your ability to explore freely, talk to NPCs because you are constantly watching your soul meter. Also, if you deviate from any extreme alignment like Chaotic Evil or Lawful Good, you are going to have a heck of a time.
The gameplay overall is fun and challenging, with a big increase in difficulty level for the fights you will have. Unless you are a melee fighter type its going to be pretty rough for you initially, especially if you don't import your 20ish level character from the original Neverwinter Nights 2 as you only start at level 18. Granted that's not a huge leap, but its enough to feel it at the beginning especially if you are a caster type character.
There isn't much of a frivolous atmosphere in Mask of the Betrayer, from the areas you visit, the NPCs you encounter and the story you traverse...everything has a sinister and dark nature to it. There are some good fights and action in this, but expect lots of dialogue, reading and choices in terms of Good and Evil.
Pros:
- Everything that was good about NWN2 and removed some of the bad!
- Great Music
- Good storyline
- Wide variety of class/race combinations
Cons:
- Spirit Eater Meter sucks
- Might be annoyingly challenging for non-imported characters/casters.
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