neverwinter nights 2

so, i found myself daring yet another sequel.

i loved neverwinter nights. at least, pre-expansion pack. you see, i loved the outfits in the first game. i'm a big fan of playing elf chick mages or rogues. they're brilliant. for starters, they look tiny and sneaky and cute, and then they often have the better animations. plus, when you zoom up they're prettier than ugly old orcs or something.

in any case, the outfits were brilliant.

until the stupid expansion came along and turned all the wizard necromancer outfits into dresses.

i really

really

really

REALLY

hate wearing dresses.

to start with, the animations just look silly. and secondly, they're dresses and not very spooky when you fancy yourself as a demonic little necromancer running around shoving your chaotic evil wand under people's noses.

it was just embarassing, and i found myself tossing away any magically helpful "robes" in favour of something useless but tight-fitting. they just LOOKED better - what with all the pouches and things. much more fun.

so, suitably disgusted at seeing i now have a repeat performance of compulsory dresses, i haven't really gotten into neverwinter nights 2 which has probably THE most annoying camera thing known to gaming. i haven't seen one so bad in . . . well, i haven't. it's totally annoying, flipping inward and outward when you go under things and just seeming to zip about so you can't see what the hell you're doing, and in many cases anything attacking me is dead at the hands of my minions before i can pull the stupid camera around to target it. either that, or i'm the dead one.

and no, i haven't got the hang of the target next target buttons. they're crap. if i want to play games where i have to push a lot of buttons, i'd play quake. or whatever they call it now.

i also find the stupid way the spells work are really really irking me. some spells you target a creature, and others you must target yourself (area effect - such as some kind of booming fire spell i have). annoying!!!!!! it's annoying because you target your creature, and you zap him with ice, then you press your fiery spell, and nothing happens! so you press it again, then realise you're no longer targeting the creature, so you target him, and click your spell, then right click the creature and the spell effect disappears (some spells you need to right-click and others seem to need a left click - annoying!!!!), and then you realise you have to target YOURSELF, so by the time you've wrapped your head about THAT, you're either dead, or your minions have had all the fun and you're left swearing at the screen.

other minions seem to require healing, so you tell them to heal (appropriate right click), and it queues the healing process then just skips it for a while. sure, it's supposed to heal next "turn" but that doesn't stop it ignoring the healing process for the whole frikken LIFE of your minion.

or yourself...

i'm trying really hard to find something, ummm, endearing about this dumbass game, but so far i can't.

i mean, i'm not exactly a newbie. i've been playing dumbass games for well over fifteen years. the minions seem fairly ok at handling themselves, which is good, but the controls are just manic. there is just no rhyme or reason to have to do so much click clicking about. you have to keep pausing if you want to get it right. and while i didn't mind pausing all the time in neverwinter nights, in the sequel it's just a pain in the posterior because it doesn't seem to help at all. the first game the pausing was helpful and enjoyable. you set your spells and sat back and howled at the screen as you wailed your banshee and watched everything melt. brilliant.

this game... i'm not sure if i want to keep going long enough to see if the animation for wail of the banshee is as good as the original neverwinter nights...

so far it's getting me down. worst than dungeon siege 2's stupid mario brothers badguys.