Cast your mind back, if you can, to 2018’s Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition release. Developed by Beamdog, that trusty outfit responsible for recent ports of the first two Baldur’s Gate titles (not the Dark Alliance ones, the *proper* CRPG ones) and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition made its case as a great way to replay 2002’s arguably best CRPG.
Fast forward to Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition and now Beamdog has seemingly been given the boot in favour of Aspyr, the porting outfit responsible for the recent spate of remastered Star Wars titles which were delivered to varying degrees of success – the remaster of Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection remains an absolute cluster, while the remaster of Star Wars: Republic Commando meanwhile is actually a pretty decent effort, all things considered.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition PS5 Review
A Flawed Remaster Of A Seminal CRPG
Broadly speaking, Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition follows a similar throughline to what Beamdog achieved with Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition in 2018. This is to say that instead of crafting a full-fat remake that would bring the whole experience up to date by contemporary standards (and likely be horrendously/prohibitively expensive to develop as a result), Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition instead takes the path of least resistance by essentially remastering the 2006 CRPG and tweaking things here and there, rather than making any significant changes.
This means that Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition absolutely looks of its era and outside of higher resolutions and upped texture detail, there isn’t a whole lot new here from a visual perspective to bring Obsidian’s genre effort kicking and screaming into 2025. In fact, if you were feeling particularly uncharitable, Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition really doesn’t look too far off what you might expect to see from a later generation PS2 title, thanks in no small part to its geometrically simplistic environments, basic character models and rudimentary visual effects.
Something that is quite disappointing regardless of whether you’re feeling a bit soft for the older, technically less accomplished visuals on show here, are the loading times. Considering how small the game world maps are, loading a saved game on PS5 Pro can take upwards of ten seconds – which is pretty nuts. This is especially frustrating when you consider that much more complex efforts, such as Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, can load a save state within two to three seconds, but this much older, less complex title seemingly struggles greatly to match this.
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There are other aspects of Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition which also disappoint somewhat and chief among these is the UI. Put simply, navigating the various inventory and myriad menu screens in Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition 2 is a total chore. From trying to perform seemingly basic actions such as equipping weapons, which can be unnecessarily complicated by a lack of obvious context selections making it challenging to see which menu you’re selecting, to a complete lack of quest markers that can make tracking down NPCs in the environment also a real pain the rear, it really serves to illustrate the fact that Aspyr certainly has more work to do in properly mapping or re-engineering this much older UI to an acceptable contemporary standard.
And then there are the bugs and general jank, oh boy. Given the sheer size of Neverwinter Nights 2, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that Aspyr haven’t been able to entirely squash all of the bugs. From a frequently difficult to tame camera that struggles in enclosed spaces, to getting stuck in the scenery on the regular and the occasional full on crash back to the PS5 main screen, it’s obvious that Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition needed some more polish before it was ready for prime time, so to speak.
Essentially, If you can make peace with the polish issues, forgive the ample jank and let the vintage of the core offering live, then a mammoth and sprawling CRPG epic awaits. For the uninitiated – and indeed for the record, if you do count yourself among that number I would *strongly* recommend dipping into Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition before its sequel, Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition, what you’ve got here is an absolutely gargantuan bounty of CRPG goodness set within the confines of Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms setting.
Indeed, all the formative bones of later BioWare RPG epics such as Mass Effect and Dragon Age are here with in-depth and well-written companions anchored to an entirely non-linear storyline which invites player driven agency and replay value. Combat is also predictably tactical too, as it invites players to pause the on-screen action to decide on their next course of action, martial their abilities, skills and party formation to win each encounter.
Much like Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition before it, this sequel offers up bountiful satisfaction in similar ways. Whether you’re seeing a companion’s own story through to its conclusion, disarming a succession of traps, winning an especially battle or just progressing the main story with up to three of your mates via online coop multiplayer, Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition has a lot to offer, you just need to be quite lenient and accepting of its advanced years and many relatively minor flaws.
It’s not an exaggeration to state that there is a whole heap of game to be had here, too. With not only the base game represented in the package , but three of the massive campaign expansions and module content as well, Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition presents hundreds of hours of play generously stuffed with interesting characters, gripping quests and intricate storylines. Put simply, in a manner similar to Larian’s soaring work with Baldur’s Gate 3, Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition does a good job of making you feel like you’re playing an actual game of the titular tabletop epic at times – albeit one with a frequently murderous and oftentimes tortuous dungeon master guiding events.
Ultimately, if you can forgive the crusty aesthetics (and I would encourage you to do so – even if there is a lot of forgiveness to be dished out), Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition will still absolutely decimate your social calendar as it thoroughly draws you into its Dungeons & Dragons setting. It’s just a shame that some more care and attention wasn’t lavished to give this re-release the proper love it deserves.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition is out now on PS5.
Review code kindly provided by PR.