Welcome to EXPlay, (Explain & Play) the review series where we care not for scores, but tell it how it is when it comes to every game we get our hands on, all whilst including some lengthy gameplay, to give you, the reader, the chance to form your own impressions and views while reading and watching. In this explanatory review, we’re covering Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter Nights 2 – Enhanced Edition by developer, Aspyr:
Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter Nights 2 – Enhanced Edition (Nintendo Switch)
Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter Nights 2 – Enhanced Edition is a remaster of the original title that was developed by Obsidian Entertainment with the support of BioWare and published by Atari Interactive. It released on Windows PC in 2006 and on Mac OS X in 2008. Aspyr is at the helm of the Enhanced version, bringing it to modern platforms including the Nintendo Switch which includes the base game and its expansions; Mask of the Betrayer, Storm of Zehir, and Mysteries of Westgate. The game is a third person, role-playing adventure based on the popular Dungeons & Dragons franchise and uses the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition ruleset.
Set in the realm of Faerûn, Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter Nights 2 – Enhanced Edition, the player takes control of a character who was adopted as a child by the elven ranger Daeghun in the village of West Harbor. The character is one of the player’s choosing who can create them from scratch or choose a preset build to represent them on their epic quest. The first act of the game has the player engage with a number of activities at a festival being held at West Harbor, which is very jovial and lighthearted. Come nightfall, the tone changes as the village is attacked by a group of gray dwarves that are looking for an unknown artifact.Â
Once the attackers leave empty handed, the player is tasked by Daeghun to retrieve a silver shard that has been kept hidden in a nearby cave. The shard was stored there many years ago after the defeat of the King of Shadows, and may just well be what the gray dwarves were after. Upon retrieving the artifact, the player is then bequested to venture for Neverwinter and so begins the player’s adventure in Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter Nights 2 – Enhanced Edition.
The gameplay for Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter Nights 2 – Enhanced Edition reminds me of that in STAR WARS: Knights of the Old Republic II, which is just as well seeing as it was developed by the same team. Players control their avatar from a third-person perspective and can assign weapons, armor, and other accesories to slots on their character like cloak, armor, or hand. Depending on your character’s build (Mage, Ranger, Warrior, etc.) there will be certain weapons or accessories they cannot use. This doesn’t make them useless though, as you can enlist other characters to join your party and you can kit them out with gear that you can’t use but they might. Your party can include a total of five members including the main character and four NPC companions. When playing online, you party can be made of up to four human players total.
You can obtain gear as rewards for completing requests, purchased from merchants, by unlocking chests, and from looting the remains from the fallen, be it friend or foe alike. you can intiate combat with enemies by pressing A. You will then automatically engage with them and will attack with your weapons every time the cooldown resets. You can also manually use skills that you have assigned to the hotbar that also have their own cooldowns so try not to spam all your good spells in one sitting otherwise you may leave yourself open before you can attack your opponents again.
Just like with many other RPGs, you can earn experience that will allow you to level up your character and party members. By doing so, you can make them stronger and learn new skills that could help you with tougher enemies ahead. Party members won’t level up automatically though. You will need to manually level them up yourself and then choose which skills and feats you would like them to learn. It does give you some control in how you wish to influence their build but you will have to keep checking their experience bars every now and again to see when they are ready to level up or not.
So, lets get down to brass tacks. I will admit that I have not really played a Dungeons and Dragons video game before, nor have I ever participated in a real D&D Campaign. I am a complete novice in this franchise but I wanted to give this game a try to see if it may entice me into the realm of epic fantasy. Unfortunately, I am remiss to say that I am not reallywowed over at all. The text heavy tutorials were daunting, especially when I accidently skipped a window that may have had some important information and I couldn’t find that information again. It was a case of “blink and you’ll miss it” which left me with trying to figure out how to do things like how to cast a spell, that needed to memorise first and set it to the hotbar menu but when I did, it didn’t have any power. This happened to me during my recorded playthrough of the game and I was left fumbling for a good while until I tried resting my party, which then restored the magic power needed for me to use the spell.
While I do appreciate Aspyr for giving games like Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter Nights 2Â a new lease of life, there are going to be some games that I am just not going to gel with and in this case, its this one. The remastered visuals, refined camera, and the new controller-adapted control scheme in Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter Nights 2 – Enhanced Edition are very much appreciated, as is access to community created content to help prolong gameplay even more. These are all great, but I couldn’t really enjoy the combat or gameplay. To be honest, I had the exact same issue with STAR WARS: Knights of the Old Republic IIÂ and I totally agree that the fault lies with me than perhaps, with the game itself. I do think that if I was a fan of the Dungeons & Dragons series, I may have enjoyed this and its world building, but I am afraid it is not to be.Â
If you are a fan of Dungeons & Dragons, like Planescape and Baldur’s Gate, then you may very well get a kick out of Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter Nights 2 – Enhanced Edition. If you are a total newbie to the series though, you may struggle with the 3.5 ruleset as there are newer games in the D&D universe that use more modern and refined rulsets that you may find more to your liking.
Game Specifications:
Developer: Aspyr
Publisher: Aspyr
Platform: Nintendo Switch (Digital)
Genre: Adventure, Role Playing
No. of Players:Â 1 (Single System) 2-4 (Online)
Release Date:Â July 15, 2025
Price:Â $29.99
File Size: 21.4 GB
Nintendo.com Listing
