Our opinion on Neverwinter and its gameplay
Released in 2013, Neverwinter is published by Perfect World Entertainment and developed by Cryptic Studios. It is an MMORPG based on the famous heroic fantasy franchise, Dungeons and Dragons. In this free-to-play game, you will have to rebuild the city of Neverwinter, which is under attack by terrible creatures.
As with any self-respecting MMORPG, Neverwinter starts with the creation of your character. You will first have to choose between several races: human, half-orc, drow, wood elf, moon elf, sun elf, half-elf, tieffelin or drakeid. A rather large panel. Next, you will have to decide on the class of your hero. There is no originality here, you will find all the classic roles such as magician, warrior, thief… The possibilities are wide enough for you to create the avatar of your dreams. The last step is to check your basic statistics. Here, everything is decided by randomness, in a “roll of the dice” mode, a tribute to the paper role-playing game. Whatever your luck, you won’t have a character that is too weak, no worries. Especially since all the classes in the game are balanced, which is a good point.
As for the appearance of your avatar, don’t expect too much. The possibilities are honest, but the options are rather rudimentary. Theheroic fantasy spectrum restricts the potentialities somewhat, which is understandable. A dimension that does not really apply to Neverwinter’s environments, which are very varied. The 3D graphics, without being incredible, are of good quality. The textures are sometimes smudgy, but the frankly successful art direction makes up for this small technical gap. If only the experience wasn’t spoiled by cascading loading screens…
Neverwinter and its quest editor
Good surprise: Neverwinter has a quest editor called The Foundry. Far from being basic, this mode allows you to add content within the software, which itself offers tasteless missions. In fact, the main story is just a succession of instances with no real interest. The strength of this quest editor comes mainly from its potential: it offers an almost unlimited playground to the users of Cryptic Studios’ title. The community is very creative, and many of the quests created via The Foundry are far superior to what you’ll see in other MMORPGs.
Let’s talk about the gameplay. The confrontations are very dynamic, especially since you have to move a lot to avoid your opponents’ blows. Not that taking hits is very punishing in Neverwinter. The game is very accessible, perhaps even too much so, and fans of challenge will no doubt be frustrated.
The interface is exemplary in its sobriety. Your character has 8 attacks: 2 assigned to mouse clicks; 3 encounter powers that suffer from a cooldown; 2 daily abilities, and finally 1 ability specific to your class. The mechanics are simple to manage, and you quickly enjoy facing creatures or other players. On the other hand, it is regrettable that the evolution of the avatar is so tedious, and that it can only be limited to one role. If you have chosen a warrior oriented towards defence, you will have to wait a long time before you can change your play style.
Our conclusion on Neverwinter
While Neverwinter was presented as a new, unpretentious MMORPG, it does have some nice qualities. Despite the sub-par textures and annoying loading times, the game is beautiful, varied and large enough to be fun quickly. The game’s nervous gameplay is also noteworthy, even if the main asset of the software remains its quest editor.