Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition PS5 Review: A Classic D&D RPG

Forbes

15-07-2025

Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition
Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition is far from being classified as a remake and I wouldn't even call it a remaster, either. This is functionally the same game as it already existed, but it's optimized to run better on modern hardware along with some bug fixes and perhaps upgrades to things like enhanced resolution support. Fundamentally, what this does is bring one of PC gaming's most beloved classic RPGs to consoles (and modern machines) for the very first time in a way that's highly enjoyable and that's worth commending in and of itself.
I was only given access to the PS5 version of the game for this coverage and I didn't have anyone to test multiplayer with, but fortunately the single-player experience of the four included campaigns is pretty fantastic from what I've played so far.
Neverwinter Nights 2 was originally developed by Obsidian Entertainment, a studio that somehow found itself making sequels to other studio's RPGs fairly often for several years. Between this game, Knights of the Old Republic 2, Fallout: New Vegas, and Dungeon Siege III it's remarkable how adept they became at adopting an existing game world and just running with it. This Enhanced Edition is in the hands on Aspyr, the same folks behind the Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remaster, as well as the Tomb Raider 1-3 Remaster collection, and many others including multiple Star Wars games.
Let me be perfectly clear up front that prior to playing the game for this coverage, I had not played it before. Well, not really. I tried to once upon a time back in college over a decade ago, but it didn't really run very well on my PC at the time so I shelved it and never tried again.
I think something similar happened to a lot of people, especially after the original game was removed from Steam. All these years later, I can happily report that not only does it run well on PS5 via the new Enhanced Edition, but the story, characters, and gameplay are as rich and engaging as ever.
I did not have the bandwidth to complete any of the campaigns during my time with the game, but I tried them all out for a bit and fully intend on continuing to adventure my way through each story.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition
While all four campaigns are technically standalone endeavors, I'd highly recommend playing them in the order you see them listed in the main menu. Start with the original main campaign (The Wailing Death) storyline because it's designed to be your introduction to the game and its systems as it will take you from a brand-new character all the way up to around level 20—which is basically endgame in Dungeons & Dragons terms.
After that, you should go into Mask of the Betrayer, which is an excellent story in and of itself but it does seem to function best as a sort of epilogue to the main campaign. To this day, that storyline is still regarded as one of the best of any RPG. After that, the final two (Storm of Zehir and Mysteries of Westgate) are pretty much entirely separate so the order doesn't matter as much.
If you're completely unfamiliar with Neverwinter Nights 2, something of note to be aware of is that the game's gameplay and ruleset are based on Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition. This is important to keep in mind because it's quite different from 5th edition, which is what Baldur's Gate 3 is based on. Without getting into the nitty gritty details too much, 3.5 is a more complex system with a lot more nuance and detailed rules for situations, whereas 5 is generally a more accessible and streamlined format.
That being said, they've done a nice job of easing you into things with Neverwinter Nights 2. For me personally, I started playing tabletop D&D with 4th edition, but have since moved on to 5th edition which is what I'm most familiar with. However, over the years, I've played a wide assortment of D&D video games ranging from Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, to Eye of the Beholder, Warriors of the Eternal Sun, Pool of Radiance, and even Dungeons & Dragons Online.
All that's to say I know my halflings from my gnomes.
Despite my lack of direct knowledge of 3.5 as it exists in video game form, I didn't find the game that overwhelming. During character creation, there are some great options to select 'packages' for your chosen class, which streamlines some of the options so you can neatly fit into a bucket that sounds appealing for how you want to play your character.
Since this is a relatively crunchy RPG full of stats and character sheets, it's important to think in terms of roleplaying and possibilities not just within combat, but in the larger world as a whole. For example, even just in the first few hours my Paladin was able to persuade and diplomatic resolve multiple conversations and even violent encounters. There were several instances in which I had to leave a locked door or locked chest behind before I had a reliable rogue in my party.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition
For the main campaign, it starts off pretty slow. I really enjoyed the small town harvest festival event that teaches you how to play the game and introduces a bunch of side characters, but in general the first several hours move quite slow. Once you actually reach Neverwinter and get into the thick of things more it picks up quite a bit, so don't get put off if you feel like things aren't moving very quickly at first.
In many ways, the world feels very alive and reactive here. Perhaps it's my nostalgia for the era and willingness to look past shortcomings in favor of ambitious design, but something about the way this game presents itself is just so charming and appealing on a core level. Maybe it's just the strength of the source material.
From what I've seen so far, the characters and writing are phenomenal. Despite playing this game nearly two decades late, I really feel like some of these companions are going to stick with me for quite a while. They feel so multi-faceted and interesting in ways that characters rarely do in modern games and I think it's a testament to the quality of Obsidian's writing with this game. They've continued that with games like Pentiment, Avowed, The Outer Worlds, and more.
As a package, Neverwinter Nights 2 is dense and cumbersome. Once I had the hang of the basics I wasn't overwhelmed, but I did find some aspects of playing with a controller a bit wonky. For example, it seems like it takes more button presses than it should to navigate some of the manus. A lot of the sifting involves pressing triggers to cycle through sub-menus within a specific screen and toggling between characters within those sub-menus.
It's not too different from something like Baldur's Gate 3, admittedly, and they've done a good job of making these menus feel like they were definitely designed for controller and console players. But I can't help but feel like there could have been some better ways to approach some of it. It's tough to remember which hot keys and menus have the right sub-menu you're looking for, but the onscreen tool tips fortunately do a nice job of guiding you when you get lost in the weeds of it all.
Neverwinter Nights 2 utilizes a real-time-with-pause combat system, very similar to Pillars of Eternity, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, and the original Neverwinter Nights. What this means is that while you're in combat everything is happening in real-time under the hood. Dices are being rolled and stat modifiers are being applied, you just don't necessarily see the math happening on a table, you just see the outcomes.
But at any time you can pause the game by pressing the touchpad on PS5, to more specifically issue commands to individual characters. This is most important for large battles and boss battles in which you want to orchestrate specific chains of actions or manage crows of smaller enemies throughout the battlefield. It doesn't take long to get the hang of things and for fans of the actual tabletop game, it can be really satisfying to position your characters, queue up abilities, and then just watch it all play out like a ballet of blood and battle.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition
Unsurprisingly, I found the combat in Neverwinter Nights 2 to be absolutely captivating. Each class is so varied and unique and the steady flow of quality loot and interesting areas to explore kept me highly engaged. You can roll through rounds in combat fast enough that you don't ever really run into that tedious lull found in some other similar games.
What's nifty about Neverwinter Nights 2 is that there are two wildly different camera perspectives. The default, at least on console, was a more character-focused third-person camera angle. This looks and feels like something you might see in a Dragon Age game, for example, and puts you right up in the middle of the action all the time. I actually played this way most of the time since I could still zoom in and out using the d-pad.
The other camera mode, which I imagine will be more intuitive and useful for PC players using a mouse, is an isometric tactical camera angle. You can select characters, click where you want them to move, and more readily access hot bars and things like that during gameplay. It just didn't feel right on a controller for me, but it's great they included this as an option.
I will say that a few times my characters would get stuck on some of the environmental geometry, like branches and twigs on the ground, and the only way to move them off would be to switch to the tactical camera and click for them to move. The third-person camera wouldn't let me move at all.
Other than that little quirk and a couple of conversations that either didn't show my character model at all or positioned some NPCs in front of the speaking character inexplicably, it actually didn't have any performance or stability problems. It never crashed on my PS5 Pro even once.
Despite the fact that the game releases today at the same time as this review embargo, there are still lots of open questions, such as what exactly is enhanced in this Enhanced Edition and how does the mod support work for the PC version.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition
Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition Revives an RPG Classic
Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition is an excellent game for fans of classical high-fantasy D&D. While it's absolutely a product of its time and is showing its age in a lot of ways, the folks at Aspyr did an admirable job of updating things like the UI to work well on a controller for consoles. That being said, you can ultimately still tell this is a nearly 20-year old PC RPG at its core. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is worth keeping in mind.
The quality of the four campaigns varies a bit with the core storyline and Mask of the Betrayer most worthy of your time, while the other two are more traditional extra side stories worth looking at if you're still hungry for more.
Baldur's Gate 3 fans will likely find plenty to love here as long as they approach it with an open-mind and willingness to unlearn or re-learn things they thought they knew from D&D 5e since Neverwinter Nights 2 is actually based on D&D 3.5e.
All in all, if you love games with absolutely deep character customization and roleplaying features, tactical combat systems, vast worlds, and interesting characters to meet, then Neverwinter Nights 2 is absolutely a game for you. There's plenty of content to keep you busy for well over 100 hours—and that's before you start replaying campaigns and trying out new build options.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition
Platform: PlayStation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X|S, Switch, PC
Developer: Aspyr (Originally Obsidian Entertainment)
Publisher: Aspyr (Originally Atari)
Release Date: July 15th, 2025
Price: $29.99
Score: 8/10
Disclosure: A representative on behalf of Aspyr sent me a download code for an NA digital copy of Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition on PlayStation 5 for the purposes of this review.