Neverwinter Nights 2: Platinum

Platform: PC (Windows)
Genre: RPG
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: Atari
Release: 31 October 2006
Rating: Teen
Price $20

Neverwinter Nights is a game that is often fondly remembered, but which, to be honest, has not aged well. It was a hit-or-miss translation of the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition rule-set to PC format, and the party system (what little there was) left a lot to be desired.
Neverwinter Nights 2 is, gameplay-wise, everything that Neverwinter Nights wanted to be. It is a near-perfect transfer of the D&D 3.5 rules, and it has a rather well-implemented party system that feels a lot like Knights of the Old Republic.
At the time of its release, NWN2's visuals were stunning, but only if you had a high-end computer. The necessary specs are far easier to achieve with modern PCs, so the visuals, while slightly aged, are still very nice to look at.
The plot is very much a storm of cliches: You're an ordinary person growing up in a tiny village, but when the village is attacked, you need to take the magical silver shard that they were after and take it to the eponymous city of Neverwinter so you can get another shard from your uncle and we've all seen this sort of thing before. What makes the story interesting is that the writers seemed to know how cliche it was, so they took every opportunity to poke fun at themselves for it.
Of course, the most important part of any story is its characters, and this game certainly delivers on that front. You will gather the standard Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, but they're all surprisingly well-developed and interesting.
Instead of the kind of "Morality" system that's common to modern RPGs, Neverwinter Nights 2 opts for an "Influence" system instead. Based on your actions, you may curry either favor or scorn from various members of your party, and their actions are determined by how much they like you. This will mainly affect dialogue, but it can affect gameplay as well (having high influence with Neeshka can get her to poison a certain foe, making that boss fight easier, for example). Some allies may even leave the group if they dislike you enough.
The main complaint that I can draw against Neverwinter Nights 2 is the sheer number of game-breaking bugs that it contained upon release. In the years since, most of them have been patched, but not all of them. It's not enough to be a deal-breaker anymore, however.
The Steam-exclusive "Platinum" release also contains both expansions to the game: Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir. Both of them are excellent and well worth your time once you've completed the main campaign. As a whole, the Platinum version is a great investment if you like Dungeons & Dragons or RPGs. There's a lot of game here, and since it comes with the tools to build your own adventures, there's the fan-made content as well.
You can get Neverwinter Nights 2: Platinum on Steam for $20.
Play, save, and enjoy. See you next week.

--Kotaro