D&D: Neverwinter

D&D: Neverwinter is a free-to-play MMORPG that hopes to stuck you in with the promise of loot and adventure, but how does it fair?

Story

The story of Neverwinter sees your character washing up in Neverwinter after the ship he/she was aboard was destroyed by Dracolich (Dragon Lich), commanded by a Lich wizard named Valindra, who leads an assault against the troops of Neverwinter.

The player, after a brief tutorial, is then cast into the role of lone person with the ability to turn the tides of war.

Graphics

The graphics of Neverwinter are very good for a console MMORPG, but due to this and the large amounts of players, some areas can be very laggy, even causing timeouts when loading areas.

Gameplay in non city areas is generally smooth while maintaining good visuals.

Controls

The controls can take a bit adjusting to, the RT is your standard attack, while LT is a special attack, you can hotlink skills to X, Y, and B. Pressing the LB orbs another set of commands such as opening your inventory, chat log, and your 'Daily Skill' (despite the name, it can be used several times, you just need to charge it by performing certain actions).

There are several menus for you navigate, sometimes being cumbersome, changing tabs is done using the bumpers, changing within the tabs is done with triggers.

Audio

So far, the audio has been acceptable do far. There's not a whole lot of voice acting outside of quest briefing. So be prepared to read a bit.

Music is very middle age like (the setting IS such era), so drums, trumpets, stereotypical renaissance style are frequent in towns

Other

The game has many game modes for you to try, these include:

Domination - 5v5 PvP where you must capture and hold 3 points, while defending then from enemy players.

Skirmish - PvE gameplay where 5 players survive waves of enemies.

Dungeons - PvE gameplay where 5 players delve into a dungeon and face strong foes and bosses for rare loot.

Each of these modes grant unique currency that can be redeemed for high tier gear. They also grant an item called 'rough astral diamonds' upon certain conditions.

During the day, the game has events that give bonuses to certain modes (the current event is displayed on the outside screen, in the bottom right).

Completing a dungeon or skirmish when they're respective events are happening grant you aforementioned rough astral diamonds, these are converted to 'astral diamonds' automatically when you load up an area, but only a certain number per day. These are used to buy from the auction house, and many other vendors (think of then as a tier 2 currency along with PvP currency and other obtainable in game currency, gold/silver/bronze pieces being tier 1).

Then there's the tier 3 currency known as 'Zen'. You can earn Zen by redeeming several hundred astral diamonds, or with real cash. Obviously, Zen is need for the most powerful stuff.

As said earlier, this is a f2p game, so guys in charge try to do whatever they can to get you to buy stuff. One such example you see plenty of is an item 'Tyrannical Lockbox', these have a chance of doing a variety of items, the most sought after being the Epic and Legendary mounts. However to open these, you need to by keys, only purchasable with Zen. The chances of one of these mounts being in there, it's insanely small (.01% based on some people's math), you're better off not bothering.

If you want more than 2 characters, you'll also need to buy slots with Zen, so make sure you like your character.

Speaking of characters, there are several races to play as, including humans, dwarves, elves, half-elves, half-orcs, a dark elf, wood elf, and some devil looking creature. Each race has bonus stats.

There's also many classes such as, rogues, time wizards, clerics, guardians, fighters, and a few more I don't remember off the top of my head.

The game has so much to offer, it's hard to make sure I got everything. If I missed something substantial, please let me know.

Overall

This is a very fun and addictive game for those who love RPGs, I've not played much else on my Xbox One since I downloaded it.

8.0/10.0

Pros
- Large variety of classes and races
- Very nice graphics for a large, free game
- Most gear is obtainable in game without any real money spending
- Lots of quest variety

Cons
- Due to the size, and relative newness, there are lots of lag spikes and timeout

- Waiting for a dungeon can take a long time depending on the time you are on

- Tanking, and sometimes healing, are optical for dungeons, you can finish one without them

(images to be added at a later date)