Opinions on the video games based on the 3E DnD ruleset?

[pabelfly]

So, I'm interested in finding out what video games are based on the 3e/3.5 dnd rulesets, and whether these games are worth playing.

[Remuko]

Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 are based on 3.0 and 3.5 respectively and I think they're both great. I enjoy both of them a lot.

[Gavinfoxx]

Temple of Elemental Evil is amaaaazing. Be sure to get the Circle of Eight mod!

[Feantar]

Icewind Dale 2 is just a hackfest. If you like those, it's okay.


Temple of Elemental Evil is amaaaazing. Be sure to get the Circle of Eight mod!

Yes it's really good with the mod. My suggestion would be to powerplay a little because the combat is turn based and sometimes takes forever.


Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 are based on 3.0 and 3.5 respectively and I think they're both great. I enjoy both of them a lot.

Yeah... with a few caveats:

On NWN 1:

Main Campaign: Atrocious, don't play it. Not the main reason, but representative, the voice actress for Aribeth (the plot exposition character) sounds like she is reciting a really important news broadcast ALL THE TIME. [Saying this as someone who has played through it a couple of times, because I had COVID before it was cool and developed a lack of taste:smallyuk:]
Shadows Of Undrentide: Really good, really interesting. Suffers a bit from uneven pacing but not to a problematic degree.
Hordes of the Underdark: Fantastic, and shifts gears every chapter (Dungeoneering / Open World / High Fantasy Epic). It might give you a bit of a thematic backlash between the first and second chapters, but it actually fits so . . .


On NWN 2:

Main Campaign: Meh. It gets better as it goes on; it suffers from some bad voice acting (namely, your character's dad) but the plot is sound, if cliche. Has some great characters (and some severely underdeveloped ones - looking at you Casavir and Bishop).
Mask of the Betrayer: This one is just *Perfect*. The best of the all. Deep, intricate, lore heavy, extremely thematic campaign. Great Companions. Just altogether awesome.
Storm of Zehir: I hated it, but it tried to combine an open world approach to these games that was interesting at the time. It was, at least, interesting but very repetitive and hack n' slashy for me.


That being said, the player made mods is where both of the Neverwinter Nights games shine. And the persistent worlds *sigh*.

[MinimanMidget]

I started writing a whole thing about NWN, but Feantar said most of what I would've. Just a few points I want to offer an opinion on:


NWN1 Main Campaign: Atrocious, don't play it.

It cops a lot more flak than it really deserves (probably because some of the others are so great). It's nothing special, but it's solid fun.


NWN2 Main Campaign: Meh.

Worth mentioning that it's buggy as heck. To be fair, NWN2 seems to be in general.


Mask of the Betrayer: This one is just *Perfect*. The best of the all. Deep, intricate, lore heavy, extremely thematic campaign. Great Companions. Just altogether awesome.

It's also even buggier than the main NWN2 campaign. It's worth it, because it really is that good, but make multiple saves.


Storm of Zehir: I hated it, but it tried to combine an open world approach to these games that was interesting at the time. It was, at least, interesting but very repetitive and hack n' slashy for me.


SoZ is just...hot garbage. They tried to build a completely different game inside the engine, and the result means sitting through 4 loading screens for each random encounter.

One official campaign you missed: Mysteries of Westgate. Which was quite fun, actually - it's a mid-level adventure, and not particularly long, which puts it in a different space than the others. It's not on the level of Hordes or Mask, but it's definitely worth playing if you're looking for more NWN content.

[Zombimode]

So, all 3.0/3.5 games to my knowledge:


Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor - 3.0, and that is pretty much the extend of my knowledge. It got slammed pretty hard by reviewers back in the day and as a result I gave it a pass. Since than it hasn't made the jump to one of the major modern distribution plattforms so getting it (and getting it to run) is probably rather difficult. It's turn-based. Setting is Forgotten Realms.
Neverwinter Nights - 3.0 with some liberties due to the realtime-with-pause gameplay (RTWP), fairly extensive class/PRC/feat/spell selection (compared to many other titles on this list), set in the Forgotten Realms. The main campaign is nothing special, the DLC campaigns are better. Darkness Over Daggerford is excellent. Tyrants of the Moonsea is also pretty good. Also, depending on you preferences/language you might find some pretty awesome user created campaigns. It is important to note that NWN is NOT a party-based RPG. Yes, you may have companions but you controll your character and thats it.
Icewind Dale 2 - 3.0, also RTWP and more deviations from the rules then NWN, limited character options: just the 11 base classes, no PRCs, limited feat selection (mostly PHB stuff or feats design for the game). Icewind Dale 2 is first and foremost a sequel to Icewind Dale - on this list it is the game that feels the least like a D&D 3.x game. It is an Infinity Engine game and quite enjoyable in my view :-) Setting is Forgotten Realms.
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The Temple of Elemental Evil - 3.5, turn-based and a very close implementation of the rules - the only major deviation is that the game does not use squares. It is one of the closest thing to playin 3.5 on a computer :-) That said, that actual 3.5 content is rather limited: just the PHB races, base classes, feats and spells - no PRCs. That makes it a very precise but basic 3.5 implementation. And of course like all games on the list it is strictly 2D (no talking about the graphics). The campaign is a dungeon crawler - very moody. The original release stands on a very shaky technical foundation. The Circle of Eight mod does a TON to fix bugs and stability issues. Personally I have not played it without the Co8 mod, but my experiences with the mod have been very positive. Setting is, for a change, Greyhawk.
Neverwinter Nights 2 - 3.5, RTWP, and without question the largest ammount of character options. Races, base classes - yes finally some base classes from other sources that the PHB!, PRCs, feats, spells. Not the full 3.5 library, far from it. But it doesn't feel like a "PHB only" game like so many other titles on this list. The main campaign is fun - nothing groundbreaking but a classic Bioware-style offering. Storm of Zehir is a more old-school build-your-own-party adventure, Mask of the Betrayer on the other hand a continuation of the main campaign. Personally I haven't got far in both DLCs, but many people seem to be quite fond of Mask of the Betrayer :-) There is also Mysteries of Westgate of which I no nothing about. Setting is Forgotten Realms, of course.
Knights of the Chalice - 3.5, turn-based, pretty accurate rules implementation. Spells and feats are SRD stuff, classes just Fighter, Wizard, Cleric. The campaign is heavily inspired by the Slavers (A1-4) and Against the Giants (G1-3) modules. Pretty fun, very much focused on the tactical battles. Setting is undescriptive generic Fantasy Land.
Knights of the Chalice 2 - 3.5 (albeit with it's own fairly large roster of base classes), turn-based. I haven't played it so I can't talk much about it. You can play it but I have no idea in what "ripeness" the game currently is.


Now, in my view it would be unfair to exclude the two Pathfinder games here. Yes, Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous are Pathfinder 1 and not 3.x - but come on, the differences are small. It terms of feeling I can only talk about Kingmaker as I havent play WotR yet. And for Kingmaker thanks to the very extensive character options (larger then even NWN 2) the experience is much closer to a 3.5 experience on the tabletop - since when do you have to play 3.5 PHB only?
Kingmaker is, in my view, also very clearly the best game in pretty much any capacity compared to any other game on the list.
By default the game is RTWP, but a very competent mod provides the option to go turn-based - a much better fit for this game.
The setting is Golarion.

[Zarvistic]

I like Low Magic Age a lot. It doesn't have a lot of story or lore, but for game mechanics I feel it's very enjoyable. It has been early access for a long time, but has so much added to it since it came out.

[pabelfly]

I like Low Magic Age a lot. It doesn't have a lot of story or lore, but for game mechanics I feel it's very enjoyable. It has been early access for a long time, but has so much added to it since it came out.

I'll have a look at Low Magic Age, I love how many feats it has. The lack of feats to properly customize characters is really annoying me in NWN2.

[Tzardok]

I think there's a mod that adds nearly every subsystem, class, prestige class and feat to NWN2 that were published for 3.5.

[pabelfly]

I think there's a mod that adds nearly every subsystem, class, prestige class and feat to NWN2 that were published for 3.5.

I found it for NWN 1 but don't know how to find it for NWN2.

Here's the link for NWN 1, out of interest: https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/hakpak/original-hakpak/player-resource-consortium-418?qt-top_mods=1#qt-top_mods

[GeoffWatson]

Dungeons and Dragons Online (https://www.ddo.com/home) is quite good, but has changed quite a bit over the years.

[Zanos]

Knights of the Chalice - 3.5, turn-based, pretty accurate rules implementation. Spells and feats are SRD stuff, classes just Fighter, Wizard, Cleric. The campaign is heavily inspired by the Slavers (A1-4) and Against the Giants (G1-3) modules. Pretty fun, very much focused on the tactical battles. Setting is undescriptive generic Fantasy Land.
Knights of the Chalice 2 - 3.5 (albeit with it's own fairly large roster of base classes), turn-based. I haven't played it so I can't talk much about it. You can play it but I have no idea in what "ripeness" the game currently is.
[/LIST]

Worth mentioning that while these games are very mechanically 'complete' they are very hard and only combat. It's not uncommon at higher levels to fight stuff like multiple ancient dragons that are all also wizards and a horde of a angry ghost sorcerers at the same time. Also low fidelity if that's something that bothers people, the 'graphics' are literally just tokens on a gameboard and none of the art is particularly good. But they are fun games if you just like the 3.5 ruleset and sadistic encounters.


Now, in my view it would be unfair to exclude the two Pathfinder games here. Yes, Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous are Pathfinder 1 and not 3.x - but come on, the differences are small. It terms of feeling I can only talk about Kingmaker as I havent play WotR yet. And for Kingmaker thanks to the very extensive character options (larger then even NWN 2) the experience is much closer to a 3.5 experience on the tabletop - since when do you have to play 3.5 PHB only?
Kingmaker is, in my view, also very clearly the best game in pretty much any capacity compared to any other game on the list.
By default the game is RTWP, but a very competent mod provides the option to go turn-based - a much better fit for this game.
The setting is Golarion.
I really do not like Golarion but both these games are very good. Wrath is probably the best CRPG I've played.

Another thing I'll build on is the NWN persistent worlds. Some of them are quite fine, World of Greyhawk in particular is a very old school dungeon crawl kind of PW. Wasn't uncommon for me to keep a bag of holding full of magic items that gave various immunities just in case I bumped into str drain critters or basiliks. It's much harder if you don't have a buddy or group, though. But there are builds that you can use to solo most if not all of the content.

[Anthrowhale]

I enjoyed the Aielund Saga in the NWN community modules (https://neverwintervault.org/article/reference/neverwinter-nights-hall-fame).

[pabelfly]

I'll have a look at Low Magic Age, I love how many feats it has. The lack of feats to properly customize characters is really annoying me in NWN2.

So I spent a bit of time playing around with this, so a few notes for anyone interested since it's a fairly new game:

- You've got the default 3.5 ruleset and you've got some homebrew changes that are readily noted. It's pretty easy to go straight to 3.5 rules.
- Graphics are simple, 2D sprites for characters and an overworld, but the graphics are fairly clean. In the context of being a cheap indie game, I like it but it's nothing special.
- It's got the base core classes and two prestige classes. Pretty decent variety of races though, including races with level adjustments and racial hit dice like Aasimar, Ogre, Bugbear, and Drow.
- You build some level 1 characters or use the pregens, and can recruit more to have up to six people at once. You'll probably want a rogue in your party to delve dungeons and pick traps, etc.
- Difficulty includes permadeath modes, if you're into that sort of thing. If you're not, resurrecting characters is fairly cheap at low level.
- Most of the feats available are from 3.5 but there are a few slight alterations from what I can see, like a Weapon Focus for two-handed weapons, separate to regular Weapon Focus. I initially thought it had a lot of feats but on closer inspection a lot of stuff (including what I consider standard, non-core stuff) is missing. Maybe it's not visible until you meet certain conditions (like being at a certain level, or have levels in a certain class). I'm sure more will be added in as they do more classes, including non-core stuff.
- It's very combat-oriented right now. A lot of non-combat skills don't work yet.
- Level cap is level 40.
- First mode is an arena mode. Seems like you fight against various mobs and gain exp and levels and buy new gear. I didn't explore this too much, since I was playing Adventure Mode
- Adventure mode is a fairly generic exploration with optional timed quests (didn't find out about the timer until I failed the quest but not a big deal) with no storyline I've seen (so far). You reach certain places and can choose to engage with random encounters but they seem to be levelled to your level. There's also a minigame exploring dungeons which is alright.
- Right now, it's about $8 Australian, so probably in the vicinity of $5 USD. Not a bad price IMO, I'll be playing more.

I can answer more questions if people have them.

[Buufreak]

No mention yet of KotOR and the sequel? I'm both shocked and upset. Their fame should speak for itself on how good they are and how well implemented the system is, but a quick summary is your standard 1 to 20 adventure, but add space wizards and laser swords.

[Zombimode]

Low Magic Age

Huh, this one went complete under my radar. Not the game itself - I have clicked on it on GoG more then once - but the fact that it is an D&D 3.5 game. Thanks for pointing it out :smallsmile:


No mention yet of KotOR and the sequel? I'm both shocked and upset. Their fame should speak for itself on how good they are and how well implemented the system is, but a quick summary is your standard 1 to 20 adventure, but add space wizards and laser swords.

Hm, you're not wrong. But isn't there a d20 Star Wars game? Maybe thats why KotOR is not being seen as "D&D" because it is linked to another (albeit d20) game system.

[loky1109]

Demon Stone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgotten_Realms:_Demon_Stone)? It isn't pretty 3E rules accurate, but still some D&D based.

[Zombimode]

I don't think it qualifies. It's a Forgotten Realms game, but the game mechanics have nothing to do with D&D.

[Feantar]

One official campaign you missed: Mysteries of Westgate. Which was quite fun, actually - it's a mid-level adventure, and not particularly long, which puts it in a different space than the others. It's not on the level of Hordes or Mask, but it's definitely worth playing if you're looking for more NWN content.

I had completely forgotten about that one; it wasn't part of the original NWN 2 (it was a premium module I think? Or did nwn 2 not have those?). Yes, Mysteries is pretty good - interesting plot, nice atmosphere. It just ends rather abruptly (feels too short).

[MultitudeMan]

So, all 3.0/3.5 games to my knowledge:
The Temple of Elemental Evil - 3.5, turn-based and a very close implementation of the rules - the only major deviation is that the game does not use squares. It is one of the closest thing to playing 3.5 on a computer :-) That said, that actual 3.5 content is rather limited: just the PHB races, base classes, feats and spells - no PRCs. That makes it a very precise but basic 3.5 implementation. And of course like all games on the list it is strictly 2D (no talking about the graphics). The campaign is a dungeon crawler - very moody. The original release stands on a very shaky technical foundation. The Circle of Eight mod does a TON to fix bugs and stability issues. Personally I have not played it without the Co8 mod, but my experiences with the mod have been very positive. Setting is, for a change, Greyhawk.


To add to this, there is also a mod called Temple Plus (compatible with Circle of Eight mod) which adds lots of features; races like Tiefling and Troll, base classes like Scout and Beguiler, PrCs like Eldritch Knight and Dwarven Defender, feats, spells, and also lots of bugfixes. I've had good fun with it.

[AsteriX97]

There's also a PSP game called D&D: Tactics, it's a fun game to play the first time, but it does have a lot of flaws.

Mainly, ruling changes, like being able to sneak attack, critical hit creatures immune to those things like undead and constructs, being able to flank beholders, etc.

There are no prestige classes, and there is no multi-classing option. The level cap is 20 and is reached before the end fairly quickly. There are plenty of level 1-9 spells, so it can be fun to play as a spellcaster, no matter arcane or divine.

The only atrocious thing about this game is that in exploration (out-of-combat) mode, you have to manually select each of your 6 party members and move them one by one. While there is an option of making the animations faster, it gets tedious quite fast, but overall, I'd still recommend it to anyone looking for a 3.5 turn-based game to play through at least once.

[KillianHawkeye]

Kingmaker is, in my view, also very clearly the best game in pretty much any capacity compared to any other game on the list.
By default the game is RTWP, but a very competent mod provides the option to go turn-based - a much better fit for this game.
The setting is Golarion.

Kingmaker had a turn-based mode added in one of the updates, no need for a mod anymore.

[Drelua]

As others have said, NWN is great. I don't even know how many hours I've spent on that, probably hundreds. Weapon Master's my favourite class, having a crit range of like 11-20/x3 never gets old. NWN2 is good but buggy, I never got very far in the main quest but MotB was a lot of fun.

The Pathfinder games are good implementations of the ruleset, but I quit Kingmaker because of the horrible writing and AI. I couldn't get a treasurer because before like level 10 there's only 2 NPCs that can do it, I missed one and the other was too evil for me to worry about how hard it was to save his life. He's a wizard and he kept casting ranged spells while surrounded by trolls, and of course getting splattered. So I got way behind on kingdom events, and would have had to go really far back to fix that.

WotR seemed better. It was buggy when I played it, but it had just come out. I've been meaning to get back to it, hopefully it's fixed. There was a lot of frustrating stuff, like slow dropping my animal companions speed from 70 to 15, and the mass combat feeling like a badly made mid-90s RTS. I think there's a mod to make you auto-win those that I'll definitely be downloading.

[Thurbane]

Temple of Elemental Evil is amaaaazing. Be sure to get the Circle of Eight mod!

Agreed, not only my fave D&D based game, but quite possibly my favorite game ever.

Be aware, it is quite glitchy but, IMHO, still worth it.

[Luccan]

NWN 1 and 2 are good fun, though some of the campaigns are a bit cliche and they're early to mid 00's fantasy games so the voice acting is hit and miss. If you can find active servers (I haven't played in several years) those can be a lot of fun regardless of the base game. Also, the last time I played 2 I couldn't progress past the prologue, the game just broke after recovering the first shard and nothing would let me continue, including new files and reinstalling

Ice Wind Dale 2 suffers from not really playing like 3.0 even given the limits of computers vs the real game. Like, IIRC, the numbers of spells classes know are off entirely. Does have the advantage of being an actual party-based game.

Haven't played the others

[RNightstalker]

No mention yet of KotOR and the sequel? I'm both shocked and upset. Their fame should speak for itself on how good they are and how well implemented the system is, but a quick summary is your standard 1 to 20 adventure, but add space wizards and laser swords.

I'm actually doing another run through on this game lol. Yes! KotOR is based on D&D 3.x. Also one I haven't seen mentioned yet is Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II.

[loky1109]

I'm actually doing another run through on this game lol. Yes! KotOR is based on D&D 3.x. Also one I haven't seen mentioned yet is Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II.
Both BG and BG2 are based on the second edition.

[Thane of Fife]

One I didn't see mentioned was the GBA version of Eye of the Beholder. It's Gold Box style (first person exploration, isometric combat) and my impression was always that it was a decent implementation of the 3e rules, albeit trimmed way back. Only four classes, for example, and capped at level 7.

There must have been some differences, though. I seem to recall 5-foot steps working strangely, and there was a bug where negative dexterity could loop, leaving a character with an extremely high score, which wouldn't have mattered the same way if armor limits on dexterity were imposed.

[Luccan]

One I didn't see mentioned was the GBA version of Eye of the Beholder. It's Gold Box style (first person exploration, isometric combat) and my impression was always that it was a decent implementation of the 3e rules, albeit trimmed way back. Only four classes, for example, and capped at level 7.

There must have been some differences, though. I seem to recall 5-foot steps working strangely, and there was a bug where negative dexterity could loop, leaving a character with an extremely high score, which wouldn't have mattered the same way if armor limits on dexterity were imposed.

Oh I did play that one briefly, but I found it confusing. The map kept flipping around every time I left a battle, it seemed

[Thane of Fife]

Oh I did play that one briefly, but I found it confusing. The map kept flipping around every time I left a battle, it seemed

I don't think the map flips when you fight, but you might be remembering the rest mechanic, where, as I recall, when you rest, you had to make an intuit direction check (maybe) or else it would randomly reorient your map.

[RNightstalker]

Both BG and BG2 are based on the second edition.

You're right, I was thinking of Dark Alliance for the PS2.

[QuadraticGish]

I enjoyed the Aielund Saga in the NWN community modules (https://neverwintervault.org/article/reference/neverwinter-nights-hall-fame).
Would recommend many times over, it's a fantastic module and I had a blast going in with me and two of my buddies.

Knights of the Chalice 2 is fun, but you really do need to play it as if you're playing a practically optimized party. It's absolutely brutal and having even a single additional full caster is a massive difference. The beatsticks should pretty much be regarded to clean up duty simply due to casters being able to cast multiple spells per round later on and then typically outnumbering you on top of it all. I think some rendition of the initiator/martial adept classes can help a bit, but they end up feeling like a liability a lot.

[Saintheart]

Both BG and BG2 are based on the second edition.

And notwithstanding that, they are still really, really good games and well worth a look for the experience and the voice acting. If you don't come out of them randomly quoting Minsc then something went very wrong. :) Let's leave aside the big bad is voiced by David Warner (RIP) who brought presence to every role he had.

[redking]

I can definitely recommend NWN2 and NWN1. I preference is for NWN2 but there is more content for NWN1. That said - get both! They are regularly on a certain website that offers old games that are good, often 85% - 90% off. In exchange of this pittance, you get hundreds of hours of D&D gaming.

[martixy]

Another vote in favor of KotOR.

Both are amazing in entirely different ways. Not to mention absurdly moddable. The r/kotor subreddit has a curated list of mods called "modbuilds".

And even tho the Infinity Engine games are AD&D, it's still D&D, and will still teach you many of the same fundamental concepts.