"Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition" Review

Some gaming classics are best left to memory.

"Neverwinter Nights," which laid the building blocks in 2002 that inspired countless games to follow, seems like one of the remakes that might have been best left as it was.

A sluggish and often jittery game that struggles to find its flow, "Neverwinter Nights" is saddled with several of the drawbacks of turn-of-the-century gaming, with too few quality-of-life improvements to make it accessible to all but the most dedicated and patient fans.

For those who want to relive one of gaming's seminal achievements, though, there is much here to enjoy. The Dungeons & Dragons"-based gameplay is sprawling and robust, with 10 separate missions challenging your skills as various characters in an array of elaborate scenarios.

The menu system remains largely unchanged from the PC games, which makes for an awkward and cumbersome fit on the Switch. Text size is less than optimal as well. You sometimes feel as though you're playing the game through a blurry pair of glasses.

The area in which "Neverwinter Nights" holds up best is storytelling. The dev team was clearly stacked with talented writers who were steeped in the legend and lore of the source material. The groundwork that eventually led to the likes of "Dragon Age" sometimes shifts into promising, if fleeting, focus, only to slip away like a miscast spell.

Publisher provided review code.