So I'm looking at GOG's summer sale, and I want to get one of these. I'm just curious as to what you guys think is the better one. I've only created a character in the 2nd so I can't really go based on that, so I'm asking you guys. Which Neverwinter game do you prefer?

I think the first expansion for NWN2 is widely regarded as the best out of all the NWN campaigns. I've barely even played the first game myself.

I definately likes NWN1 more than the second. Everythign seemed alot smoother and just felt more polished. I couldn't even get into the story in two.

NWN wasn't bad as a beginning; looking for the Waterdhavian creatures got a little drawn out though. The rest of the game wasn't too bad. Shadows of Undrentide again wasn't bad, although it was annoying to start a new character. You take that new character into Hordes though, and it allows for a nice character build. And there are tons of player made content that lets you keep playing for as long as you might be interested.

NWN2 had its own issues, but was generally enjoyable, imo. I hated the ending, however. I don't know whether they ran out of time, or what, but the ending was, at the least, abrupt and disjointed, and the voice over must have been a random intern or something. Masque of the Betrayer helped redeem that a little, but they added the spirit meter that quickly grew annoying. There are good player made mods for this one as well.

I was able to carry on with the same character from start to finish through all of the expansions. You certain you didn't do anything wrong?

As for the OP I'd definitely just give NWN1 a try as the first game, and as a very decent and fun game. Never played NWN2 but I intend to since I enjoyed the first game so much.

Well, you could import any character you wanted, but technically Shadows of Undertide and Hordes of the Underdark went together, whereas the original NWN was more of a stand-alone. There were several references to the OC in HotU, including a surprise guest appearance by one of the main characters of the OC, but other then that, they weren't meant to be a continuation, they were just using the same system as NWN, and/or building on it, so they called them "expansions", to help them sell better, instead of risking pushing them out as their own game and expansion(SoU would have been the OC and HotU would have been the xpac).

To answer the OP's question, I'd say the original. I had trouble getting into NWN2, though that's because it took Obsidian forever to patch the game to a playable state, and by the time they did, my fire for the game had dwindled to virtually nothing(On release, NWN2 was unplayable for MANY people, including myself. If you had pre-ordered, the pre-order copies were often inflicted with a black screen of death, that didn't get fixed until like 1.03). It took until 1.13 for the game to actually be playable, and it wasn't until near the final few patches that the game was mostly bug free. I've yet to play through the expansions, despite having both of them. On the other hand, I've played through NWN and both of it's "expansions" a multitude of times, I've also joined a persistent world(World of Caenyr) and was a part of that for several months, and I've downloaded multiple player campaigns and gone through them.

Honestly, to show exactly how much I loved NWN, and how dedicated I am, I can tell you this: I've lent out 3 full copies of NWN(including both expansions, and the King Makers module), and didn't get it back any of those 3 times, yet I've happily re-bought the game in Platinum version every single time. I also, just because I wanted it, rebought the original boxes and manuals, just so I had them. NWN was the bomb!

I prefer the story in NWN1, but prefered the gameplay in NWN2 (except the camera, 80% of the game is spent wrestling with it).

Out of every expansion, adventure pack or addon however, I loved Mask of the Betrayer the most. Absolutely brilliant.

Going by included campaigns NWN2 is a bit better. The OC in NWN1 is thoroughly mediocre, although SoU and HotU are decent enough. In NWN2 the OC is also not particularly good (although better than the NWN1 OC), while the Mask of the Betrayer expansion is excellent; Storm of Zehir is a bit of a different experience than the rest of the campaigns- I personlly liked it quite a bit, but it's a bit hit or miss depending on each person's preferences. All of that said, I'd actually recommend NWN1, due to the large number of excellent community made modules (I'll put in a plug here for The Prophet series, Tales of Arterra, and the Aielund Saga)- there are hundreds of hours worth of excellent content that surpasses the included campaigns. The modding community for NWN2 never really took off like that for NWN1, so there's a pretty limited set of content available once you finish with the included NWN2 campaigns.

No, I know you could use the same character through all three. It just seemed off to me; my ranger was decent level with really good equipment by the end of NWN; starting Shadows in a school for adventurers, learning how to be a hero didn't fit the experienced character I had. So I started a new one, and carried her through Hordes.