A massive MMORPG, Neverwinter is set in and around the the titular city, from the “Forgotten Realms” Dungeons & Dragons setting. Fight monsters, foil evil plots and visit strange locations in this free-to-play offering.

Good: Neverwinter boasts a huge amount of content, and it’s all free. Unlike many f2p games, weapons, classes and equipment are not locked behind any paywall, and you should be capable of completing any quest that takes your fancy without spending any real-life money.

Eight classes are available for you to choose from, and each comes with two paragon paths that allow you to further customise your role – i.e. do you want to deal damage, heal or tank. While each class and paragon path has a decent selection of abilities to choose from, you can only have a small number equipped at any given time – two that can be used at will, two passives, three encounter (short cooldown) and two daily (cast using a gauge that fills in combat.) If you’ve ever played Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition, it’s pretty similar.

• Barbarian: Rage and a great-sword are used by this melee warrior to in either damage or tanking.
• Cleric: Divine spells let this class specialise in damage or healing magic.
• Fighter: A sword and shield make this durable melee fighter versatile in a tank or damage role.
• Paladin: Mace and shield guard this divine warrior in close combat as they either tank or heal.
• Ranger: Equipping both a bow and paired blades, this class specialises in damage and crowd-control.
• Rogue: Thrown or thrust daggers let the damage focussed class specialise in ranged or melee combat.
• Warlock: Infernal magic can be spun into deadly curses for damage, or used to drain life for a healing role.
• Wizard: Lock foes in ice and bombard them with fire, lighting or raw magic to fill the damage role.

In all content (except PvP) you can bring along a companion. There’s a massive amount of these to choose from, each of whom as their own special abilities that they’ll use to help you in battle. Picking the right companion is a great way to shore up a weakness in your build – you could bring a healer for tougher solo content, or a damage dealer if you are surviving fine but taking ages to kill anything. There’s even augment companions for people who just don’t enjoy using pets, and these simply add their stats to yours rather than get involved directly. Of course, there’s the roleplaying aspect as well – you might just want a trusty dog, or something more exotic like a demonic hellbeast, lizardman shaman or dwarven berserker.

There’s plenty of celebration events (summer, winter, Halloween, etc) in which mounts, bonus items and equipment can be acquired by playing a couple of minigames – there’s enough options that you’re bound to find something you enjoy. There’s also a constant stream of small weekly events that grant bonus rewards if you do certain activities (like playing in a campaign) – there’s always something going on.

One very nice cosmetic feature that I wish more games would adopt is the ability to “put together” your mount. Every horse, gryphon, yeti, wolf or anything you can ride is added to your options, and you can pick the appearance, special power, stat bonus and speed that you want. So I can take a silly uncommon quality giant chicken mount and grant it the speed of an epic mount if I want!

Mixed: Astral diamonds are the currency used in Neverwinter for the auction-house and some other convenience purchases. They can also be converted into Zen, the premium currency of the game. Now, this mechanic is a good compared to most f2p games, since it will allow you to get premium options if you save up long enough, but it will take a significant amount of time before you have enough to buy anything.

Neverwinter takes a slightly unusual approach to player guilds, since they provide passive abilities that help in combat. The bonuses available depend on your the structures built in your Stronghold, a private map available only to your guild and any allies that has a small questline and frequent random events. While this makes your guild seem a lot more alive than some games, the fact that you are forced to be in one if you want the passive bonuses to combat is a drag.

Crafting is done via a workshop unlocked and upgraded as you level your character. You can assign tasks, gathering materials and producing equipment over time from a stable of randomly recruited artisans. This does require you to visit the location of the workshop though, and can be a bit of a nuisance.

Bad: There are some “pay to win” elements to this game – not surprising, given that it’s free-to-play. Since nearly everything (including your companions and mounts) applies an effect to your combat abilities, simply buying the best options for real money can be tempting (if incredibly expensive) proposition. Furthermore, upgrading the quality of items can become very costly, leaving you looking at “premium” options instead.

In addition, not all races are available for free. This isn’t a huge deal (racial bonuses are fairly lacklustre) but since this is a roleplaying game, not being able to pick the more exotic races by default is a significant negative.

Opinion: There’s a decent amount to recommend this game, but it is not without flaws. It’s reasonably easy to get into, and not hard to put together a character that works… but if you want to top the damage charts, you’ll either have to grind like crazy for astral diamonds or spend real money. In addition there’s always stuff to do, but this can also make the game into a real time-sink, something exacerbated by the “daily” tasks required to complete campaigns.

In terms of gameplay, it’s relatively simple but fun. Don’t expect to have four action-bars worth of abilities, it’s more about making use of the ones you chose. In addition, there’s a wide variety of enemies, along with enough skirmishes, dungeons, PvP matches and trials (big multiplayer missions) to keep anyone occupied. There’s a massive amount of story content as well.

I would suggest trying this if you want a fairly casual MMO based in the Forgotten Realms D&D setting. It can become quite onerous if you are trying to be the absolute best player out there (due to the time requirements and cost) but it’s pretty easy to be “good enough” for pretty much any content in the game.