by Peter Cohen, Macworld.com  

Aspyr Media on Tuesday announced plans to ship its long-awaited Mac conversion of the role-playing adventure game Neverwinter Nights 2 on the week of February 26th, 2008. It costs $49.99.

Neverwinter Nights 2 is set in the world of the Forgotten Realms, a Dungeons & Dragons setting, and the game utilizes Dungeons & Dragons revised third edition rules to create an authentic role-playing game experience.

As with a traditional pen-and-paper role playing game, in Neverwinter Nights 2, you create a character that goes from peasant to hero, as you choose your character's alignment, skills, profession and more. You also determine who your character will ally with, how the party will develop and more.

Neverwinter Nights 2 is the sequel to an original game made by Bioware (later published for the Mac by MacSoft). Neverwinter Nights 2 was originally created by Obsidian Entertainment, a game developer spun off of Black Isle Studios, which collaborated with Bioware to create to "Baldur's Gate" series, which made an appearance on the Mac via MacPlay. Atari, Neverwinter Night 2's PC publisher, licensed the game's Mac publishing rights to Aspyr Media. The Mac version was developed by Aspyr Studios, Aspyr's internal game development team.

Unfortunately, like the original Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2's Macintosh version does not include the toolset for users to create their own adventure "modules." This toolset, called Electron, is included with the Windows version of the game. The Mac version can use player-created modules, however.

System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.4.11 or 10.5.1 or later, Intel-based Mac running at 2.0GHz or faster, 1GB RAM, 6.5GB hard disk space, ATI Radeon X1600 or Nvidia GeForce 7600 or better with at least 128MB VRAM and DVD drive.