"Shadows of Undrentide" adds some minor improvements to the core game, and provides a quality single player campaign.
User Rating: 7.7 | Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide PC
It is clear when playing "Shadows of Undrentide" that Bioware listened to the criticisms of the core game, "Neverwinter Nights". The faults of that game have not been eliminated, but they have at least been addressed, and the results are satisfying. This expansion pack then provides a pretty good single player campaign that takes about 30 hours to finish. One of the major improvements is in your interactions with the henchmen. The henchmen have more personality and more depth than they had in the core game, and you can also adjust their inventory. You can even request them to cast spells, although this ability isn't all that useful. These changes provide some tactics and depth to the game that was lacking in the original campaign. The downside is that there are only three different henchmen who can join you in this game, and you can still only take one. Thus, the expansion pack retains some of the balance issues of the core game. You also can't micro-manage your henchmen in combat or select their spells. Combat still tends to be oversimplified and repetitive. The Nevewinter Nights series was a big failure in this area. The first half of "Shadows" has a lot of opportunities for role-playing (something else that was lacking in the original game). This part of the game is somewhat nonlinear, and takes a long time to get through. The second half of the game is a bit more of a dungeon crawl, and it's not quite as satisfying. However, the dungeon design is very unique and interesting, so it manages to avoid some of the monotony of Neverwinter Nights. "Shadows of Undrentide" fails to be outstanding, because it fails to completely correct the problems with the core game. Instead, it makes some minor upgrades. The story is somewhat ordinary, but the grand enemy boss in the game is interesting, and you will accomplish some interesting tasks to win the game. "Shadows of Undrentide" isn't extraordinary, but it's worth playing if you enjoyed Neverwinter Nights or wished that it had beena bit better.
