User Rating: 8.7 | Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide PC
This review may contain minor spoilers. On the whole, I liked the SoU Campaign better than the original OC. However, there were never any parts of the plot that held me thoroughly enraptured like Charwood or the Snowglobe in the OC. Thankfully nothing was as long and tedious as Chapter 2 of the OC. And now a Chapter by Chapter breakdown of my thoughts: Chapter 1: This, I felt, was by far the best chapter out of the entire SoU campaign. There are plenty of role playing options to explore, the pacing of character progression is quick, and the path you can take through the chapter is mostly non-linear. There are enough side quests to do, each with multiple solutions. Especially nice are the extra roleplaying options and placeables for the Rangers and Druids among us. A very nice touch considering Chapter 1 takes place mostly among the snowy wilderness. Interlude: Also an excellent chapter, but unfortunately it is entirely linear. You proceed from area to area in sequence, solving one problem (one "dungeon" per area). The quests are all entertaining, but consist exactly of "Oh no, we've hit a problem. We need you to fix it before we can move on." Chapter 2: Thankfully, this chapter is not quite as linear as the Interlude and will take you to many interesting places in one of it's subquests. The "main quest" of the chapter had a pretty ingeneous solution. My only complaint is about the final area leading up to the last boss. It is filled with hoardes of weak enemies that make you just want to roll your eyes as you see yet another gaggle of 10 wisps come floating towards you. They aren't incredibly dangerous and only serve to slow you down. The final boss battle was a little bit of a let down, I only had to retry it one time. It consists again of figuring out how to make an "invincible" creature vulnerable, but it's not so hard to figure out. Overall: Chapter 1 is easily the best of the three. I'm not quite sure why the Interlude is not just called "Chapter 2" and the final one "Chapter 3" as there is much that goes on in the Interlude. The difficulty ramps up quite unevenly in middle to end of the Interlude and the beginning of Chapter 2 as better equipment is nearly always too expensive to buy and you usually have to go through a few miniquests to get better stuff out in the field. Quite a good campaign overall. There are many interesting characters to meet. I especially liked the desert Druid in the Interlude, Tymofarrar, and, of course, Deekin! Everyone will want to take Deekin with them on their first time through. Deekin ranks right up there with Minsc as one of *THE BEST* NPCs Bioware has created to journey with you in their games (with best being most "interesting" to travel with). As a final note, I played through with an Elven ranger with a wolf as my animal companion and Deekin as my henchman (Dorna before I got Deekin). I ended up Level 12. Quick breakdown: Gameplay: 8/10 -- On the whole better than the orignal OC. The Interlude is very linear, but you are doing mostly interesting quests. Lots of roleplaying opportunities. Graphics: 9/10 -- New spell effects and critters are nice. New tilesets look great. Outstanding texture work. Sound: 7/10 -- A lot of sound bugs in this. Excellent voice acting the whole time. New music is just as good as the music from the original, I just wish there were more of it. Value: 10/10 -- For $30, you get 5 prestige classes, a handful of new skills, over 50+ spells, a 20+ hour campaign, the ability to modify your henchman's inventory, tons of new scripting abilities in the toolset (including commands to do some fancy camera work). I daresay, it doesn't get much better than this. Reviewer's Tilt: 9/10 -- Is it a must-buy for NWN owners? I would say almost certainly. If you didn't like NWN at all, you won't find much in SoU to change your mind. If it was only NWN's OC that turned you off, you will find the SoU campaign to have a tighter focus and better things to do than search 1000+ random barrels. If you are a builder, there's the new camera scripting abilities and projectile traps. Overall: 8.7/10 Recommended?: Yes! For the new skills and Prestige Classes alone it's almost worth it. Add in the excellent campaign and you've got a winner.
