System Requirements:
Requires the original Neverwinter Nights to play
cpu: Pentium II 450 MHz or AMD K6 450 MHz
os: Windows 95/98/ME/2000SP2/XP
ram: 96 MB RAM
directx: 8.1
video: 16 MB TNT2-class OpenGL 1.2 compliant
sound: DirectX certified
modem: 56k
lan: IPX or TCP/IP via LAN or Internet for multiplayer
Genre:
RPG
Developer:
Bioware
Publisher:
Infogrames
Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide
A Labor of Love
Releasing an expansion pack for a game as all encompassing as Neverwinter Nights (NWN) may seem like a bit of over-kill, especially when you consider the huge amount of fan-created content. The same concerns, however, were voiced concerning the two expansion packs for Morrowind, and upon their release the detractors were forced to rescind their complaints. In this same manner, Shadows of Undrentide (SoU) rises above its critics. It not only is an interesting module to play, but it proves itself to be a labor of love by highly skilled designers. I do have a couple complaints, as I will detail later, but overall I found the $30 I invested in the expansion as money well spent.
Captivating from the Beginning
The story starts with you enrolled in a school for adventurers. The opening scene finds you in your dorm room, standing in front of your storage locker. The storage locker contains all of your worldly possessions including a journal and a low-level magic item, tailor made for the class of character you selected. The journal does a fine job of filling you in on the back-story to the adventure. The magic item is a unique keepsake received as a gift from Drogan, the instructor of this school. You may activate it once per day, but it doesn’t specifically list it’s benefits, like other magic items, instead you must read the item’s history to deduce its effects. I liked this little touch of personalization.
Congregating in the hallway outside your room, are the other students of the school. Two of which offer their services as henchmen. Rather than play it safe and create typical class/race pairings for the henchmen, the developers chose to instead create interesting characters. Dorna Trapspringer is a Dwarven Rogue Cleric (aren’t they all) and Xanos Messarmos is a Half-Orc Barbarian Sorcerer. Both of them have an interesting story to tell, and similar to the original NWN, each will only tell you so much at a time.
One frequently heard complaint about the single player campaign in the original NWN, was that it took too long to get exciting. Floodgate Entertainment, the developers of SoU, were obviously paying attention, for after a brief and humorous conversation with your fellow alumni, you are thrown directly into the action. I don’t want to spoil any of the storyline, but wait till you see the beautifully choreographed in-engine cut scene that precedes this battle. It is excellent.
Similarities and Differences
There are quite a number of differences between SoU and NWN. One of the first ones, you might encounter is the replacement for the Stone of Recall (SoR). In the original, Aribeth gave the SoR to your character and activating it would instantly teleport you and your companions to the nearest temple. In SoU, you are given Mystra’s Ring, which differs from its counterpart in three distinct aspects. While it does transport you and your companions to your benefactor’s presence, it also consumes one Focus Crystal in the process. I didn’t find this to be a major issue, as it is quite simple to procure more Focus Crystals. The second deviation, depending on your style of play, may either not even be noticeable or may be a considerable annoyance, because IT DOES NOT WORK IN COMBAT. Either way, you are forewarned to SAVE OFTEN. The final major difference between Mystra’s Ring and the SoR, is that the ring does not function after the first chapter.
We come now to one of my few gripes with the game. The walk between where Mystra’s Ring teleports you to and the closest store is considerable. Playing as a character with a low strength score, as I did in choosing a Wizard for my first time through, made getting encumbered a very very frustrating experience. To be fair, you do encounter another merchant later in chapter one that is a little better positioned, but only by a little. This wouldn’t have been such as big an issue, if the developers would have included at least one Bag of Holding. The other magic bags, those that reduce the weight of their contents by 20, 40, 60 and 80 percent did make an appearance.
Attention to Detail
Either the members of the development team are fans of Druids and Rangers, or at least they wanted to make sure no skills were left behind, because there is a plethora of opportunities to use the Animal Empathy skill. In chapter one alone, there are at least two quests that you can only get if you have Animal Empathy. Both of them are rather small, but it’s details like these that separate the average modules from the spectacular ones. In fact, attention to detail is what has impressed me most with SoU. For example, if you leave the door to the school wide open, one of the students will comment on how drafty it is and proceed to close it. Another example of attention to detail involves how many of the encounters can be handled without bloodshed. Oftentimes, when you choose a bloodless solution, you will find you have allies at a later encounter or are able to converse with someone who otherwise would have been hostile.
My Gripes
I did find one bug in the game. I can’t give too many details for fear of spoiling the plot, but in the final chapter you have to visit three areas to collect three similar items. In my first game, I was not able to collect one of the items because a randomly placed key apparently didn’t get placed. After a frustrating night with no progress, I finally decided to save my character and restart the chapter. Every time I have played that area since, the key was found without a problem so this may just be an IFC (Idiot in Front of Computer) error.
My final two gripes with this game are centered on the concluding chapter. I found the final battle to be way to easy for a wizard. I literally won it with four area-effect spells while hiding behind a pillar. Dasrina Montebrillar didn’t take even one point of damage in the battle. Maybe it was kind of cheap of me to conceal myself the way I did but isn’t that what makes the difference between a live mage and a floor stain? Normally a mage would hide behind the tanks, but because of the way the final chapter is handled I didn’t have a henchman with me. If you don’t bring a henchman with you when you leave the interlude, you won’t have one for the rest of the game. I survived, but there are a couple of areas where I could have sure used one.
Partial List of Features
That is enough talk about the negative, however, as there is still too much left to praise:
Concluding thought
I could go on for quite a bit longer, but in conclusion, I have much more good to day about Neverwinter Night’s first expansion than bad. From the choreography of the cut-scenes to the design of the puzzles to the attention to detail to the extensive amount of additional content for designers, Shadows of Undrentide is in my opinion, a complete success.