Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide

"Worth the thirty dollars by far."

New stuff that matters:
--5 new classes but 4 are good.(Harper Scout is worthless)
The arcane archer seems to be my favorite of the five. The most viable with assassin being in second. The assassin is good but is a lazy out I think. It's basically a rogue with paralyze effect. The shadowdancer has its ups but I don't think it's very viable. The blackguard is very viable but the downside is you have to be evil. The harper scout is worthless, not sure why they added it. Filler?

--New campaign with a much higher difficulty. I've been working on it with my friend for about 8 hours combined and we're only 2/3rds done with the first chapter(i think). The dungeons actually make you think and it makes it alot more fun. Not the regular hack and slash all the time.

--New effects that add to the fun factor. When you walk by things it will tell you things your character feels.

--New monsters. The gnolls are a cool new basic race. Kobolds are a lazy way to add new monsters. They're goblins but they're blue basically. Aside from those two races the rest of the monsters are pretty unique.

--New henchmen and interactivity with your henchmen. You can now heal your henchmen after they die. They lay on the ground with 1 hp and you can heal them. After so many they die and you have to go get them at town.

--A load of new feats and spells and a few new skills. The downside to all the new feats is it makes picking feats alot harder. Too many to choose from. Alot of the new spells are useless but then again alot of the old ones were too. The new Bigby's spells stand out as being the best new spells.

Things that could have been added:
--Longer campaign. Only 2 chapters long + an Interlude. Downloaded modules just don't seem fun to me so the campaign is basically all there is to play.

--Better graphics. The graphics aren't BAD but they certainly aren't good either.

--More new weapon types and armor types.

New death system. It's both a good thing and a bad thing. When you die to respawn you need a Focus crystal..making death more punishing. Good because it makes every battle more crucial and bad because if you die it sucks. Also you cant just town recall whenever you want anymore. It eats up focus crystals which makes going to town tedius but adds fun because I found myself using town recall in the old neverwinter to get out of situations safely ALOT, so it makes the game more difficult.

Overall it's a good expansion and worth the money. Make sure you start as level 1 again if you do the campaign.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/22/03, Updated 06/22/03