Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark

"Neverwinter Nights goes into the Underdark and emerges as an Epic title!"

As the second expansion pack to the successful Neverwinter Nights franchise BioWare decided to take over from Floodgate Games (the ones mainly responsible for Shadows of Undrentide) and to instill their own special brand of epic gaming into this one. A truly excellent single player adventure is found in this gem of an expansion which adds more than SoU did. Unfortunately the Official Campaign it includes has a lot of problems working in multiplayer, so expect to mainly have a solo go at this campaign. As usual though, you still have access to all the many multiplayer and single player modules available in various websites for your enjoyment, modules that can now add some interesting new official features that this XP includes.

Graphics: 7

Well, this is an expansion pack to a title that's been out for almost 2 years and that also spent a lot of time under development. NWN's graphics were not exactly groundbreaking when it released (though I still really like their artistic value), and don't expect to be blown away by the looks of this expansion. Now the new tilesets do look pretty good, and BioWare also added a new skybox to them so if you have your camera unlocked (they also added new camera functions if you don't have it unlocked btw) the overground areas look better now that they have a sky on them. Of course, if the area did not have the skybox enabled to begin with (as most modules will be until they get updated to HotU), you won't see it even if you turn this feature on.

It should be noted that character animations got reworked. Combat animations are the same and they still look great, but the new walking and running ones will take some getting used to. I haven't made up my mind whether I prefer them or not yet, but many fans have voiced that they hate them in the official forums. Overall, graphics do their job well, but don't expect to be blown away by them. They also added new character portraits and head models and the option to take an existing character and modify it to take advantage of these additions. The new character models do sport more polys than the old ones (and they look much better as well overall) so it taxes the PC a bit more than the game did in either its original incarnation or in Shadows of Undrentide.

Sound: 9

New tilesets mean new music scores for them, and they are excellent! Unfortunately the title music got changed. It's a great sounding theme, but I preferred the old one. The new voice sets are mostly ho-hum, though the maiden one sounds pretty neat. NPC voice-overs are great for the most part, though some old familiar henchmen got their voice talents changed which may annoy some.

Official Campaign: 9

Like I wrote earlier, the official campaign of this title is mainly geared for a single player. There are numerous workarounds to problems you'll experience if you play it with multiple players posted in various forums, and there are builders working to mod it to make it more MP friendly. With that out of the way...

...This new official campaign is excellent. Many of you may have negative memories of NWN's original OC. It was somewhat shallow. Fun, but definitely not up to previous BioWare material. SoU's OC was much better, adding more role-playing opportunities and being what I'd call a short but sweet campaign. HotU's campaign blows both out of the water! The first chapter starts fairly slow and it's extremely heavy on the hack and slash, and I'll admit I was quite disappointed at first because of it. However, the story immediately picks up in the second chapter and by the end of the game you realize you've played an expansion that pretty much lives up to what you expect from BioWare on a full game. Obviously it's not as long, but there is very good stuff in this expansion.

You start off in Waterdeep, having escaped from the shadow plane you find yourself in at the end of SoU. Deekin published a book about your adventures so your character has a fair bit of notoriety. It so happens that there are all sorts of evil things coming out of a hole in the ground known as Undermountain so you go down to investigate what could be going on. As the title says, you eventually run into a plot by vile Underdark beings and you are thrust into a conflict that will rend Faerun should you fail. The stakes are high, and the surprises start piling up pretty fast. You'll investigate Undermountain of course, a Mind Flayer community, golems with their own free will, beholder caves, and even some places mortals cannot thread at all. Very good stuff. NPC's are also a lot more interesting this time around, offering many comments and with a lot of interjecting conversations not unlike Baldur's Gate II (by the way, you can also have 2 henchmen this time around). There's also a well scripted romance for either male or female characters (though male characters seem to have more choices on this - haven't quite fully confirmed this yet). Anyway, I dare not say more else I'll end up spoiling many things.

Additions: 8

Well, there's lots of interesting new features in this XP. There's of course, access to ''Epic'' levels through 40 (the OC will take you about to 25), which means a slew of new epic feats along the other additions. Be warned that the new epic levels seem to favor melee classes a lot more than magic using ones though.

You can also customize your armor and weapons via the crafting skills. These skills also allow you to make weapons and armor, but it is limited to standard, not magical equipment. You can enchant them though. They also finally added robes to the game, though more of them would have been nice (there's a casual -monk robe-, a formal -noble robe-, sleeveless wizard, and wizard's robe). No official cloaks though. You can also add or remove robes from anything so if you have a cleric with a heavy armor and would like him/her to wear a robe instead simply add a robe to the armor and voila. Same stats, just looks like a robe. I like it. They also added whips as an exotic weapon, though they do not have a long reach (disappointing).

They added a bunch of new prestige classes, though even if there are some added which are known as perfect PrC's for magic using classes in PnP they just don't work out that way in NWN. It is a sad limitation of the game engine that levels in the Pale Master or Red Dragon Disciple class do not add up to the DC of arcane spells as they should. The Weapon Master is pretty much the one that will let a lot of players have their Kensai again (a kit found in BGII that many wanted in NWN), and the Champion of Torm is sure to please many fighters lookin for a PrC to take up. Dwarf fighter players will definitely want to try the Dwarven Defender fun! Players who chose Harper Scout in SoU (did anyone do that?) are still shafted, with that class stuck at only 5 levels. Can't go higher. Implementing it is just too much of a pain within the NWN engine, quite sadly. For those who like the shape shifting powers of the druids, the Shifter will surely put a smile on your faces. This is one impressive PrC addition.

The new tilesets (5 of them) look pretty nice for the most part. None of them strike me as a simple retouch of an old tileset like the winter one in SoU did (which was simply a retouched rural tileset). They also added some new scripting features, though that's not one area that I'm particularly good with so I can't comment on them.

Conclusion: 8

Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark is pretty much the game that NWN had been wanting to be since its release! All the new additions are very well done, and I can't stress enough how enjoyable the OC is! Expect to get your money's worth and then some from this expansion. The only reason I didn't score this a 9 is that the new epic levels do not seem to work very well with many classes, and as good as all the new feats are they still seemed to miss many that should have been no-brainers (such as Combat Archery - it's quite a disadvantage to Arcane Archers that they must suffer through Attacks of Opportunity when they use their best weapon, their bow).

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/12/03