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Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark Expansion Pack

Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark Expansion Pack

List Price: $19.99
Your Price: $19.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fun even for nongamers
Review: I am not a hardcore gamer. I wouldn't even really call myself a gamer at all -- I'm of the "if my husband's playing it and it looks really fun, I'll give it a try" school.

Well, I've never played D&D in my life, but I am a HUGE Neverwinter Nights fan. I love being able to customize my character's appearance and skills, I love the graphics, I love the adventures and the ability to roleplay my character in many different ways (from goody two-shoes to black-hearted villain).

Having finished the original Neverwinter Nights and the Shadows of Undrentide expansion pack, I started in on Hordes of the Underdark. Without a doubt, it's my favorite so far. The quests are more interesting (some even stumped me, and I had to go to the Bioware site for a little help!). There are new classes, which are fun to play, and there's even a little romance in the game! I have to admit, I thought that was a great element. I don't know how the guys who play this cared for it, but it really added some fun for me.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not quite the same game.
Review: I bought Shadows of Undrentide primarily because it had added many new prestige classes. This sounded cool, along with the new creatures you could summon. There are a few problems, though, that I could not overlook. I enjoyed making items for my characters through DM mode. But now, you immediately are robbed, making this taxing. Even if you create stuff outside of the room, it winds up dissapearing.

Another problem is it's interface. It just feels like a player created mod. It lacks the depth of play that the other games had. Drogan sends you on these boring "Find me this" missions, that just get old soon.

The amount of experience you get from killing creatures also makes it feel like it is not worth it. It levels you up to 15, and then gives you 30 EXP drow elves for you to slaughter. My Level 13 sorcerer/2 arcane archer annihilates the competition with one spell.

To summarize, this is a good game, and continues out the story (while not to the best of NWN's ability), and gets the job done as a D&D sim.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: The weakest Neverwinter title yet
Review: I had far more technical problems with this expansion than with the original or the previous expansion pack (yes, I installed the latest patches). The game locked up several times, my character turned green from enemies and stayed that way, I unintentionally lost my (out of control killing machine) henchmen, my inventory would open to a blank screen about half of the time. While I am a big fan of the original Neverwinter nights, and I really liked the first add on, the technical problems brought on by this expansion were too severe to allow me to characterize it as anything other than uncooked. Perhaps this game was squarly aimed at powergamers that care less for story than I do, but the NPCs seemed far more bland and two dimensional than in the original or previous game (with the notable exception of your henchmen, who don't seem to be able to shut up), the game universe seemed less expansive and more limited than with the previous modules. The game felt like it was rushed to market too fast and that the story was jotted down on the back of a napkin, or made up as they went along (the story felt crafted in the previous games).

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Engaging single player adventure, awesome toolset content
Review: I have to admit, I'm enjoying the new campaign in Hordes of the Underdark more than either of the previous Neverwinter Nights campaigns (the original game or the Shadows of Undrentide expansion). It has a strong "Forgotten Realms" feel to it, and it's great for people who've been wanting a high level adventure with tons of Drow, Ilithids, Beholders, and other denizens of the Underdark. The new prestige classes, spells, feats, etc... are a lot of fun and should definitely add to the re-playability factor. I've personally played through this expansion twice: with a Druid/Shifter and Bard/Dragon Disciple, and I'd certainly consider playing it again.

Also, from a module builder perspective, the new toolset content is quite impressive. To mention just a few things: new tilesets, new magic item abilities, intelligent weapons, improvements and added scripting functions, vastly improved henchman AI... and your characters can now wear robes! These are things that the Neverwinter community has been clamoring for, and it's nice to see the wishes of the players and module creators being addressed. Kudos to Bioware for listening to its customers. This expansion brings Neverwinter Nights to a new level of maturity with regards to the sheer wealth of possibility for fans who design modules.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This is what NWN should have been
Review: I liked the original Neverwinter Nights well enough, but there were a LOT of disappointments considering the amount of hype that surrounded it. I wasn't very impressed by the first expansion either; it was more of the same, only shorter. Hordes of the Underdark, however, gives credence to the saying "Third time's the charm".

This expansion proves that Bioware actually listened to the fans and added a great deal of content that was requested. The new story is fairly typical of fantasy games, but still enjoyable, particularly for the characters. The gameplay is significantly improved by new classes, spells, equipment, and more.

While, in my opinion, the first expansion was forgettable, Hordes of the Underdark will redefine Neverwinter Nights as a much more enjoyable game.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Keeps crashing! Very fun but completely unstable.
Review: I'm about half way through this game and it honestly feels like a 4.5 star game, except it won't stop crashing! I played the original NWN without a problem (skipped SoU) as well as dozens of other games, all with my existing hardware, software and configuration. I'm running all mainstream stuff:

Win2k, Service Pack 4 with all relevant hotfixes (so...5,000).
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro - great card.
AMD 2200+ on an Abit mobo, 512 ram.
Patch 1.62, installed on March 12th 2004.

So basically what happens is the game either locks up during a save and after about 30 seconds crashes to desktop corrupting that save file in the process, or the system reboots. Neither scenario gives any warning and if I play for 3-4 hours then I'm about guarunteed to have at least one of each crash.

So the game is great. Graphics are nice, sound is fine, nothing special. The battles are a lot of fun and I really enjoy watching my dwarven fighter charge a drow cleric amid fire and ice storms. The power given to you is awesome as your guy gets around level 20, and since the game starts off with you generating a character and leveling it up to level 15 you can customize the bejeezus out of it. The game bogs down a little sometimes, which annoys me since I greatly exceed the recommended specs, but that doesn't happen enough for it to be a problem.

Summary:
Buy this game if you liked NWN, it is tons of fun. But either research your PC setup online to see if others are having problems or at least wait until patch 1.62 is no longer the latest. I'm going to think really hard before buying Atari again.

UPDATE: I updated my graphics driver to the latest catalyst driver from ATI (version 4.3 at this time) and the machine reboots seem to have stopped. However the game still locks up about 1 time in 10-20 while saving. I hit ctrl+alt+delete and kill the process after it freezes and I've caught the game using 210MB of memory! The log files it says it is generating are useless, they just describe event within the game itself before it crashes.

Maybe Atari is one of those things to avoid now so as to keep our fond childhood memories....

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent Enhancements
Review: I've read the reviews that pop up here regarding NW: SoU being too easy for their existing characters. Bah, I say, Bah. The designers stated numerous times that they were creating a quest for new characters. The true enhancements, of course, come into play in Multiplayer mode, where the original shined anyway. New spells, new feats, and best of all, prestige classes. Definitely an improvement!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Best of the Series So Far
Review: If you like the Neverwinter Nights series, this is a must have. Offers the best single player campaign to date, new classes, spells, and abilities, and new creatures. In addition, charators can level higher than ever before. I highly recommend this to fans of the series.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best MMORPG as well !
Review: If you want to know how NWN is in single player, read all the other reviews. Now the game is out for some time now, had its bunch of patches (easy and automatic install) I decided to look at the online community. I was totally amazed what people have done using this engine. If you enjoyed the single player go at use Multiplayer over the Internet. There are worlds out there and most of them beat any of the "pay to play" MMORGS by miles. With NWN you only invest once for months on months of fun.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Earn your wings and show them off to your friends! NOT!
Review: If you're going to play this in the single player game then you have nothing to worry about. It's really fun if you like playing by yourself. :)

If you were planning on playing online with your friends and taking the Red Dragon Disciple (a new class that allows the player to become 1/2 dragon and grow a set of wings) then be ready for some heartache. Once you've downloaded the most recent patch, version 1.61, and spent your time (how much is *your* time worth?) building your character up to wing status you'll discover that you can't login because this class is broken! Keep that in mind, before buying this expansion pack for little Jonnie or Janie (or yourself ;) ) if you play online and wanted to "wow" everyone with your wings.

Everytime a bell rings, someone finds a bug in NWN:HotU!


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