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Summary: Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide Expansion
Review: A rather disappointing, but expected, letdown from the same licensing company who bought out TSR and turned Dungeons & Dragons into a marketing scheme akin to it's collectable card games (Wizards of the Coast). They're the originators and owners of the Magic: The Gathering collectable card game. Those who know this game and know WOTC can attest... WOTC Slogan: Gotta collect the whole set! And, producing numerous sparse expansions with minimal inticing features is WOTC's meat and potatoes.So here's the skinny... yes, Shadows of Urdrentide expands on the successful Neverwinter Nights, though NWN is, itself, not exactly 'true' to the actually table top game. It has been adapted for multiplayer on-line use. Neverwinter Nights also left a lot open for future development. And, that's how WOTC wants it to be. Grant it, D&D table-top is hugely expanded now due to open-licensing, so the entire D&D system could never be addressed in one mere boxed set for computer play. But, that is the sales scheme. The Urdrentide expansion does precisely what I and several others expected WOTC would allow and desire. It adds a minimum of rather unimpressive new spells, feats, prestige classes, areas, and creatures... making future expansions inevitable for those junkies hooked on the game. Buy Urdrentide if you're a NWN junkie like my friend Mark. It's like electronic crack to him. But, If you have willpower and insight, think about waiting until the price drops to bargain levels. The downside of 'not' buying it now... if you're an on-line player, you may lose access to rooms/modules with Urdrentide installed. This could prove to be very annoying to those who haven't purchased the Urdrentide expansion. And, it 'will' happen... trust me. Just so you understand, I'm not downing on Neverwinter Nights. I enjoy the game, as do many of us. I'm simply citing that one should not expect a great deal for your $29.95 in this expansion. Even for those Builders creating modules with the NWN Toolset, the sparse and unimpressive new tilesets and other add-ons make Urdrentide only mildly appealing... perhaps only $14.95 appealing.
Rating: 
Summary: Heading in the right RPG direction.
Review: A truly fun game true 3d. Being able to control a characters look and status is great. The only shortcoming is the limited team members, and a lack of there owns agenda. I hope there are more in line soon.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good expansion
Review: A very nice second campaign if you already finished the main campaign and want to take you character up a few more levels, buff up on eq and even change your character by the new prestige classes. (Or even head over to bioware and download some ultra buffed pre made characters.) Very similar to the NWN. Three chapters in different worlds with unique creatures. The eq in this sequel was very impressive and may even tilt the game, but it is for high level characters.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good expansion
Review: A very nice second campaign if you already finished the main campaign and want to take you character up a few more levels, buff up on eq and even change your character by the new prestige classes. (Or even head over to bioware and download some ultra buffed pre made characters.) Very similar to the NWN. Three chapters in different worlds with unique creatures. The eq in this sequel was very impressive and may even tilt the game, but it is for high level characters.
Rating: 
Summary: This was better than the original campaign
Review: After completing the official campaign from NWN (hereafter, OC), I was left wanting something more. I was disappointed with the OC in that it was a little too easy -- there were too many opportunities to run back to the temple and stock up, even in the middle of combat situation. As a result, the OC was very unbalanced, although the storyline was good. Shadows of Undrentide (SoU) is *not* a continuation to the OC, but rather is a parallel storyline, taking place at roughly the same time. Completely new characters, completely new setting, completely different storyline (although, roughly the same premise). This expansion pack does not have some of the same flaws as the OC. The game is more balanced, with no teleports in combat situations and limited teleports overall. The puzzles are harder, and the rewards for completing quests are not unbalancing either. Further, SoU adds a few new abilities and character classes, as well as new creatures, that would have been welcome in the OC. This is more along the lines of what the OC *should* have been. SoU is shorter than the OC, and for some that's disappointing. It's also a lot harder and takes more time to wade through, which makes it equal out to about the same amount of investment in time. It takes a good little while to work through the puzzles and side quests, which add positively to the game. One negative -- the game's ending is very anticlimatic. Once you finish the final battle, you are led to a cut scene with a vague ending that is resonant of the "...to be continued..." cliche at the end of a bad movie. In spite of a great game and a wonderful final encounter, the player gets a disappointing epilogue, resulting in "Bummer, what a letdown" instead of "Wow, that was great!" In spite of the ending, I still max the rating for this expansion pack. Had the OC been more on the difficulty level as SoU, the OC would have been great. SoU takes a good game, builds on it and makes it better.
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Summary: I want a deepwood sniper!
Review: But since that won't be happening it seems that the new feats will be cool ( blindfight and dirty fighting especially ). The fact that they claim the quest will allow more sneaking around and less kill the monster, rogues will have more fun.
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Summary: Has Turbotax like copy protection that locks your computer
Review: First I'd like to say that Bioware is a great company that has released a lot of good stuff, and this problem is not their fault. The only thing they did wrong is to pick Atari as their publisher. You see Atari put copy protection on the CD by Securom, that pretty much either 1) locks up your computer after 5 min of play everytime, or 2)won't allow you to install the game. (Just go to nwn's forums to see how many complaints there are about this - nwn.bioware.com) I don't even understand why this is even on the cd since NWN is mainly an online game, it already verifies your game keys when you go online. Furthermore any pirate can bypass this with stuff like Alcohol Software. The only people this hurts are people like me who were stupid enough to buy this game. All the good reviews in the world won't help this game if you can't play it - all you'll do is hurt your wallet. Bottomline: unless you want to play russian roulette with your time and money (for some cdrom drives - it does work fine), buy any other game at Amazon - like Warcraft III's expansion instead; their copy protection doesn't lock up your computer. Trust me, you don't want to pay money to be an unpaid tester of alpha quality software.
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Summary: I can relate to it more than Hoard
Review: First off, if you have NWN and HoUD get this too, you are missing out if you don't. Some of the Paladin's key abilities are in only this expansion pack(Divine Powers) Although Hoards has some more difficult challenges, Undertide has a better story and dialogue and is more about a small time student becoming a grand adventurer and less about the Darth Vader dark side of the force knock-off and all that God/deity B.S. in so many FRPGs (like Hoards of Underdark). In this you are an inexperienced youth unsure of what to do and either good or evil but in a more subtle sense. Unlike NWN original you have alternatives to fighting, but fight you will and thier is plenty of action(though Hoards is more fun in that reguard). As in Ultima 6-7.5 thier is comaradry amoung your party and other NPC's lots of dialogue unlike NWO which is cardboard by comparison. The Three that can join you have lives of thier own however(unlike NWO) and will leave if thier is too much conflict.(much like Iolo did when I stole that roast mutton from a ship I did not have a deed for o'those many years ago). Character generation is like NWO but with better abilities for all classes + some new classes(which I don't care for) evil characters can pick Blackguard which is a stealthy paladin(not at all appropriate for a black knight of evil) Archane Archer is for elves(hate elves) and the other is for bards(hate 'em for my PC) The campaign is the reason to get this(and some of the extra feats). Your starting class is what people will referr to you as(even if you have higher levels in other classes) My 4 level fighter 8 level paladin is considered a fighter (personally I think I should be able to role play a fighter/paladin with the status quo of a paladin if I want to, it is suposed to be open-ended you know!) Same can be said for rogues, if you start out a fighter you are a fighter(according to dialogue) even if you have 20 levels rogue and 1 of fighter.(most reference dialoge is not present at level 20) Shiza(if I spelled it right) is not the only one who referrs your specific class. Deekin the bard blabs about it a lot, and so does Xanos and Dorna up on occasiion(if you are a rogue) at least you can multi-class as ANY character(not excluding paladins and monks) with no penalties outside the race penalty of other classes which is nice IMO. The only other 3rd game I know of with this feature is Icewind Dale II and only if you follow the path of your Deity.
everybody's favorite compainions made his start in this one. So if you have Hoards and wonder what Deekin is talking about in his "story" get this game and live his tale.
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Summary: Supports the Linux Version of NWN also!
Review: Have not received my copy of SoU yet. But I think it's important to add to the product description that NWN and NWN:Shadow of Undrentide runs in Linux. For the base NWN game,you purchase the Windows version - then visit the website for the Linux binaries. This expansion pack includes Linux install scripts. Visit the NWN website for more info!
Thank you Bioware for supporting Linux!
Rating:
Summary: A good improvement
Review: I am one of the many people that were fairly disappointed with Neverwinter Nights when it came out. I play only single player games and found the original campaign to be boring. I had the usual complaints about a poor story line, character development and awful henchmen. That being said, I think the Shadow of Undrentide is quite an improvement as far as the single player campaign goes. They did listen to their audience and made significant improvements to the plot development as well as henchmen being greatly improved. I would liked to have seen the this be a continuation of the earlier campaign. I really am getting of tired of playing low level characters. Magic missiles gets very boring and I hate how often beginning wizards have to rest to be useful. In a way I glad they started a new story line because the fist campaign plot was so poor. If I was designing the game I would make it harder and give the single player the option of having multiple henchmen. I really do miss the party aspect of the BG series. I would love to play with a balance party and really form good strategies with all the party members to overcome obstacles. Maybe they will get there with the next expansion. Over all it is well worth the money and an OK game. Lets hope the community comes up with some good modules that take advantage of this expansion.
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