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Neverwinter Nights: Hoards of the Underdark

Wrapping up our continuing look at Neverwinter Nights, we turn our eye toward Hordes of the Underdark, the latest expansion pack released by Atari and BioWare. Unlike the first NwN expansion pack, Shadows of Undrentide, which felt skimpy and a bit rushed, Hordes of the Underdark is an add-on that truly lives up to the legacy of the title it is extending.

One of the weaknesses of SoU was that the three new tilesets were not really anything all that new; not so with HotU. The game introduces a branch of the Forgotten Realms kingdom that neither NwN or SoU explored; the world of dark elves, known as the Drow. The tilesets introduce those new environments into amateur developers’ hands, as well.

It translates to a big improvement over SoU; in SoU, one of the “revolutionary” new tilesets was just a repeat of a previous tileset … with SNOW on it. You have to admit, that was weak. But the generosity of HotU more than makes up for it. Since the Underdark is virtually just as vast as the Forgotten Realms itself, just underground, the new setting basically “doubles” the size of the gameworld available.

Also more generous this time out is the number of new spells and prestige classes. While SoU contained only five prestige classes, HotU extends that by six to a total of 11. It also contains one of my personal favorite prestige classes, Red Dragon Disciple. And to make matters even more interesting, the game introduces Epic-level characters; levels 21 to 40. The new cap allows a lot more variety in character development as well as the introduction of tougher enemies that require group play online to keep one’s head above water. And of course, with epic classes come epic spells that are real treasures for gamers looking for more firepower and greater challenges.

On the developer side, not a ton of brand-new wizards were introduced, but something even cooler was tossed in; improvements to existing scripts and wizards were made to make them more effective, more intuitive and quite simply more useful. For example, the Hak Pak Conflicts Dialog may not seem like a sexy tool, but it’s infinitely useful for debugging the problems in your custom module that otherwise might take hours and hours to detective-work out and resolve. Improvements to the New Creature Wizard is also an example of something that, while not completely new, works much better this time out.

As for the official Hordes campaign, the story is still a brief 20-hour affair but is much more appropriate as an expansion pack adventure because it no long assumes you’re playing a novice character; in fact, the adventure is so hard that if you roll up a level one character, the first thing the game has you do is level your new character up to level 12 as a minimum, so that you have a fighting chance in the world of the Underdark.

The story has also changed formula and feels more original than the Shadows campaign; the plot revolves around the current queen of the Drow, the Valsharess. Her prophets have told her lil’ old you is gonna be not just a thorn in her side but the one her will defeat her. Not what the fetching Val’ wanted to hear, so she slays her prophets and vows to stop you. Of course, you’ve never met her but that’s all about to change.

One nice aspect of the HotU campaign is that recurring characters are becoming more developed; when you run into Deekin, the Kobold bard from Shadows, he will reminisce with you about that adventure for a bit, and BioWare even throws in a behind-the-scenes joke about the short length of the adventure, through Deekin’s dialog; BioWare is aware that some folks weren’t happy with the length of Shadows, and this moment is their wink to us to let us know they were listening.

The world of the Underdark is well-developed within the game and sets a good example for amateur game designers on how to use it to great effect. The story unfolds well as you progress through the game and is possibly the best plot to appear in any Neverwinter Nights game yet, (although I haven’t played through much of Witch’s Wake, the episodic adventure BioWare is releasing for free via the download/update utility, just yet).

With nearly everything improved and refined, Hordes of the Underdark not only is a huge improvement over the first NN expansion pack, Shadows, but for me ranks right up there as one of the better expansion packs ever released for any RPG. While Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind – Bloodmoon remains my favorite RPG expansion pack, since the werewolf element added something completely new to the Morrowind series, Hordes ranks above ES3: Morrowind – Tribunal to fall just shy of Bloodmoon in my book. It comes close because of the Epic Classes, which inject new life and interest into even a standard thief or fighter, let alone adding dimension to prestige classes like Red Dragon Disciple. While an Epic Red Dragon Disciple is cool, however, it’s not like adding playing as a werewolf into the mix, which keeps Bloodmoon just ahead of Hordes.

Still, that’s heady company for Hordes to keep and places it as an absolute must-have for all Neverwinter Nights aficionados and as one of the top expansion packs I’ve ever played in an RPG. Well done, Atari and BioWare. Keep ‘em coming!

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Tags: Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark

Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Jan 23rd, 2004 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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