Backdrop

Precisely 1 year to the release day of Neverwinter Nights, the ultimate flexible RPG, comes its first expansion, Shadows of Undrentide. Shadows, a fresh single-player 20-25 hour adventure installed atop Neverwinter Nights, features virtually the same gameplay framework in a brand new setting. Expect to find significant enhancements to the underlying gameplay foundation, including new spells, skills, feats, classes, and monsters. A second expansion, Hordes of the Underdark, is scheduled for a November release.

Neverwinter Nights’ popularity and strength came from its versatility and sheer quantity of gaming that could easily reach hundreds of hours -- a 60-hour plus, absorbing single player campaign, a programming toolset using the game’s engine that let the gaming community, even Bioware, create over 2500 free, playable adventures (modules), a DM Client to let others adventure in those modules presided over by a Dungeon Master, and exciting multiplayer online play. Just RPG granted this game a well-deserved flawless A+ rating.

A Puzzle-Laden Story

The Shadows story begins in the remote snow-covered village of Hilltop, home to Master Drogan, a venerable adventurer, who turns neophytes into legitimate candidates for adventure stardom. Drogan’s top student is your character, who begins the game at Level 1. (Because of this, there’s neither a need to max out your Neverwinter Nights hero nor even finish the original game.)

Four precious artifacts are stolen from the school during a daring robbery by a mischievous band of kobolds. Some remain to terrorize the inhabitants of Hilltop, while the devious kobold leaders and the main gang literally head for the hills with the artifacts. Initially, your hero must rid the town of kobolds. Following that, the dangerous countryside must be penetrated in pursuit of the kobold band. Though this all sounds relatively simple and straightforward, the plot really picks up steam, and becomes delightfully convoluted. There’s much more to the artifact robbery than meets the eye.

The Shadows plot is much deeper and interesting than the principal mission of Neverwinter Nights. Solving the plot is more difficult than the original. The Shadows quest is chockfull of puzzles, both diabolical and mundane. Another crowning story achievement is the fact that many game junctures afford the hero quite a few differing choices for solutions that move the plot forward. For example, early on, some kobolds hold the tavern’s cook, who possesses an important story item, captive in a back room, planning to spirit her away for a clearly nefarious reason. The cook can be saved by your hero’s choosing any of the following tactical alternatives: snatch the cook from the kobolds’ clutches and defeat them in combat, or persuade the kobolds to give her up as of little or no value to them, or convince the kobolds to use the cook as a bargaining chip to allow them safe passage out of the tavern.

Players with impressive or superior persuasion skills who solve a problem choosing a peaceful method gain just as many experience points as those who bludgeon their way through the problem. These kinds of choices are typical of various sticky situations throughout the game, and make for many “edge-of-your-seat“ palavers with even the most stubborn of enemies.

Gameplay

Those familiar with Neverwinter Nights will feel right at home in Shadows, a situation not unexpected in an expansion. (In fact, the game package does not even contain a keyboard or mouse command reference.) Everything about this game comfortably feels, looks, and plays like the original, from the game’s movement, combat, treasure retrieval, magic system to the character advancement and attendant skills and feats engines. A few new environments, including desert and frozen wasteland, spruce up the game’s look. The character experience cap stays at 20, and the ability to have a single henchman join your party returns.

While the gameplay parallels the original, the Shadows story is completely original, and takes place nowhere near the City of Neverwinter. As mentioned above, you begin with a Level 1 character created from scratch, or lifted from one of the game’s pre-rolled characters. As with Neverwinter Nights, numerous side quests add continual variety add spice to the gameplay.

Shadows contains a wealth of enhancing innovative material that radically bumps up the gaming experience. Anticipate over 50 new spells, over 30 new feats, some new skills, over 15 new monsters, new armor, grenade-like weapons, and, most impressively, the ability to role-play your character into any of 5 so-called Prestige Classes.

The 5 new Prestige Classes, including an Arcane Archer whose arrows brandish powerful magic, are a super addition to the character development system. Be warned, though. If you‘re not careful, none of the Prestige Classes will be available. This is because, like the original game, the hero is limited to 3 classes, including normal and prestige. If you accidentally or purposefully use up your 3 class slots without choosing one of the new prestige classes, no prestige class will ever be available for that character. Loading a save game before adding your third non-prestige class or beginning Shadows anew is the only way to access the new classes. Though you cannot create a hero of such a class from the game’s launch, within 5 levels or so, your character can become ground-breaking in all facets of adventuring and combat. The Prestige Classes max out at level 10, not 20 like the normal classes.

The combat system remains the same, retaining all the interesting tactical and strategic considerations found in Neverwinter Nights. Needing to maneuver only 2 characters makes combat a breeze. You can still pressing the Spacebar to stop combat cold to let you give specific commands to your party, or just let your party duke it out with the monsters in a flurry of blows.

Henchmen return with 3 noteworthy changes for the better.

First, you can now access henchman inventory, which lets you easily swap weapons, armor, and items from and to the main character, for equipping and other purposes. This new feature adds an additional strategic control element, particularly prior to the more difficult combats. It also doesn’t hurt that the henchmen can be used as a handy packrat when your collected treasure encumbers the hero.

Second, the henchmen are more colorful and helpful during the campaign. They frequently make voluntary comments to the hero, and even to NPC’s, during conversations. Henchman also will warn the hero of impending dangers on approaching a particular location, and will even provide useful guidance from time to time. Though some may consider henchman abandonment a bad thing, I enjoyed the way one of my “good” henchmen, dropped me cold and left the party, when I tried something distinctly “evil”. Because of all this, unlike in the original, I felt much better for their being along.

Third, the player can order henchmen to level in specific classes, even multi-class, just like the main character. This makes it easy to create a henchman that is a true complement to your character.

Unfortunately, the rather clumsy henchmen AI, a big sticking point in the original game, has not improved, particularly in combat. Case in point. One of my henchman, during a fight, would go from one enemy to another, striking only once, in a bizarre game of “tag”. This made it almost impossible for the hero and henchman to pummel a single enemy until dead, one of the most effective RPG battle strategies. Because of this and other strange behavior, I journeyed through a significant portion of the game alone. Finally, other than through some elaborate, protracted leveling techniques, the henchman are not strong fighters, which practically forces you to make your hero a killing machine, and leave the magic and softer skills to the henchmen.

Shadows restricts both resurrecting the main character after death and the ability to easily teleport back and forth between safe havens, by requiring your possession of Focus Crystals. I missed the ease of performing these important actions found in the original game.

One particularly annoying NPC conversation requirement continued from the original was having to click a separate screen to “End Dialog” constantly. This was necessary even though a prior screen made it clear the conversation was over.

New Features for Builders

Shadows provides the huge community of Neverwinter Nights module builders with modest new tools with which to create new adventures. Three new tilesets afford builders a way to expand the way their created world looks. New trap options embellish the combat. Finally, there’s a new plot wizard to make constructing quests easier.

Bottom Line

In the end, Shadows provides a reasonably lengthy, appealing campaign, with plenty of new features, which offer considerable replay value. Anyone who enjoyed Neverwinter Nights will take to Shadows from beginning to end.

The new features are a boon to RPG’ers who relish building complex and interesting characters within the context of the D&D rules. With the new prestige classes, feats, spells, and skills, the type of hero you choose to embark on your adventure can be dramatically different. If that were not enough, all the new character classes, spells and feats are available to characters starting the original Neverwinter Nights Official Campaign, so why not log another 50 hours in the original game?

Though the following does not detract from my high opinion of Shadows, I feel compelled to mention this cautionary note. Ironically, one of Neverwinter Nights’ greatest strengths, the toolset, impacts on whether Shadows is of value to the RPG gamer. Though the new campaign is first rate, some of the modules created by the gaming community are clearly professional in nature, and, might be viewed as comparable in quality to Shadows. Bioware’s own Shadows FAQ candidly confirms this: “The biggest impact the community has was to push the designers to create something that builds upon the quality and expertise that is being displayed by the talented Neverwinter community. They played a lot of modules and viewed fan created content and that inspired them when coming up with the feature set and story idea for Shadows of Undrentide.”

That, my few criticisms of the expansion, and the fact that I still long for a 4 to 6 person party to adventure in the Neverwinter Nights world aside, I wholeheartedly recommend Shadows.

Final Grade: 90%