Shadows of Undrentide is
the first of the two major expansions of Neverwinter
Nights. However, don’t expect a lot
of Neverwinter or nights, as Shadows of
Undertide begins in the snowy village of Hilltop in the Silver Marches,
around the same time that the Wailing Death is afflicting Neverwinter. Unlike escaped prisoners, zombies, a wizard,
and pirates, the player character must contend with a kobold tribe, a gnoll
tribe, and a white dragon. And that’s
just the first act.
A player character can be created, as in vanilla Neverwinter or imported from another
save game. With how the enemies are set
up, the campaign seems like one that should be started at first level or so. This, of course, means that you can transport
your character over from Neverwinter
if you’ve beaten the campaign and completely break the game…at least until act
two. Undrentide
is technically split into three sections – Chapter One, an Interlude, and then
Chapter Two. The first chapter involves
an attack on the player’s home – a school for adventurers run by Drogan
Droganson, the most badass dwarven wizard ever…who gets immediately poisoned by
kobolds and later drops an entire temple down on himself. Spoiler alert.
Thus, with the master knocked out, the player is charged
with recovering artifacts that were stolen by the kobolds, which lead into the
main quest as a whole as well as several side quests around the village of
Hilltop. These include such interesting
asides as trying to convince the village to allow a Red Wizard of Thay to set
up shop in town, clearing giant spiders out of an elven crypt, and saving a
duergar’s daughter from a giant attempting to mate with her, as well as several
others. The main plot also allows the
player a glimpse at the main Big Bad, as well as hinting at things to come.
The Interlude is just that, an interlude. The player ends up joining up with a Halfling
caravan heading into the Anauroch desert in order to get a crystal
identified. Until the last settlement
reached in the section, the main plot is hardly even addressed. It provides a few neat side adventures that
help break up the main plot and keep it from being too monotonous. I think this was something that the vanilla
game sorely missed. By the same token,
however, there was a real sense of weight and the threat of something that could
end the world, something that isn’t really achieved here until Chapter Three.
 |
| "Get up on the hydra's back!!!" |
Chapter Three sees you being awoken from stone – oh, yes,
there’s a Medusa Sorceress who ends up being the Big Bad of the game, spoiler
alert – to be enslaved to a desert merchant for a time until you can find the
Medusa and stop her from using a magical series of mirrors to raise the sunken
city of Undrentide and take over the world.
From a gameplay standpoint, Undrentide plays exactly the same way that its vanilla form does. However,
it does add some new prestige classes to the game in the form of Arcane Archer,
Assassin, Blackguard, Harper Scout, and Shadowdancer classes. Again, all following the Third Edition
ruleset for Dungeons & Dragons…more or less. There’s also fifty new spells for the magically
inclined.
In full summation, it has a fairly good storyline and a
couple of new goodies to play with depending on how hard you look. It’s not as long as its parent game nor
really as in depth, but it’s definitely enjoyable and worth the time
invested. And worth it especially due to
the fact that, according the in-universe canon, the player character from Undrentide is the one that will face off
against…the Hordes of the Underdark…
Shadows of Undrentide
is now available from Bioware and Atari
for PC.
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