User Reviews (1 - 11 of 44)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

SecuRom...more like Suck-U-Rom

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 31
Date: July 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Like others, I'd like to put a disclaimer up front that BioWare seems like a good company and the people there seem to care about their product.
Atari, on the other hand, clearly does not. I am one of the many people who are unable to use this game with my cd drive. I tried everything under the sun (checked that drivers were current, updated firmware, etc.). There is no fix for this on the BioWare or Atari site (as of 7/25/03). I emailed Atari's tech support (after going through their troubleshooting maze) TWO WEEKS AGO and I have received NO RESPONSE.

As some(probably most) people's cd drives work with the SecuRom, one could say that it is MY problem that it doesn't work and I should just go out and buy another cd drive so I can play this game.
The question is, "Do you want to gamble with your time and money?"

Alternate Review:
This game is great. Unlike the previous NWN, this expansion revolves around the exciting world of computer troubleshooting and technical support. You play an unwitting dupe of the Atari game distribution company who has been suckered into buying a game that won't run on your computer despite the fact that your system meets the requirements printed on the packaging and that there was no disclosure of the known hardware incompatibility issues. Your pulse will race as you search for new drivers. Your heart will pound as you update the firmware for your cd drive. Will the firmware work? Or will this be the end of your drive? On-line play is great to, as you post to discussion threads and share your frustration with other "users". The high level of realism makes this title "one not to miss".

Has Turbotax like copy protection that locks your computer

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 16
Date: July 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

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.

So Disappointed

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: July 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I can't believe I'm saying this about a Bioware game, but this expansion has got to be the "cheapest" (short, they say 20 hours long, but I completed the whole thing in less than 10 hours), most boring, most expensive $$ expansion they have ever released. I own practically every Bioware game ever made, and have loved every one of them... except for this one. I have downloaded and played mods that other players have created that were more exciting and more thoughtfully created that SoU. In my opinion, Bioware was in a hurry on this one, and let greed get in the way of creativity. All I can hope is that the next expansion is exciting, REPLAYABLE, LONGER!!!, and an all around better continuation of the NWN's story. If not, I will begin to wonder whether to spend any more money on Bioware creations.

games is too buggy

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 20
Date: September 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

this game, and the original, needed to be tested more before release. there's people everywhere, including me, having fits trying to play this game. there's no support from bioware. all software problems are blamed on the user and the publisher of the game, things are never the software creator's fault. though the game is fun, it crashes so often its fun-factor drops dramatically. patches are nigh non-existent as bioware is too busy creating expansions to de-bug the existing code. ka-ching?

if you want to buy a beta-game which may or may not work on your system, this is the game for you.

Does not really feel like an Add on...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 12
Date: January 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I got this game as part of Neverwinter Gold. I have heard nothing bad about Neverwinter and with a second expansion coming out I bought Neverwinter Gold since it was the same price as Neverwinter. I finished Neverwinter Night last weekend. It was a great game. I love every part of it. It is the best representation of D&D in a computer game since the early days.

But....Shadow of Undrentide is seriously lacking. First, you start out being "trained" as an adventurer. My character was twenty second level by the time I start this add on so I would hardly say that a player of that level would be in that situation. It seemed like the creators wanted this to be a separate game using the same game engine, but decided on an add on instead. This can be the only reason for the next flaw, which is they dump the hench men from the original for a new set which are seriously lacking the depth of the original ones. I only raise this issue b/c Bioware brings back the original Henchmen for the next add on; Hordes of the Underdark. So why else would they make this change in the middle?

So in short, this is a fair enough game if you buy the Neverwinter Gold edition, but do not waste you money on buying it on its on. It is simply not worth the money. I gave it two stars since this add on has my favourite prestige class, the Blackguard. Buy it from the bargain bin.

I hope the other expansions have more than this...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: August 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This expansion will give you A) five new classes, only two of which are worth playing (the Blackguard and the Arcane Archer are fun). The other classes are inferior to most others.
B) A handful of new monsters. The madusa and the basilisk were a good addition, but I was hoping for a lot more.
C) A handful of new spells, most noteworthy are the bigby's giant hand spells. When will prismatic sphere be added? It's the best spell for wizards and sorcorers!
D) A few minor rule changes, such as the removal of level requirements for the use of magic items (This never should have been added into the game in the first place, and is right out of Diablo 2).
E) A new campaign, which is much better than the original campaign. If you like playing solo, it's fun, but not as fun as playing online.
F) The editor has been upgraded. Secret doors, and simular objects, are much easier to add into your dungeons.

It would be nice if these fixes and add-ons could be gotten in a free patch, rather than a $... game!

Certain Warnings to heed

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 18
Date: June 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is a great game, however, if you are someone unlucky (like a lot of us), you might encounter a range of problems. Only after a day of its offical North America release, I visited the Bioware Self-help fourm and there was TONs of little (and major) problems people have encountered.

For example, lots of people ran their game CD on a RW drive and encountered start-up stalls which is because of the security measures on the CDis interfereing with data transfer. Or "pointer errors" with the launcher (fortunately Bioware posted things about that). Also, I have obsvered that majority of these problems are NEW, you might have your old NWN working one day and as soon as your install SoU it stops working, which is intensely frustrating. Plus, you need a rather new vid card that's not from a outdated company to full take advantage of the expension, which require better system specs than NWN itself. This might not make so much a difference to people with good computers but for those with low or middle ends (like mine), might need to *upgrade*.

The biggest problem you will encounter will have to do with your video card. Many people have top of the line video cards stilled countered problem from "stuttering" to square leaves to not being able to play at all. Be perpared to navaigate through video driver sites or worse yet going out to buy yourself another video card just so you can play the game you paid 30 dollars for.

Well, enough peismism, just hope you are one of the lucky ones. I gave the rating as a 3 (netural) because I do not know how the gaming experience will turn out (mine is being shipped), but do not have your hopes up too high and be perpared for frustration! (not what you paid for eh?)

Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide Expansion

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 23
Date: June 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

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.

A bit anti-climactic

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: June 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

It's not that there's anything wrong with SoU, it's just that a lot of the fan made content is way better. The module itself is alright, but it's too short, too small in size and scope, and there were a few really non-intuitive puzzles.

The tilesets are nice enough too, but I don't see why they didn't include several others for fans to use. An outdoor Arabian city tileset, and a corresponding city in the module would have made SoU a lot better.

The Prestige Classes are a mixed bag. Specifically, the Shadowdancer and the Assassin can't do much that a normal rogue can't do.

On the positive side, the new Feats and Skills are very cool, and should allow for more unique characters. The new spells are awesome, probably the best addition to the game.

SoU isn't all bad, but I still recommend saving your money and downloading the fan made Lone Wolf modules and a few others instead.

Better but not great

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 11
Date: January 04, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This expansion pack fixes a lot of things, but this game is still not on par with Baldur's Gate II. The game is still too linear, and you still have henchmen you can't give anything to (other than a potion which they will drink on the spot). I found this expansion pack was worth about 5 days of game play before I got bored and stopped playing it. Better that the orginal which didn't last 2 hours.

It's hard to believe the people who made BG and BGII, some of the best selling games ever, didn't build on what those games great: party role-playing. What we want is Baldur's Gate with better graphics. That's it. The game mechanics were almost perfect, the multi-threaded stories where fun, and the party building was great.

So no NWN SoU is not an equal to BGII, but with this expansion pack, it's worth a few days of your life.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 Next 

Actions