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Great addition

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: December 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

There's a lot of things I think make this expansion pack worthwhile. Just another game to play, that alone would be a deal. But you can sort of "pick up" where you might have ended in NWN:OC or SoU.

I haven't had any crashing problems, and have a general run-of-the-mill system: XP2100+ with 512mb, XPSP2, DMA133 hard drive. The only thing that might be considered sub-par is the graphic card, which is an older NVidia MX420 which I've had for about three years now (64mb). But even with the video, I get good response, except in those areas where there are a huge number of scripts running, such as one battle scene near the end. luckily, those are few.

Other than that, the plot is fun, and full of unexpected twists and turns. But it allows you to follow those plot twists, such as betraying your allies. The ultimate goal seems to be the same, no matter which way you play it.

Graphics and sounds are fine, as in the original NWN. They did add a lot more cut-scenes to HotU, tho, which can get kind of annoying. Some of the cut-scenes add depth to the story, but some are just seemingly put there for eye-candy.

There's also lots more puzzles in this expansion. Some are fun, but one in particular got extremely tedious very fast. I knew exactly how to solve it, but I had to wait for in-game timing events before I could move on to the next step. I honestly cheated at that point, and just solved the puzzle. Otherwise I'd probably waste 30 or so minutes.

You can start HotU with a new character, and you'll immeadiately level him up to level 15. I'd really recommend that you play straight from OC to SoU and then HotU. You get a good feel for your character, his strengths and weaknesses. It's easy to take your newly made level 15 character and assume invicibility. I ended the OC with a level 15 half-orc barb, took him thru SoU to level 18, and ended HotU around level 22. Quite a bit of growth in there. Besides, I'm an XP hunter and level monger, so I like that kind of stuff.

Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 29, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark adds more of everything. The new Prestige Classes are generally more interesting and useful than those in the previous expansion pack (Shadows of Underntide). The new feats, like the Prestige Classes, are also much more interesting and useful than the previous expansion. The list of epic spells, improved henchman, max level, and tile sets are all improvements for the game.

Hordes of Underdark also adds a new set of official modules with the expansion. The plotline, dungeon layout, puzzles, and feel of the modules are far superior to that of previous official modules (and even better than most player/fan-base modules). A major problem is that it was designed for single-player only. Technically, you could play the game multiplayer, but the player hosting the game would have to be well versed in using the DM Client commands from the Player Client interface to combat these "issues."

Hordes of the Underdark has also released more glitches and bugs than even the original unpatched game. Even after Hordes being patched, most users experience occasional freezes and crashes. This is not such a big deal when you have the auto-save feature turned on, but still detracts from the excitement of playing the game.

One problem that I have witnessed in Neverwinter Nights from the beginning is that there has never been a large player/fan-base Mods for high levels (level 20). With the new cap of level 40 in Hordes, I have still not witnessed many high quality Mods for characters level 20-40. Lastly, those Mods that have been designed well for the higher levels frequently have a bias for more warrior based characters.

For players whose main focus in NWN is the single-player mode and enjoyed the expansion of freedoms in Shadows of Underntide (classes, feats, etc), those who enjoy "maxing" out a character or designing super templates, enjoy designing their own Mods or like to be able to keep up with playing the most current Mods, then Hordes of Underdark is an excellent expansion. For players whose computer's limits were being pushed by the previous expansion (Hordes doubles the "recommended" RAM requirement), who play primary/solely multiplayer mode, or for those who get their kicks by challenging high-level content, then Hordes doesn't deliver as much as it seems to contain.

Excellent expansion

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: April 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This was a great expansion for the NWN series, easily making up for the so-so Shadows of Undretide, which offered zero challenge to a character that finished the original.

I purchased this very shortly after it came out, and did the immediate patch, and had zero game play issues, which is refreshing nowadays.

The storyline was good, the return of some characters was a pleasant surprise, and it definitely served up a decent challenge, while not being unbeatable. Like many RPGs, the final battle wasn't the hardest I encountered, but the overall game was good, and none of the puzzles were incredibly hard to overcome.

A definite keeper, with considerable replay value, as you try out other classes.

GREAT expansion pack

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: September 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This expansion pack brings to the table some very cool things. Players can craft items, choose epic classes, new weapons, skills, spells, camera angle can be set virtually in any position, there's even a sky now in the game! Very cool indeed. The new adventure is interesting, very very long and the storyline is pretty deep. There is however a point where you will get the feeling the whole thing is starting to drag for too long.
This is how Neverwinter Nights should have been from the beginning. DON'T miss out on this great expansion.

The best of the series!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: October 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is a classic epic level adventure! A crazy mad wizard makes an insane dungeon under a mountain where adventurers go to "prove themselves" goes bad when untold horrors come from deep within this dungeon. The story and characters are much improved on from the first adventures, and the challenge level of both the puzzles and the battles has increased. Very fun, and a must have for any RPG buff.

Fun even for nongamers

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: May 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I am not a hardcore gamer. I wouldn't even really call myself a gamer at all -- I'm of the "if my husband's playing it and it looks really fun, I'll give it a try" school.

Well, I've never played D&D in my life, but I am a HUGE Neverwinter Nights fan. I love being able to customize my character's appearance and skills, I love the graphics, I love the adventures and the ability to roleplay my character in many different ways (from goody two-shoes to black-hearted villain).

Having finished the original Neverwinter Nights and the Shadows of Undrentide expansion pack, I started in on Hordes of the Underdark. Without a doubt, it's my favorite so far. The quests are more interesting (some even stumped me, and I had to go to the Bioware site for a little help!). There are new classes, which are fun to play, and there's even a little romance in the game! I have to admit, I thought that was a great element. I don't know how the guys who play this cared for it, but it really added some fun for me.

Not quite the same game.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 14
Date: January 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I bought Shadows of Undrentide primarily because it had added many new prestige classes. This sounded cool, along with the new creatures you could summon. There are a few problems, though, that I could not overlook. I enjoyed making items for my characters through DM mode. But now, you immediately are robbed, making this taxing. Even if you create stuff outside of the room, it winds up dissapearing.

Another problem is it's interface. It just feels like a player created mod. It lacks the depth of play that the other games had. Drogan sends you on these boring "Find me this" missions, that just get old soon.

The amount of experience you get from killing creatures also makes it feel like it is not worth it. It levels you up to 15, and then gives you 30 EXP drow elves for you to slaughter. My Level 13 sorcerer/2 arcane archer annihilates the competition with one spell.

To summarize, this is a good game, and continues out the story (while not to the best of NWN's ability), and gets the job done as a D&D sim.

KARPG (kick-ass RPG)

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: April 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

great toolset (though not perfectly stable (a few error handling kinks should be worked out)
great game - good storyline, and pretty good rendering...no serious redering faults...fair control of camera angle manually...good sound effects

great scripting capablity!! script resembles C-syntax and allows easy custom functionality of objects in mods...fairly good object handling, too...

Keeps crashing! Very fun but completely unstable.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: March 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I'm about half way through this game and it honestly feels like a 4.5 star game, except it won't stop crashing! I played the original NWN without a problem (skipped SoU) as well as dozens of other games, all with my existing hardware, software and configuration. I'm running all mainstream stuff:

Win2k, Service Pack 4 with all relevant hotfixes (so...5,000).
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro - great card.
AMD 2200+ on an Abit mobo, 512 ram.
Patch 1.62, installed on March 12th 2004.

So basically what happens is the game either locks up during a save and after about 30 seconds crashes to desktop corrupting that save file in the process, or the system reboots. Neither scenario gives any warning and if I play for 3-4 hours then I'm about guarunteed to have at least one of each crash.

So the game is great. Graphics are nice, sound is fine, nothing special. The battles are a lot of fun and I really enjoy watching my dwarven fighter charge a drow cleric amid fire and ice storms. The power given to you is awesome as your guy gets around level 20, and since the game starts off with you generating a character and leveling it up to level 15 you can customize the bejeezus out of it. The game bogs down a little sometimes, which annoys me since I greatly exceed the recommended specs, but that doesn't happen enough for it to be a problem.

Summary:
Buy this game if you liked NWN, it is tons of fun. But either research your PC setup online to see if others are having problems or at least wait until patch 1.62 is no longer the latest. I'm going to think really hard before buying Atari again.

UPDATE: I updated my graphics driver to the latest catalyst driver from ATI (version 4.3 at this time) and the machine reboots seem to have stopped. However the game still locks up about 1 time in 10-20 while saving. I hit ctrl+alt+delete and kill the process after it freezes and I've caught the game using 210MB of memory! The log files it says it is generating are useless, they just describe event within the game itself before it crashes.

Maybe Atari is one of those things to avoid now so as to keep our fond childhood memories....

The Best of the Series So Far

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: February 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you like the Neverwinter Nights series, this is a must have. Offers the best single player campaign to date, new classes, spells, and abilities, and new creatures. In addition, charators can level higher than ever before. I highly recommend this to fans of the series.

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