The adventure is decently long (15-20 hours) and has a unique feel and tone when set beside the earlier official offerings and the mod community stuff.
The expansion is far better than the main game. It has an exciting story with good twists that are as amazing as surprising. Even after many years I still remember the story, characters and twists. It is a very loose continuation from the previous (weaker) expansion. Your character survived the events and obtained a useful artifact “The Relic of the Reaper”. It is a pocket dimension which transport and revives the character upon death and can also be used as a portal system for previous visited places (You need an item for this). The mentioned Reaper is the host / guardian of this place. The story is set again in the Forgotten Realms on Faerun and starts in the city Waterdeep. There are constant attacks from Drow on the city and they are invading from Underground. This should not be possible as under the city is the (undisputed) realm of Halaster. Halaster is one of the most powerful mages in this age, slightly mad (or medium mad?) and does not like Drow. You are hired by a former adventurer named Durnan who is now an inn keeper to investigate this mystery. The set up alone is great as there is something really wrong. As you progress the story never loses momentum and there are twist that I still would put on my top 10 list in gaming. The other content is also good. You get interesting quests, some moral dilemmas, a few good riddles and meet interesting characters (party members and NPCs). There are also some variation in the story and the ending / conclusion is fitting in each possible outcome. I will not go into details because of spoilers here (Would consider it a crime). It adds also some new (prestige) classes like Dwarven Defender (Iron wall that hits back;-), Pale Master (Necromantic abilities), Shifter (What the name says), Weapon Master (Also what the name says), Champion of Torm (Some kind of Paladin I did not use) and Red Dragon Disciple (Dragonic abilities) atop on a now level cap of 40. I tested mostly the Dwarven Defender, Red Dragon Disiple and Pale Master and found them useful (There are some drawbacks but that is normal as no perfect class exists). A mayor improvment is that you can have 2 party members now instead of 1 like in the main game / first expansion. This while being an improvement is still not enough because I had more than 2 companions I would take with me especially later on (Party of 6 is what I prefer). I think I give you some tips: Firstly the amount of money you get for great items is limited to 5000 Gold if I remember correctly. Later in the game you need tremendous amounts of money to use all possible options (Not needed but very nice gameplay and roleplay-wise). I solved this by exporting my character with all items to the main game, sell the items for incredible amounts of money and returning the character to the expansion. Don't know if this still works. I experimented also with creating a new character manually. You have 15 levels to use and I tested a lot of combinations for viability. You can later improve weapons to an amount that is ridiculous (But not unlimited). For last play different ways. It is the only noteworthy exception in a D&D game were I finished the story with an evil character (Never happened before or after). The graphics looked amazing back then and there was a great variety in the game. Like the main game it aged not that well but this is just a testament how much the graphics have improved since back then. The soundtrack is still good and should deliver. Overall this was a positive surprise and I returned many times to this game. The story, character and variations in the outcomes are what makes this game so great for me. It was an amazing expansion and should not be disregarded or hide behind other games.
The focus on the single-player experience, along with Bioware's top-notch level design has created an expansion pack with great detail and atmosphere that's arguably even more immediately immersive than the original game. [PC Zone]
The storyline is reasonably interesting, there’s plenty of new stuff to check out, and it looks pretty good. It’s not an amazing expansion, but it's better than "Shadows of the Undrentide" in every way.
Has that woefully underbaked, released-just-in-time-for-the-holidays taint to it, and that's just a colossal shame, because underneath that nastiness is a great, great expansion. [Mar 2004, p.78]
Has to be one of the GREATEST Fantasy RPG games I have ever played. It was a challenging and engrossing experience with magnificent NPC's, Environs and Story to make it everything you want in a great Fantasy RPG. Can't recommend enough purchasing the Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition for this MASTERPIECE by Bioware!
Brilliant expansion for a brilliant game.
It's nice that Bioware has given us another aspect of the D&D setting to explore, and hasn't just stuck to the typical caves, dungeons and big cities.
This also adds quite a bit to the multiplayer aspects of the game. I've seen plenty of servers add an underdark to their PW, and greatly benefited from it.
My alltime favourite. I've finished this expansion many times with many different build types and i will do it again sooner or later. Best Bioware game and one of the best pc games with d&d setting in history.
This second expansion for Neverwinter Nights got a lot of praise, even though the story feels like a bit of a rambling mess compared to Shadows of Undrentide (wisely, it's a continuation of that expansion's storyline and ignores the NWN original campaign). As an "epic" D&D adventure (over level 20) it has the usual stat inflation problem, with far too many spells (many now useless) ending up in your list if your character is a spellcaster. But: two NPC companions at once! More Deekin!
SummaryThe second expansion for the revolutionary role-playing game Neverwinter Nights. BioWare has created a dark and dangerous world of adventure set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons. Your hands are callused from many years of weapon play, your mind is sharp from hundreds of books studied, your feet are nimble from slipping unseen and unhea...