Neverwinter Nights: Doom of Icewind Dale

Some of these reviews aren't being reasonable. This is by the same Luke Scull that released Siege of Shadowdale, Crimson Tides of Tethyr, and Tyrants of the Moonsea as free canceled premium modules for NWN1. All three modules got updated for NWN:EE with only Tyrants being an actual premium module while the other two remained free modules. He's been super active in the NWN community. The $10 price isn't unreasonable for the amount of work he's put into this. Some of you will pay more money for games that are far worse and just because this is a module and not a stand-alone game doesn't change that. If there's any real complaint, it's that this is a direct sequel to The Wailing Death campaign that we can all agree is the absolute weakest campaign where most people play once if they ever finish it at all but then again, maybe this will give people some more motivation in regards to playing The Wailing Death campaign in the first place.

Just finished the module/campaign (the author promised a sequel) following the Wailing Death (OG NWN campaign) and with it fresh in mind, here are my impressions. Might contain some spoliage. The good: ** Gorgeous visuals ** Awesome soundtrack (for the most part) ** Custom tiles, custom monsters ** Lengthy (if you are a diehard completionist like me, you can hit 30 hours easily ** No bugs (just regular NWN bugs) ** Map system from DoD ** No spawning areas ** Non linear ** Item removal at the begining ** Tough fights, at least for the first levels ** Romantic followup ** Raft system to move to small islands ** Only few spellcheck isues ** ALL quests get completed. I can't stress enough how much I appreciate that ** The bad: ** Part of the story it's about a slumbering entity that tries to rampage Faerun with the help of a madman (yup, that again) ** Hack'n'slashy (while I do enjoy a good monster bashing, you need some humor, some puzzles sprinkled here and there) ** No henchmen related item from OC survives the item strip (and no related journal entry/quest) ** Not enough henchmen dialogue; they feel like luggage ** Speaking of henchies, they never die, just get temporarily incapacitated; even in the OC you could kill them for good ** Final boss is too easy ** The lazy: ** You are being adressed as they/them/their. Not sure if for multiplayer or other concern. I mean they KNOW the hero of Waterdeep is male and the one of Moonsea is female. But you are staying right over there while the stupid face of Aarin Gend they/thems you. Not cool. Surely some script can fix that. There are workarounds the he/she situation, like using friend, mortal, warrior etc. ** Aribeth's ring doesn't look the same. Why...?** Score: 8.25/10 "Should I buy it"? Yes. There aren't many people out there willing to build quality modules (yes, this is a quality module). There are talks for a sequel. Fingers crossed.

I've played Neverwinter Nights since it was released back in the day and probably have well over a thousand hours playing the game and playing around with the toolset divided almost equally between both the older version and Enhanced. This was a treat! Great score, great writing , great art and a good dose of hack 'n slash, story and adventure. This ranks equal if not better than Shadows of Undertide to me and we finally get an official link between the storys told from the original released expansions! For everyone moaning about paying 10 bucks for an expansion... This game has gotten regular updates since it released both by a lot fo the original developers and the comminity over at the Neverwinter Vault. We have gotten literal THOUSANDS of tales created with the toolset that Bioware of old gave us as a love letter to gamers everywhere. Itis one of the longest running games to ever be released and it erned that respect Foreveryone moaning about TEN BUCKS for an exspansion there will be hundreds more that would pay 10 bucks for every new expansion released because we home Neverwinter never dies. Buy this, you wont be disapointed and the money goes to develope more great adventures in the future.

Overall an enjoyable module, and if you are an NWN fanatic (and chances are if you are looking to buy a DLC for a 22+ year old game) you should get it. I would rank it lower than Hordes, Daggerford and Tyrants, but not much. Like some reviews have already said: the module feels more like a continuation of other modules (namely Tyrants of the Moonsea and Darkness over Daggerford) than the OC, but I found the story told very enjoyable. It tells a good enough story of its own, but it is intended to be a part one of a larger saga of modules. In addition: if you have years of experience with other D&D games and books (especially Icewind Dale 1&2 and the Icewind Dale trilogy of books) you will find a lot of callbacks to those which is delightful. The module is linear but it has a decent amount of side content similar to Tyrants of the Moonsea. My gripes in the gameplay department are mainly bugs (I had one main quest breaking but I could fix it with the console and one bug forced me to do a long backtrack as I was teleported to a wrong location) and the unfair fights in the first couple of hours. Even on Easy difficulty the early fights with yeti and ice trolls were down to pure luck with my Fighter/Rogue/Blackguard as I had barely any equipment. After the half way point (4-5 hours) the fights became trivial even on D&D Hardcore difficulty though. Regarding length and level advancement: I got to level 13 in roughly 10 hours while doing what I believed was most of the side quests. In conclusion: Is the module good? Yes. Is it worth getting at full price? Yes, if you are obsessed about NWN and D&D. For a more casual NWN/D&D fan I would consider getting it on a sale.

Good module, worth the price. The overall module wasn't as great as Darkness over Daggerford or Tyrantas of the Moonsea, but a great start of a bigger story. There are a few minor design problems to the maps with narrow paths that got blocked by your companions and unclear directions which caused alot of running back and forth, which was annoying. Hopefully the maps get a bit easier to navigate in the next instalments. The plot itself felt a bit thin... Alot of narrative hooks that hints at something bigger, but you don't really get the chance to fully explore those. The dialog and character writing was great, however, and my only problem is that I wish there was more of it. The characters had potential to grow a bit more, and I hope the future installments lets you sit and smell the roses a bit more. The modules biggest problem is probably time and budget. It really feels like a story that would be great if it only had another writer or designer that could flesh out the world a bit with more local NPCs, companion dialog, and incidental quests. But overall I'm glad I played it.