There's a new camera option that allows you to zoom in much closer, hovering just above and behind your hero's shoulder, giving an arcade/adventure style aspect on the action. Unfortunately you can't adjust the zoom level in this view but this doesn't stop it from being a nice way to watch uncomplicated battles. Graphical errors and blemishes were more noticeable the second time round, such as black blocks on raised scenery, harsh cutaways or enemies and traps that can be seen through solid walls. While there's an extra helping of those amazing particle effects to animate the new spells like Bigbies Interposing Hand and Sunbursts, a little extra spit and polish on the engine wouldn't have gone amiss. We should hopefully see some of this in Bioware's in-house, forthcoming expansion, Hordes of the Underdark. Don't get me wrong; the graphics engine is a fine beast, yet in comparison to the similarly aged Dungeon Siege it is more then Crayola.

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A smattering of new character voices breath some extra life into your characters. There must be some new in there because the repetitious combat music which soon began to grate in NWN is far less prevalent this time round. One of the henchmen and the one I stuck with for the whole adventure, Xanos, also sounds a heck of lot like Watto of the junkyard fame

The update function has been revised to include the downloading of Bioware's newsletters as well as some of their modules. The missing ambient sound file also came down the pipe along with the latest patch. There's been some expansion in the number of game options as well, with more graphical tweaking available to get things running to your satisfaction. For example, SoU is another of a slowly increasing number of titles that recognise that Anti-Aliasing is a popular feature by allowing you to change it while in the game. In-game the pointer retains it fidelity, allowing you to manipulate your characters without it getting confused by its own context sensitive nature. Sending you off to open a chest in the middle of combat, for example, happens very infrequently even though the possibilities for such a tragic mismanagement of priorities are ample.

There's a plethora of new feats to enhance your character with, from a total of 30 in all. From Circle Kick to Luck of Heroes through Silver Palm and Blindfighting, there's plenty of new ways to customise your character. Some of them are only available at the 1st level so you have to make some hard choices right off the bat. I should mention now that all the new content is available to you in the original campaign if you decide to give it another bash. In fact, aside from modules, this is the only way to experience some of the higher level abilities. Even though the XP given away in SoU is generous you probably won't make it to the higher levels by the time the expansion comes screeching to a halt.

The items dropped appeared to be more closely tailored to the class of character that you are playing, which lessens the amount of useless material to be found. Saying that, my Arcane Archer went through only two sets of armour, and was wearing the same armour for the final battle that he'd had on since the start of the second chapter. You will come across some new weapon types too. Grenade like weapons such as Holy Water or Tanglefoot bombs can come in handy for softening up enemies, but due to their weak effects they are only really useful in the earlier stages of the game. At least you don't need a special proficiency to utilise them.