This time round there are actual secret rooms, something that was incredibly omitted from the first title. Secret rooms have always been a part of D&D, and it's nice to come across a place that is there to be found solely to give the player some extra goodies. However, the quests are often very similar to those of the original, leaving the player with the impression that they are doing the same things against a different background.

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There is one big difference to the mechanics of the gameplay however. After the first chapter there's no way to teleport back to safety. So once you go out adventuring you better take all you might need with you as well as be more selective of the loot that you pick up and keep. This makes the game tenser, forcing you to remember to save often, a task that is easily forgotten when you are sucked right into the adventuring. Luckily the save takes place quickly, unlike some older RPGs I've played where I was constantly taking the risk of having to retread hours of dungeon to extricate myself from having to pause the adventure for the two minutes the game took to make a record of your progress up to that point. The puzzles were more involving this time around, with a good few of them sending me off to the forums for direction, (another useful area of Bioware's superb support system); although a good few of these had me slapping my forehead in a 'doh!' kind of way once it became apparent that the answer was staring me right in the face all along. Let's just say that most of them had a visual clue in their surroundings.

You can now fiddle with your henchmen to your hearts content, a process that they will happily submit to now, overturning the hesitant bashfulness they displayed in NWN. This makes a big difference to the gameplay, as not only can you equip your companion for the role that you have in mind for them but they can also help to cart around the swag that you discover. Control over the of their class is also expanded. You can get them to multi-class or concentrate on one discipline, and they will level up accordingly. As the game progressed Xanos started to unleash some devastating spells, including a fireball that made me rather envious, while maintaining his ability to hold himself in a sword fight.

Technically all is not sweet. Occasionally the inventory can get lost, an annoying event which necessitated a reload. Slain skeletons sometimes appear as dead bodies rather then a heap of bones, gaining in death what they lost in life after death. There are quite a few bugs here, but nothing that will turn enjoyment of the game into frustration. I was fairly engrossed during the 20 hours or so it took me to complete the game but I could never really shake the feeling that this was more of a retread than an expansion, as far as the story and adventuring was concerned. The number of new additions to the engine and the gameplay system is impressive, it's just sad that effort wasn't replicated in the actual gaming that you get to do. And the conclusion is anything but climatic - coming all too abruptly. While the finish line was well signposted I had convinced myself that there would be a second encounter with your nemesis. Instead I went through one of the less involving and thrilling fights in the game to be presented with a quick little storyboard-style end-piece, which was the final letdown of the game.

Shadows of Undrentide, as a game, is a disappointing first expansion for a title that made such a massive impact on the D&D world. You could say that when held up against the myriad of feats of the initial title SoU was bound to look a little ineffectual, but as I've said in this review it is the lacklustre adventuring that let this pack down, not the amount of new content. If you liked the first one you will get ample enjoyment from SoU but will probably have the same impression as I did.

Metaphorically, it was like following up a Whopper with a normal Cheeseburger. You may get the addition of mustard but the product as whole is much less filling and leaves you wanting for more. It's up to Bioware to bring the official continuation of NWN back up to the stellar heights that they themselves first propelled it into. Still, despite my misgivings I do recommend it to NWN fans, if just for the extra toys that it brings to the NWN world.

75%

By Sam Gibson