HOTU - Some criticisms

[DemonKing]

Ok - I just finished HOTU, so here are some (mostly spoiler free) criticisms of the finished product:

- The game is pretty stable and bug free. I had a problem with save games repeatedly corrupting that made me spend a couple of hours replaying an area until I worked out what was triggering the problem, but that was the sole issue I had.

- The graphics seem to be slightly improved over previous NWN games. You can also change the viewing angle to a behind the shoulder look, but I found this pretty useless and stuck to the default angle. Obviously the game uses tiles so I didn't find it quite as nice as the hand-crafted IE engine games or TOEE, but that is the price you pay for making something easily modable, I guess. I hope Bioware's "super secret" new PC CRPG will go back to the style set by the BG series rather than continue the toolset "experiment" of NWN.

- The game is split into 3 chapters. Chapter 1 is set in the famous FR dungeon of Undermountain which is run for the amusement of a mad wizard. Unfortunately it is nothing like I imagine Undermountain to be from the original D&D source material. I excpected to be teleported, lost and jolted around the place in a manner similar to the old Wizardry games (in particular, Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord) but instead got a fairly linear, short and boring dungeon crawl. In D&D I believe Undermountain is (at least) 9 levels - here you get 2 with some cursory caverns underneath.

- Chapter 2 is the most interesting and non-linear. You get to run around the Underdark (a sprawling world beneath a world) and make and/or break alliances with various races and factions. In the course of visiting several exotic locales you also get to fight some classic D&D monsters (I won't spoil it for you). At the end of the chapter you have to arrange the defence of an outpost positioning allies and troops where you best see fit...almost like a mini-Helm's Deep. It is quite exciting as the enemy storms the walls. Alas you might as well have not bothered because even if you defeat the bad guys another force breaks in behind you and you have to rush back and defend your town in a much less interesting fight which involves waves of enemies running straight at you...ho hum. I also had a problem with a Mind Flayer outpost where I struck a deal but then decided to free some slaves and do some looting. Well depsite me rampaging through certain parts of the outpost no one else there seemed to care and the deal I made held. Overall though, I'd say chapter 2 is the best of the 3.

- Chapter 3 is interesting since you leave the FR for a planar location. It even plays a little like PST in places with weird and wonderful characters (I especially liked the first guy you meet in this chapter and his greeting). Unfortunately the level is hampered by several "puzzle" levels which are a pain in the ass and some puzzles where the clues are a little bit esoteric (for example, the vague image of a man and a boy his supposed to make you think of the word "treason"...huh? I guess someone at Bioware had parental issues). A whole series of puzzles require you to constantly take on and off a particular piece of equipment...as you can imagine this is about as much fun as dressing and undressing in the morning about 30 times would be. The foozle at the end is pretty tough, depending on your choice of character...but you can dodge the fight if you take certain actions (unfortunately you have to have 700 000gp to do so - I do hope you weren't buying any equipment over the course of the game and saving your pennies!).

- The game suffers the same problems as most ultra high level D&D games (see Pools of Darkness and Throne of Bhaal in particular) - there are hoardes of unrealistically overpowered monsters thrown at you and in the end you are leaving +6 swords on the ground to avoid cluttering up your inventory. Also there is a problem where the prime goods storekeepers have cost from 300 - 500 000gp but the most they'll pay for your +10 Warhammer of Deity Slaying is 15 000. Not great design, particularly when having a pile of cash at the end of the game really helps.

- The NPCs are just as useless as they always were. Sometimes attacking. Sometimes standing still. Sometimes blasting fire elementals with fire spells etc. I really wish I could have full control over them in combat like I did in BG and TOEE. You can have two now instead of one so you think Bioware might have made sure that, for the non-rogue characters, there was always someone around who is decent at disarming traps. Ha! More fool you. I had to run through most of the first two levels of Undermountain getting constantly popped by traps (and those that I didn't set off my henchman walked over instead, naturally!). And in chapter 2 - there is *no* NPC with any disarm skills - and traps are even deadlier there. In chapter 3 there are virtually no traps (I guess even the designers got tired of them) - instead you get the annoying puzzles as noted above.

- One minor annoyance. I used my SOU character (an Arcane Archer) who had a spunky blonde Angelina Jollie lookalike portrait in that game. Not good enough says HOTU! They replace it without asking with a new portrait that is obviously intended to be based on the same portrait I had initially selected - but is instead butt ugly. I guess this is my "reward" for achieving epic levels or something. And of course, if I want to change my portrait back I have to download a 3rd party character editor. Thanks Bioware!

- There are some great in-game cutscenes and the music, voice acting and SFX are top notch (although I still think Jeremy Soule's best work was the original Icewind Dale stuff). Some of the dialog is pretty good and some of the NPC interactions amusing. The storyline is not too bad with a minor twist in the middle. Alas the end-game sequence, where a poorly animated monk gives you a wrap up of what you achieved over the course of the story ala TOB, FO, Arcanum, TOEE etc is downright embarrassing.

- Overall I rate this one slightly higher than the original NWN OC and just below SOU which while not adding much new was a better and tighter story IMHO. It's solid, fun and reasonably addictive - but not revolutionary...and if you hate the NWN engine then this really doesn't add enough to make it a worthwhile purchase. Also if you want to play with a friend - tough - HOTU doesn't support that option. Makes you wonder if you can't play the game multi why we have to put up with the limitations of the NWN engine in the first place. 6/10

 

[Walks with the Snails]

The graphics seem to be slightly improved over previous NWN games. You can also change the viewing angle to a behind the shoulder look, but I found this pretty useless and stuck to the default angle. Obviously the game uses tiles so I didn't find it quite as nice as the hand-crafted IE engine games or TOEE, but that is the price you pay for making something easily modable, I guess. I hope Bioware's "super secret" new PC CRPG will go back to the style set by the BG series rather than continue the toolset "experiment" of NWN.

I dunno about that. I've only managed to run through the 3 campaigns once, just like I only managed to run through BG and BG2 once. If it weren't for MP and mods, I'd never play NWN any more.

The game is split into 3 chapters. Chapter 1 is set in the famous FR dungeon of Undermountain which is run for the amusement of a mad wizard. Unfortunately it is nothing like I imagine Undermountain to be from the original D&D source material. I excpected to be teleported, lost and jolted around the place in a manner similar to the old Wizardry games (in particular, Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord) but instead got a fairly linear, short and boring dungeon crawl. In D&D I believe Undermountain is (at least) 9 levels - here you get 2 with some cursory caverns underneath.

Yeah, Undermountain really sucked. I'd say fully half of the user-made mods are probably better, and that's really not saying too much.

Chapter 2 is the most interesting and non-linear. You get to run around the Underdark (a sprawling world beneath a world) and make and/or break alliances with various races and factions. In the course of visiting several exotic locales you also get to fight some classic D&D monsters (I won't spoil it for you). At the end of the chapter you have to arrange the defence of an outpost positioning allies and troops where you best see fit...almost like a mini-Helm's Deep. It is quite exciting as the enemy storms the walls. Alas you might as well have not bothered because even if you defeat the bad guys another force breaks in behind you and you have to rush back and defend your town in a much less interesting fight which involves waves of enemies running straight at you...ho hum. I also had a problem with a Mind Flayer outpost where I struck a deal but then decided to free some slaves and do some looting. Well depsite me rampaging through certain parts of the outpost no one else there seemed to care and the deal I made held. Overall though, I'd say chapter 2 is the best of the 3.

I did like the different areas in Chapter 2. They were consistently pretty fun and interesting. I didn't care for the siege that much, though. Cool idea, but really the strategy didn't matter too much since basically everyone else existed to keep the hordes busy long enough for you to polish them all off. It was the closest thing to a challenge my wizard had run into up to that point, since he couldn't rest to regain spells, but I imagined it would be a cakewalk for a meat-grinder. The most they managed to do was take out my shield golem when I got careless. It's not like all your actions for the whole chapter really mattered that much, either. I killed the Elder Brain just as a character thing, and the Seer was really disappointed in me. End result - maybe 6 more mind flayers in the final assault, which took me all of 10 seconds to kill. Oooh. So much for the mightly Illithid army which threatens to overrun the Underdark.

Chapter 3 is interesting since you leave the FR for a planar location. It even plays a little like PST in places with weird and wonderful characters (I especially liked the first guy you meet in this chapter and his greeting). Unfortunately the level is hampered by several "puzzle" levels which are a pain in the ass and some puzzles where the clues are a little bit esoteric (for example, the vague image of a man and a boy his supposed to make you think of the word "treason"...huh? I guess someone at Bioware had parental issues). A whole series of puzzles require you to constantly take on and off a particular piece of equipment...as you can imagine this is about as much fun as dressing and undressing in the morning about 30 times would be. The foozle at the end is pretty tough, depending on your choice of character...but you can dodge the fight if you take certain actions (unfortunately you have to have 700 000gp to do so - I do hope you weren't buying any equipment over the course of the game and saving your pennies!).

The game suffers the same problems as most ultra high level D&D games (see Pools of Darkness and Throne of Bhaal in particular) - there are hoardes of unrealistically overpowered monsters thrown at you and in the end you are leaving +6 swords on the ground to avoid cluttering up your inventory. Also there is a problem where the prime goods storekeepers have cost from 300 - 500 000gp but the most they'll pay for your +10 Warhammer of Deity Slaying is 15 000. Not great design, particularly when having a pile of cash at the end of the game really helps.

I didn't really care for Chapter 3. Yeah, the first part was a bit like PS:T, only with less flavor. It was like they were really trying to be PS:T but just fell short. The little doggie was cool, but I didn't see the relation in his riddles either. I just went by trial and error.

And I thought the last boss was a joke. I'm not kidding here, I soloed the boy with a gnome wizard with a dagger. It was an uber dagger with all the trimmings from that smith, but still. It had vampiric regeneration, so like the oh so fun dragon battles in the OC, I just strapped on my greater swordman's belt, some elemental resitance and regeneration items, and left the game running for 15 minutes while I went to the kitchen to get something to drink. My spells were largely useless so I didn't have much choice anyway. Since Tenser's Transformation just transforms you into a gimp, that wasn't even any use.

The linear dungeon crawl for the remainder was just rather boring. And I also was short of gold at the end. Silly me, I thought I'd stock up before setting out, and then there was no one to sell loot to for the entire remainder of the chapter, so if you didn't walk out of the first town with 1,000,000 GP, sorry Charlie. I also thought the GP ceilings were a bit idiotic, especially considering they'd sell you some really expensive stuff. I also ran into a rather rookie mistake reminiscent of FO1, where just by having a few ranks in appraise I was able to sell stuff for less than it would cost me. They went to the trouble of putting GP ceilings and limited merchant money but didn't fix that, which is the real problem with merchants?

The NPCs are just as useless as they always were. Sometimes attacking. Sometimes standing still. Sometimes blasting fire elementals with fire spells etc. I really wish I could have full control over them in combat like I did in BG and TOEE. You can have two now instead of one so you think Bioware might have made sure that, for the non-rogue characters, there was always someone around who is decent at disarming traps. Ha! More fool you. I had to run through most of the first two levels of Undermountain getting constantly popped by traps (and those that I didn't set off my henchman walked over instead, naturally!). And in chapter 2 - there is *no* NPC with any disarm skills - and traps are even deadlier there. In chapter 3 there are virtually no traps (I guess even the designers got tired of them) - instead you get the annoying puzzles as noted above.

Didn't even bother with henchmen given past experiences. I had a little fun with the shield golem for a few minutes but quickly decided he wasn't worth the XP penalty, and it's not like I needed him anyway.

There are some great in-game cutscenes and the music, voice acting and SFX are top notch (although I still think Jeremy Soule's best work was the original Icewind Dale stuff). Some of the dialog is pretty good and some of the NPC interactions amusing. The storyline is not too bad with a minor twist in the middle. Alas the end-game sequence, where a poorly animated monk gives you a wrap up of what you achieved over the course of the story ala TOB, FO, Arcanum, TOEE etc is downright embarrassing.

Yeah, the music was pretty cool. It did seem a bit weird sometimes when they played really dramatic music when I was just slaying a pack of helpless drow though. I also was impressed when the Valsharess tried to parley with you, wasn't what I expected from a Bio game.

And I thought the ending was rather cute. As I sat there watching the results of my accomplishments scroll by, I just thought, "Aw, that's so cute. They're really trying to be like Troika."

Overall I rate this one slightly higher than the original NWN OC and just below SOU which while not adding much new was a better and tighter story IMHO. It's solid, fun and reasonably addictive - but not revolutionary...and if you hate the NWN engine then this really doesn't add enough to make it a worthwhile purchase. Also if you want to play with a friend - tough - HOTU doesn't support that option. Makes you wonder if you can't play the game multi why we have to put up with the limitations of the NWN engine in the first place. 6/10

I don't know about addictive. I think it does show Bio is making improvements at least. Like SoU, there are a few gems hidden in a heap of mediocrity that overall just sort of disappoints me and makes me think Bio could do so much more but just aren't willing to put forth the effort. They remind me of some rich, bright school kid who just coasts by on C's because that's all he really needs to get by.

 

[Sheriff05]

- One minor annoyance. I used my SOU character (an Arcane Archer) who had a spunky blonde Angelina Jollie lookalike portrait in that game. Not good enough says HOTU! They replace it without asking with a new portrait that is obviously intended to be based on the same portrait I had initially selected - but is instead butt ugly. I guess this is my "reward" for achieving epic levels or something. And of course, if I want to change my portrait back I have to download a 3rd party character editor. Thanks Bioware! -.

FYI, this was because Bioware never performed any sort of due dilligence within it's art department and some of the original portraits (like the one you used) were basically lifted directly from a photo that someone else owned. After this came to light they had to change a dozen or portraits, to avoid copyright infringement hassles-

Makes you wonder if you can't play the game multi why we have to put up with the limitations of the NWN engine in the first place. 6/10

you hit the nail on the head as that pretty much spells out the big problem with the entire NWN franchise-

Nice review, honest and objective-

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

- The game is pretty stable and bug free. I had a problem with save games repeatedly corrupting that made me spend a couple of hours replaying an area until I worked out what was triggering the problem, but that was the sole issue I had.

I had a few save game corruptions as well. I really don't think this is acceptable given how long NWN was in development and how long it's been since the release considering two expansions have been introduced since then.

- The graphics seem to be slightly improved over previous NWN games. You can also change the viewing angle to a behind the shoulder look, but I found this pretty useless and stuck to the default angle. Obviously the game uses tiles so I didn't find it quite as nice as the hand-crafted IE engine games or TOEE, but that is the price you pay for making something easily modable, I guess. I hope Bioware's "super secret" new PC CRPG will go back to the style set by the BG series rather than continue the toolset "experiment" of NWN.

The lack of mouth animations was pretty sad as well. If they were going to do close ups on the models for conversation, then there should have been better animations for close ups.

- The game is split into 3 chapters. Chapter 1 is set in the famous FR dungeon of Undermountain which is run for the amusement of a mad wizard. Unfortunately it is nothing like I imagine Undermountain to be from the original D&D source material. I excpected to be teleported, lost and jolted around the place in a manner similar to the old Wizardry games (in particular, Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord) but instead got a fairly linear, short and boring dungeon crawl. In D&D I believe Undermountain is (at least) 9 levels - here you get 2 with some cursory caverns underneath.

Level 1 of Undermountain wasn't bad, but after that.. Ugh. Level 2 was pretty lame and just seemed like any other dungeon anywhere. Level 3 was just plain lame. There was really no consistancy in this implimentation of Undermountain and it got progressively lamer and tamer as you went down.

- Chapter 2 is the most interesting and non-linear. You get to run around the Underdark (a sprawling world beneath a world) and make and/or break alliances with various races and factions. In the course of visiting several exotic locales you also get to fight some classic D&D monsters (I won't spoil it for you). At the end of the chapter you have to arrange the defence of an outpost positioning allies and troops where you best see fit...almost like a mini-Helm's Deep. It is quite exciting as the enemy storms the walls. Alas you might as well have not bothered because even if you defeat the bad guys another force breaks in behind you and you have to rush back and defend your town in a much less interesting fight which involves waves of enemies running straight at you...ho hum. I also had a problem with a Mind Flayer outpost where I struck a deal but then decided to free some slaves and do some looting. Well depsite me rampaging through certain parts of the outpost no one else there seemed to care and the deal I made held. Overall though, I'd say chapter 2 is the best of the 3.

I really didn't like Chapter 2 too much. I thought the best thing about it was the flying elves thing, but it could have and should have been done better. The mind flayer thing was okay, though. However, the golem area sucked(why can't I kill the maintenance golem?) and the beholder area was pretty lame as well. The beholder area just seemed like a Diablo 2 dungeon, really. There was really only one thing to make it special so this could probably be made with MODULE WIZARDS rather than a team of developers sitting down and crafting something.

- Chapter 3 is interesting since you leave the FR for a planar location. It even plays a little like PST in places with weird and wonderful characters (I especially liked the first guy you meet in this chapter and his greeting). Unfortunately the level is hampered by several "puzzle" levels which are a pain in the ass and some puzzles where the clues are a little bit esoteric (for example, the vague image of a man and a boy his supposed to make you think of the word "treason"...huh? I guess someone at Bioware had parental issues). A whole series of puzzles require you to constantly take on and off a particular piece of equipment...as you can imagine this is about as much fun as dressing and undressing in the morning about 30 times would be. The foozle at the end is pretty tough, depending on your choice of character...but you can dodge the fight if you take certain actions (unfortunately you have to have 700 000gp to do so - I do hope you weren't buying any equipment over the course of the game and saving your pennies!).

Yeah, Chapter 3 starts off great. I was pretty impressed.. Then it degrades to SuperMario's Annoyingland Jamboree. If Chapter 3 started and finished the way it started, it would easily be one of the better things BioWare's ever done.

- The game suffers the same problems as most ultra high level D&D games (see Pools of Darkness and Throne of Bhaal in particular) - there are hoardes of unrealistically overpowered monsters thrown at you and in the end you are leaving +6 swords on the ground to avoid cluttering up your inventory. Also there is a problem where the prime goods storekeepers have cost from 300 - 500 000gp but the most they'll pay for your +10 Warhammer of Deity Slaying is 15 000. Not great design, particularly when having a pile of cash at the end of the game really helps.

What got me was getting my ass kicked by goblins, then a few dungeon levels later, I was trashing Balors like they were pissant nothings.

- The NPCs are just as useless as they always were. Sometimes attacking. Sometimes standing still. Sometimes blasting fire elementals with fire spells etc. I really wish I could have full control over them in combat like I did in BG and TOEE. You can have two now instead of one so you think Bioware might have made sure that, for the non-rogue characters, there was always someone around who is decent at disarming traps. Ha! More fool you. I had to run through most of the first two levels of Undermountain getting constantly popped by traps (and those that I didn't set off my henchman walked over instead, naturally!). And in chapter 2 - there is *no* NPC with any disarm skills - and traps are even deadlier there. In chapter 3 there are virtually no traps (I guess even the designers got tired of them) - instead you get the annoying puzzles as noted above.

I'd much rather have a CRPG focused on single characters, but if the AI is going to be this bad... In fact, I thought NWN's OC AI was a little better than this. I think one of the main problems is that NWN's pathfinding is such shit which causes the NPC AI to behave more stupidly than it should.

- There are some great in-game cutscenes and the music, voice acting and SFX are top notch (although I still think Jeremy Soule's best work was the original Icewind Dale stuff). Some of the dialog is pretty good and some of the NPC interactions amusing. The storyline is not too bad with a minor twist in the middle. Alas the end-game sequence, where a poorly animated monk gives you a wrap up of what you achieved over the course of the story ala TOB, FO, Arcanum, TOEE etc is downright embarrassing.

I agree about the end game wrap up. Given that games have had this since at least 1997, you'd think BioWare could get this down by 2003.

- Overall I rate this one slightly higher than the original NWN OC and just below SOU which while not adding much new was a better and tighter story IMHO. It's solid, fun and reasonably addictive - but not revolutionary...and if you hate the NWN engine then this really doesn't add enough to make it a worthwhile purchase. Also if you want to play with a friend - tough - HOTU doesn't support that option. Makes you wonder if you can't play the game multi why we have to put up with the limitations of the NWN engine in the first place. 6/10

I'd say one reason it's better than the OC is just because it's not intended for multiplayer.

 

[Volourn]

You can kill the maintainance golem..

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Yeah. That was actually an okay puzzle. I felt kind of guilty about it, though. It would have been nice to just be able to disable him.

 

[DemonKing]

I've only managed to run through the 3 campaigns once, just like I only managed to run through BG and BG2 once. If it weren't for MP and mods, I'd never play NWN any more.

Yes - I agree it has more potential than BG & BG2 as far as longevity go with the user-designed modules, but I have trouble getting into the official NWN campaigns. With the great hand-crafted look of the IE engine games I really felt like I was in another world but every NWN map looks like it was built with the same basic lego set just rearranged in different ways.

And as I said, seeing as HOTU is not multi-capable, why do we have to put up with the engine anyway?

Oh well - I guess we'll just have to see what their next project/engine entails.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

You can kill the maintainance golem..

I'm talking about running up to him and slicing his little golem guts out. Instead, you're forced to solve the little puzzle thing in order to stop him. It's rather silly that my fighter has to run around flipping toggles in order to stop a living golem, you know?

 

[Jed]

With the great hand-crafted look of the IE engine games I really felt like I was in another world but every NWN map looks like it was built with the same basic lego set just rearranged in different ways.

This is the problem I have getting into the user-made mods: they all look and play pretty much the same. It's fine if I just want to play a nice hack'n'slash campaign with my brother or friends or whatever, but if I'm playing solo, it just all feels like the goddamned OC...

 

[MrBrown]

Unfortunately the level is hampered by several "puzzle" levels which are a pain in the ass and some puzzles where the clues are a little bit esoteric (for example, the vague image of a man and a boy his supposed to make you think of the word "treason"...huh? I guess someone at Bioware had parental issues).

There's several images associated with each of these pilars, the one you're talking about included the image of 1) A tree and 2) A Man and a boy. Hence, treason.

Personally, I really liked this puzzle. Not annoying, includes some thinking, but can be solved just by trial if you're bored. The only problem was that you had talk to the doggie again if you chose the wrong pillar, which resulted in alot running around before I figured how it worked... they should have scripted this differently.

I pretty much agree with SP about chapter 3 in general. Didn't mind the puzzles themselves, they were just really out of place, and too many.

 

[DemonKing]

There's several images associated with each of these pilars, the one you're talking about included the image of 1) A tree and 2) A Man and a boy. Hence, treason.

LOL - you're right...It never occurred to me that some stange alien dog from hell would be playing mental charades with me, but still...a damn pun puzzle? It is scraping the bottom of the barrel a bit.

I guess I was looking for something a bit deeper than the above. I thought maybe there was some deep iconographic symbolism in the images I was missing...more fool me.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Yeah, they were definitely out of place. It didn't make much sense to me that a 27th level Dwarven Defender build character would have to chase a mimick around and then kill it with a puzzle, when he could just have beaten the shit out of it. It might have made sense for a first level character that wouldn't stand a chance against one to do this, but an epic level one?