NWN - Tyrants of the Moonsea Review

HiddenX

HiddenX

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The RPG Codex reviewed the expansion pack Tyrants of the Moonsea for Neverwinter Nights:

RPG Codex Review: Neverwinter Nights - Tyrants of the Moonsea

For a couple of years now, I've been plugging Tyrants of the Moonsea as the best piece of official content for Neverwinter Nights, and yet I've begun to suspect few of you have hearkened to my sage advice. So I thought to myself, this one's never had a proper official review around here, why not put that front page to good use?

Authored by Luke Scull under Ossian Studios, 2019's Tyrants of the Moonsea is arguably the flagship expansion pack for Beamdog's Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition 2018 re-release. Like the first NWN:EE expansion, Darkness over Daggerford (Enhanced Edition), it was born of Atari's Premium Modules program for the original BioWare release of Neverwinter Nights and similarly scuttled when the publisher suddenly cancelled that initiative, but DoD was nearing completion and Alan Miranda's Ossian decided to share it on the Neverwinter Vault, whereas TotM was still in the early stages of development. When Beamdog acquired the NWN license, Ossian finally got the opportunity to polish up and make DoD:EE available as paid DLC, but the adventure's content is still the same that was (and continues to be) available for free on the Vault. The Vault version of TotM, however, was just a demo and the module was only completed for the EE, pretty much tripling the content and taking the plot to its conclusion.

[...]

Looking back to the Infinity Engine and even many of its contemporary peers, Baldur's Gate 2 is king (no matter how much that might make some of the local fauna seethe), but why? Icewind Dale had better combat, the first Baldur's Gate had better exploration, Planescape: Torment had better writing etc. - all of that is true, but Baldur's Gate 2 was pretty darn good at all of it. That's what gets it top billing and the same qualities apply to Tyrants of the Moonsea for NWN - you should easily find other modules, official or fan-made, that do better in various individual respects, but Ossian's title scores high on all counts and if you enjoy NWN at all (if you don't, you should never admit it!), passing on TotM would be a big mistake.

Now, if the byzantine brandings and histories have left you confused, allow me to make it simple - Tyrants of the Moonsea is for sale on GOG, Steam and the Beamdog Client. If you also want to check out its prior episodes in the Alazander series, they're free on the Neverwinter Vault as Siege of Shadowdale Enhanced Edition and Crimson Tides of Tethyr Enhanced Edition or in NWN:EE's integrated content browser. For historic purposes, links to the Diamond Edition distributions of those two modules are on their respective Vault pages under Related Projects.

So there you have it, I've led you to the water, I've even forced your snout in, the rest is up to you. Drink and you'll get the full flavour of competent writing and design, solid production values and artistic direction, fun combat and exploration... To put it simply, Tyrants of the Moonsea is, at this time, the definitive single-player NWN experience.
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Thanks Couchpotato!



More information.
 
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Hmm this does sound good. I only ever played NWN once back in the day, really didn't enjoy the single player campaign and gave up in it. NWN2 on the other hand, I devoured everything!

Daniel.
 
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The original campaign wasn't the best because they didn't have enough time to make it shine, but the Shadows of the Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark were very enjoyable. The reception of this new campaign seems only lukewarm, but I might try it some day.

Do you also have to scroll the window to read the text of the review (or make your browser full screen)? It's quite annoying to have to read long lines stretching over the full width of the monitor. Maybe it's always been like that in the Codex, but I glanced at it a few times before and it never struck me.
 
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Redglyph said:
The original campaign wasn't the best because they didn't have enough time to make it shine, but the Shadows of the Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark were very enjoyable. The reception of this new campaign seems only lukewarm, but I might try it some day.

Do you also have to scroll the window to read the text of the review (or make your browser full screen)? It's quite annoying to have to read long lines stretching over the full width of the monitor. Maybe it's always been like that in the Codex, but I glanced at it a few times before and it never struck me.
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I found SoU mediocre and very buggy when I played it. HotU on the other hand was really worth playing and several levels above the OC and SoU.

There have always been various issues with the layout on the Codex as it's chronically outdated (much like ours, ahem). I reported the issue, but whether anything will change in the short term remains to be seen.
 
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Taluntain said:
I found SoU mediocre and very buggy when I played it. HotU on the other hand was really worth playing and several levels above the OC and SoU.
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I preferred HotU too.

To be fair, I loved playing NWN and wasn't too particular about the quality of the story at the time. I even found the OC rather good when I first played it because it was my first experience with that game genre. So, yes, I may be biased here.
 
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Redglyph said:
The original campaign wasn't the best because they didn't have enough time to make it shine, but the Shadows of the Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark were very enjoyable.
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I agree with Taluntain that SoU was mediocre but HotU was fantastic. I replayed HotU a few timed but I got so bored with SoU, I don't remember anything about the module except that it had Deekin (fun henchman).

Redglyph said:
The reception of this new campaign seems only lukewarm, but I might try it some day.
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? I thought Tyrants of the Moonsea is not a new camapign, thought it was out for ages (I only read snippet of the review). I need to try this one too, heard many people praising it but never got around playing it.

Edit: I confused this with Crimson Tides of Tethyr, which I also haven't played. I did play the 1st part of Alazander series which didn't impress me at all so never bothered with Tethyr (2nd part). I really should play Tethyr then Moonsea as well!
 
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HiddenX said:
One of the best NWN-mods is this one:
The Aielund Saga
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Thanks for digging out my old review :) Please note that this is one of my first attempt at writing reviews so it was quite rough but the TL; DR is "its fucking fantastic, go play it" ;)
 
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purpleblob said:
? I thought Tyrants of the Moonsea is not a new camapign, thought it was out for ages (I only read snippet of the review). I need to try this one too, heard many people praising it but never got around playing it.
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Yes, I put it badly with 'reception', as if it was a new thing. I mean the scores didn't fly very high, mainly because of bugs. Maybe it got better.
 
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The Codex is weird. They hate EVERYTHING, but they seem to love this module, which is far from the best ones made for NWN... I played a few years ago and it's pretty cool, but nothing incredible.
 
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Redglyph said:
Yes, I put it badly with 'reception', as if it was a new thing. I mean the scores didn't fly very high, mainly because of bugs. Maybe it got better.
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The original version was intended to be sold but was left unfinished when Hasbro and Atari dropped paid mod support. The EE version much better and actually has an ending.
 
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purpleblob said:
So After Aielund is written by different author, not Savant? Hmm I can't even see rating for this module
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It was released with permission of Savant the original modder. It also doesn't have many ratings as it was recently released. I played it and it was a decent mod and fit the original.

Only problem is the difficultly but once again it's a better ending to the series. You should be level 20 at the end of the last act made by savant. The download is large as well.
 
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