Delving Into Undermountain

Remembering that most of my best times in Neverwinter involved playing the game with my husband, I convinced him to reinstall it as well and dust off his oathbound paladin. At first he was very reluctant, but already a few hours in he didn't want to stop playing again because he was really enjoying himself and wanted to see how the storyline we were playing through was going to end.

In fact, his enthusiasm was so overwhelming that we ended up playing through almost the entirety of the Undermountain campaign in a single Sunday afternoon session. This was made possible by it being the first campaign that didn't feature any time gating for story progression or boon acquisition. I don't know if it was like that at launch or if this is something Cryptic implemented later, but it made for a pleasant discovery either way.

The gameplay was a mix of the usual "kill x things over there and click y things while you're at it", but that's what we we're here for, isn't it? I did notice that some missions involved the use of some newfangled temporary abilities, but they were integrated into the UI in an unobtrusive way and not annoying.

The story was also enjoyable, in usual D&D fashion involving a mix of the slightly tragic but often silly. We were curious to see where plot developments would go throughout the whole thing and kept chatting about it while doing the quests. "I really want to know who that mysterious woman is!" Or: "I wonder what we're going to do with this guy; I mean we're working with him right now but he's evil, right?"

I may have been very annoyed with his module for all its system changes, but in terms of story they certainly did a very good job.