Hordes of the Underdark Review at RPGDot
Posted Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 23:23 CET by chevalier

RPGDot have reviewed the Hordes of the Underdark expansion, giving it a 9.4 score. Here's a bit of what they write:

I think it's safe to say the graphic quality of Hordes of the Underdark easily surpasses its predecessors. The character models appear to be more detailed, the new monster models are excellent, and the addition of a sky does much to increase the immersion of a player in the world of Faerun.

Additonal features include the inclusion of robes (and they look great. Now, if only they'd add cape models for that cape slot...) as well as the ability to customize your equipment's color schemes by use of dyes that you get in game. Not content with the color of some wicked armor I found in chapter 3 with my blackguard, for example, I gleefully changed its color to be as black as his soul. The end result was cool enough for me -- especially when I further discovered through experimentation that you could use the dyes on helmets as well. I did two complete play throughs with my trusty-rusty GeForce 2 MX (32 MB) and I noticed the graphic increases with Old Faithful. Halfway through my third completion of the module for this review I upgraded to a Radeon 9600 (if it impresses me my next upgrade will be to a 9800 Pro or XT once the prices drop). Immediately the game became totally unplayable. Sigh. I had to break one of my rules of reviewing and hit the official tech support forums looking for an answer to what turned out to be a rather common problem. I had to DOWNGRADE the Catalyst drivers that came with my card to 3.10 and turn off hardware mouse acceleration. Lovely. Ok, the driver thing I would have tried myself eventually but I never would have thought to check for something as innocent looking as a mouse setting. Once I got it working I was able to crank every graphic setting to and through the roof and blink in amazement as the graphics, which I've always thought were PERFECT for a D&D game, became even better looking.

See the rest at RPGDot.