Finished HotU for first time. My thoughts.

[Legacy_ZFR]

               Finally finished HotU for the first time. (8 years after its release I must be one of the first to complete this game... anyone beat me?)

Anyway, this will contain ENDING SPOILERS and might contain spoilers from SoU and the OC.

Roleplay, gameplay, quest-wise, storyline-wise... etc it was better than SoU and way way much better than OC. It was also shorter (it seems the official campaigns were getting shorter and better with each expansion). Good interactions, nice quests, different ways of doing things... etc.

Disadvantages, other than the short length mentioned before:
_Way too easy. Not a single battle was any challenge. I think the most difficult one was the dragon in level 1 chapter 1, but only because by this time you still don't have many items. But even that was easy. Final boss, Grimgnaw, dracolich might have required a reaload or two, but posed no real challenge. I  played strength based bard/RRD. Most of the battles were just click and wait for the fighting to finish, including "difficult" opponents like illithids, golems, beholders, devils/daemons. maybe my class was overpowered, but with Deekin and Valen as henchman I could just as well be a skill-less peasant standing idly and waiting for them to finish the job. Sometimes a buff or a bard song would help to speed things up, but still no real strategy was required.
_It was Monty Haul. Especially in chapters 2 and 3 where way too many powerful weapons/items were easily available. "So I found this Cool Sword of Hacking +234298. Great, I'll just put it in my backpack with the other 8 I found so far". The "super-high" reward of 100k becomes really funny. Why should you want to risk your life and draw the drow out to claim it, when all you have to do is to go down and check some garbage cans or kill some goblins to get items worth much more than that.
_Unpolished. Had some glitches. Especially in dialogues in chapter 3. some dialogue paths were incomplete, some made no sense given other actions you've taken... etc. For example, if Aribeth's was Sleeping Man's true love, you could still convince her that you love her in Mephi's dialogue, after which you get both endings that she travelled with you and with sleeping man.

Overall I think SoU was best. The campaign was almost as good, and but had some much more difficult battles. SoU's main problem was that you finish at level 12-14, so you miss out all the cool high level abilities/spells...

Interesting things I found (many of you probably know this).
_You can get Sleeping man to join your final fight. If his true love is Aribeth. Not sure if there are other ways for this to happen. He's not that useful though..
_You can light fire with 20 velox berries for instant suicide.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_jmlzemaggo]

               

ZFR wrote...
Interesting things I found (many of you probably know this).
_You can get Sleeping man to join your final fight. If his true love is Aribeth. Not sure if there are other ways for this to happen. He's not that useful though..

If I recall right, Aribeth or any other female companion, including yourself if you play a woman.
But, on the contrary, I found him being very efficient, and I remember that one battle he took care of M just by himself. 
I'm also a big fan of SoU, by the way. I found the HotU story too... complicated. Too much of a technical exploit. 
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_HipMaestro]

               Although it was well-designed and innovative (I particularly enjoyed the starting challenge of being stripped of ones primo gear), I felt it was anti-climactic.  Being able to complete the story with no challenge at the end by simply hoarding enough gold to buy Meph's True Name was a let-down for me, personally.  It seems inappropriate somehow that the final combat, as easy as it was, could be entirely avoided BY DESIGN.

I agree totally that the economic balance was way out of whack.  There is essentially nothing that cannot be obtained even with a poor Appraisal check.  Gold = godliness = predictable & boring.

IMO any content's value should rest on its on own accord and not depend on customizations (like TK's AI, for instance) to provide the balance and challenge that should have been designed by the creators in the first place. 

As tedious as the first chapter of SoU is/was for me to play through... overall, it is a better-balanced, more-challenging module than HotU.  But, in general, the larger the campaign the more difficult it becomes to retain the balancing and immersive qualities so requires much more design effort.   SoU's major flaw was that its scope could have been easily expanded to include some linkage between the two expansions, again, IMO.  Just too short.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par HipMaestro, 29 septembre 2011 - 02:20 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_philty_]

               Strangely enough, I liked the OC more than both expansions. Actually, what I liked most in HotU, was 1) you start without your uber-stuff, but can get it back later; 2) the 3-stage long battle before you go to the frozen hell; 3) I liked that in a beholder's area, where all magic and magic items lose their magic status, you have three different ways to  get to the main area.

I just thought Bioware did characterise the Underdark's "evilness" *very badly *. And after you play the Paladins Trilogy and witness Pirotase's conversation with her "friends", you wonder how much the mood was off in this regard.

One last thing: imo, the whole epic-level stuff was vey badly done too. It might be true to the rules, etc..., but really, it came to a point that any level 30 character looks like the other. Epic level imo just killed the essence of the characters.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Adeph]

               I finished it for the first time last night, loved it. It was much better than SoU imo which I finished last year but disappointed me enough I shelved HOTU for 12 months, what a mistake that was!

I have to admit the Maker and the undead dragon kicked my ass the first few attempts I fought them. I loved chapter 3 especially, the demon hand was something I was not expecting in a game like this and the shape shifting made you look at things differently.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_jmlzemaggo]

               HotU is surely the best "exploits" type of the OCs. That hand still amazes me... years later.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_unclejoe1917]

               HotU is far and away my favorite of all the campaigns in either NWN1 or 2.  I really like how the story comes full circle with the OC (even though it is technically a sequel to SoU) as you hook back up with Aribeth.  I like the overall mood of the adventure. Nathyrrah is hot.  Yeah, you get too much gold and goodies, but you are saving the world after all.  That should be worth something.