I've spent about half of the last 24 hours of my /played time in Neverwinter running through Undermountain, the 71-80 levelling content introduced in Mod 16. I'm four zones in, so leaving aside for now my thoughts on what the module did to the older campaigns - because I've already talked about that - what do I think of Undermountain so far?
It's... alright.
The intro to the campaign is fairly well done. It's not as good as the wild ride that led into Jungles of Chult, or as atmospheric as Ravenloft*, but it sets that scene. I do think there's a couple of things that could have been expanded upon more - the ghost/narrator is just kind of there for a long time and when they do get a proper intro it's underwhelming for such an omnipresent character. Similarly, I'm not actually feeling the threat the Mad Mage is supposed to represent, and it doesn't help that after he and other other named adversaries make their initial appearances they then go offstage and are mostly uninvolved in what goes on in the first few zones.
*Admittedly it'd be hard to outdo Ravenloft in this, since that module was dripping with atmosphere all the way through.
The first zone, Catacombs, has the most classic dungeon feel to it, and delivers on the atmosphere of a vast underground structure better than any of the other zones. The mobs are nothing special, but it looks good and the music is excellent. It's quite a change of pace from a lot of Neverwinter's soundtrack, being more atmospheric and ambient than the energetic action music this game does so well.
The good music continues into Twisted Caverns, which is easily the best of these first four zones. The comedy bits with the Kuo Toa are pretty silly but still got some laughs out of me, and this area also has the best sense of progressing through a story, even if the final fight was too easy for a character who was already level 80.
Next up is Wyllowwood, which doesn't do much with the underground setting, and is also a lot shorter. The enemies are unremarkable and there's a subplot involving a magic sword and a dragon that didn't hit the mark for me. There's a lot of unconventional quest givers in Undermountain, and as in the Upper Vault of Whispering Caverns I appreciate the effort to provide quest givers who might reasonably be there, rather than just having some Harpers scouting deeper into the dungeon.
There are more unconventional quest givers in Terminus - that's pretty much what the zone is built around. The quests in Neverwinter are far less nuanced than then best of say City of Heroes, and it's rare in this game that the player is working for the bad guys, but Terminus feels like a missed opportunity. In a game where the character is almost always unequivocally cast as The Hero it should feel different to be working for demons, but it doesn't, because the quests that are handed out are standard stuff. In CoH I can find myself questioning what I'm doing and who I'm working for, because it's really well written and goes to some surprisingly dark places. In Neverwinter, after questing in Sharandar, I'm not going to feel bad about killing a few more fomorians.
Terminus also has an unusually clunky layout by the standards of this game, and there's a lot of back and forth over old ground, killing the old mobs en route to the new mobs. It's telling that this is so obviously the case that toward the end of the zone story a portal is provided as a shortcut to where the finale takes place.
So that's Undermountain so far. Some of it is good, most of it is okay, and the bits that are neither mostly don't take too long to get through.
As always at the end of these runs I find myself thinking back over them, and reflecting on how my most recent experience of a game might affect how I think about that game. In this case I'm almost surprised to say that I'm still looking forward to coming back to Neverwinter to finish off Undermountain and continue on to Avernus. The neutering of the old campaigns has struck a sour note, but all in all the game is still a blast to play. Of all my characters, in all the MMOs I've played, my Rogue in Neverwinter may well be my all time favourite. The moment to moment gameplay is just - as I've said before - damn good fun, and that's what will keep me coming back, despite the misteps of Mod 16.
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