Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Immersive"

I picked this game up recently via direct download. I played the first NWN and NWN2 and enjoyed them both, and thoroughly enjoyed this expansion also.

The story begins with the same protagonist from the Neverwinter Nights 2 original campaign, a circumstance that doesn't always occur in expansions. The glowing shard implanted in your chest has been surgically removed, and you awaken with a bloody hole in your body. Your adventure unfolds from there, as you discover a curse that has befallen generations of your ancestors - a shadowy being that lives in your soul and seeks to devour it.

The story revolves largely around spirits and the afterlife, which wasn't appealing to me at first but the game's excellent scripting helped draw me in. I do not wish to spoil the story, but you are presented with choices and consequences and a rewarding sense at the end.

Mechanically the game uses the Infinity engine which allows you to pause the game and 'plan' out your strategy with your multiple characters and then the action will unfold in real-time as you unpause it. There is also a new camera mode in Mask of the Betrayer, called Character Mode you can select it using the "*" key on the Numpad. However, I didn't find that I preferred this mode to the traditional Neverwinter Nights camera...In fact, I think it has a main drawback in that it is a third-person view from directly behind the character, not over the shoulder...which directly obscures the camera's view from a large portion of the environment.

The extensively tweaked version of the Aurora engine used by Obsidian runs very well after a ton of diligent patches by the company. Even at high resolutions you should be able to get a great looking game with equally great framerates (with an appropriate video card, of course).

Overall, with a few disagreements about the story and camera, I only detract 1 point from the score and give this expansion a 9.0 out of 10.0 . Remember, I am judging this game as an expansion not a full retail game as it does require NWN2 original game to play. As an expansion, especially among RPGs it is absolutely phenomenal. Go and buy if you like CRPGs...

If you don't own Neverwinter Nights 2, then go and purchase it to play the Official Campaign, and then move to the Official Expansion Campaign... Now that is about 100 solid hours of D&D fun :)

(PS: This is a D&D RPG and if you have never played on you should begin on Easy difficulty...or tread lightly on Normal and save very often)