Fantastisches Aufeinandertreffen

Since I never actually played through Neverwinter Nights 2, I don't think I ever got to enjoy the content of Storm of Zehir. So I'll just quote the Wikipedia entry here, as real journalists do:

Storm of Zehir is an expansion of Neverwinter Nights 2 and continues the formula of a role-playing video game played from an overhead third-person perspective. Players first create a character along the lines of the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 rules by selecting a variety of traits, such as a race, class, and feats. New character creation options include the yuan-ti pureblood and gray orc races, the swashbuckler class, and the hellfire warlock and doomguide of Kelemvor prestige classes. The rest of the player's party can also be created, unlike Neverwinter Nights 2, but pre-made characters are available if the player is not interested in complete customization. The party can then explore several regions on the Forgotten Realms continent of Faerûn. The game provides an overland map that is used to move between different areas like towns and dungeons. While on the map, characters can use various skills to identify treasure, monsters, and other points of interest, such as side quests and secret locations. The party can rest while on the map, but doing so puts them at risk of random encounters in the form of wandering monsters.

Additional content:

• New character options (new races, base and prestige classes, background traits and ancestral talents)
• New animal companion
• New creature models
• New textures
• New tileset
• New visual effects
• New crafting system

Wikipedia entry for Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir

Games from the Dungeons & Dragons-series

Neverwinter Nights (2002)

Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006)

Everyone on the same page? Okay, then let's move on to the soundtrack. Because something has changed there too.

Instead of Rik Schaffer, Paul Romero and Rob King are now involved. We know the composer duo primarily from the Heroes of Might and Magic-series, where they have delivered increasingly great soundtracks over the years. So it's not surprising that I particularly like the pieces in Storm of Zehir that drift a little in this fantasy direction.

However, we don't actually hear a transformed form of the Heroes-formula here, which has its very own style. Instead, perhaps with the help of Alexander Brandon, we encounter an arrangement of classic fantasy, as we know it from Kingdoms of Amalur, Overlord or Age of Wonders , for example. Gone are the days of realistic tones like in the main game or Maks of the Betrayer. No, this gamerip swings the stereotype cudgel to the full and hits my dopamine store every now and then with tracks like Beach (Combat), Shipwreck and Swamp (Combat) . Although the score doesn't come close to that of the main game, it at least comes a little closer to my enthusiasm.