I've finished TotM too.
As everyone else said, really good presentation. The areas, specially the cities, look great, with the new tilesets, atmospheric lighting and plenty of sounds and NPCs doing their things. You actually have to look at it in the toolset to appreciate it fully, even with the expanded viewdistance...
The tilesets seems very polished. Oftentimes these sculpted terrain types have some issues, with odd looking seams/shadows or imperfect walkmeshes where you get "stuck" on seemingly flat ground with mouse movement. Older stuff also sometimes clashes with ambient occlusion. I think in whole Tyrants I had to move with WASD maybe twice?, otherwise it was all smooth even through the thin passageways. I saw EE didn't really improve things with "high" areas though as I had my character walking in the clouds a couple of times in the "random" dungeon in Zhentil Keep.
I don't really have a problem with lots of cutscenes, specially when they're well made. The animations/effects/camera were all unusually well synced. Cutscenes in NWN tend to be quite janky normaly. Sometimes animations can interrupt eachother or you see something that you didn't suppose to. Not a big issue but nice to see it addressed. The "morphing" sequences I guess are something done with that new creature resize functions of EE? They look much better than older attempts at such things, without all the obvious fade in/out of creature spawning on top with default position.
The portraits are a step up from whatever Beamdog is selling (that Fzoul psycho biker look is amazing). Creature models are almost
too detailed, but still somewhat fit in, mostly cause they're monsters and not people. Music is nice and fits in seamlessly, I believe there's even a separate track just for the final battle?
Story-wise I thought it was fine, though I'm more of a sucker for personal stories like PS:T and MotB. It's a grand adventure with bit of a BG vibe (chasing bad guy). If anything I'd wish it was more paced. Thinking back it seems like you get the whole exposition from talking to like 3 NPCs? Some more mystery and deeper hooks maybe. The best thing about the writing I thought was actually the various books you find in the module. They essentially describe and give a bit of background on every major area. Very good for worldbuilding as there's references to current goings-on in there too.
The companions... the undead girl stood out a bit from the rest I think (it's not a spoiler, she practically introduces herself with it and keeps reminding you every now and then), has an arc and everything. The fighter had the potential, but, alas... My favorite it's not actually a henchman per-se so I wish Elf could be a party member. I think it'd be better if the companions were a bit more active, too. As is now they have few interjections with most of stuff coming from you talking to them. They are somewhat aware of what's currently going on when you do but it seems a bit inconsistent. Looking at their builds I feel like facepalming though. Rogue got feats for both short sword and dagger but no dual-wielding. Ok technically it's fine. Then you got the ranger/bard/harper (rp) who got dualwield from ranger but also two-weapon fighting feat and even then no ambidexterity. Then again it doesn't really matter in the end.
Quests I'm not sure how to comment. Oftentimes I had the feeling that there had to be something more to them that I couldn't find, like the radiant blade owner, shadovar expedition, thayan wedding, bandit in the slums... Maybe I was overthinking things, but the locktower quest or fiends on the road had more wiggle room.
For gameplay, I'm kinda split, too.
Skill checks seem standard, besides locks/traps there's a fair deal of persuade/intimidate and I
believe there's number of instances of animal empathy for talking with animals. Not much else though, but then again other skills have gameplay effects. Maybe some spells are used in conversations, too. I've been able to use charm person a couple of times. I'd recommend avoiding pickpocketing. I've had some weird behavior with some NPCs going hostile, others not, then some attacking each other etc. Didn't get any loot anyway.
Some thought was put into the economy. At first I was disappointed with mostly vanilla items but it turned out to work well nonetheless. Stuff is crazy expensive and sells for little, you can't keep your team in top gear. And most of the time anything you buy is just temporary as you find equal/better stuff later. Just wish there was more named stuff, it really bothers me when I have an endgame +5 greatsword with divine damage bonus named "Greatsword +3"
. Speaking of which why allow divine bonus on weapon upgrades with same cost as other elements, but is unresistable. Anyway yeah, you have a forge with upgrades for weapons although it's pretty limited in options and quite expensive at the start (ehchants/damage/racial enchant).
Combat made me sigh a lot. It's quite varied with many different situations and enemy compositions and effects to deal with. But 99% of the time none of it matters as you just plow through with brute force. For example you have a quest to kill a big toothy monster and then you find it and quickly kill it. But it doesn't die and just kneels down and rises again after a short nap. You know, like trolls in BG2 for example. So it got up 1 or 2 times before I even notice this (it instantly goes back down cause my party is still duitfuly wailing on it). Thing is furry, maybe it's weak to fire damage like trolls but I'm already doing fire damage, so let's see if I have any acid spells or some other elements. Thing croaks before I even open inventory and I'm still not sure what the gimmick was.
You even have hints of stuff you're gonna encounter or items that are good at dealing with something but you can just ignore all that. I feel that the arena was meant to strip you and you had to rely on those 2 potions much more? That random demilich caught me off-guard, is the story behind it supposed to be on the staff you loot? Besides that the toughest enemy would be the adamantite golem. Those lategame casters were kinda iffy even with sequencers. Possibly due to stoneskins being ineffective? Oh yeah, I'm not sure if it's somehow exploitable but I liked the way enemies have a small delay before going red after conversations. I don't feel the need to insta-pause after chats anymore and they got time for their stuff to fire at least.
The module could also use a few more points of interest I feel. Some areas are pretty large yet pretty empty. Outside is one thing (adds to atmosphere) but with a large city quarter and only 1-2 doors that open and nothing else player related going on it feels like a wasted opportunity. Those vampires in a house with a note was a nice tidbit for example. The old Zhentil keep is made for explorations but it also just contains some combat encounters. I thought it was a cool idea (specialy cause it's a "new area" according to minimap) but some of those ruined buildings could have something to them.
As for bugs encountered. I actually only remember one that stuck out, which is an infinite xp loop in a conversation with.. uh.. Alazander. Oh and some mithril golem lookalikes didn't have construct immunities if that wasn't intentional. The biggest issues I had are probably the fault of EE itself. The companions seem to really love the longer view distance as they chase enemies across half the map and they don't even give up if you tell them to follow or stay (they run off again after a second or two). Cormanthor forest was really annoying because of this. The second this is AI can't handle friendly fire. As soon as someone does damage to something they start fighting. Those few times you have NPCs fight alongside you (being totaly useless as is) they mosty just start a big clusterfuck amongst themselves. And everyone is still "blue". I'd advise to disable spellcasting for the harper henchman as she's the biggest instigator with those iron horn spams. Oh yeah and the game crashed like 5 times and ate quicksave on 2 of those. Beamdog, I can't even. Or was this meant to be played on beta branch or something?
Finished game at lv22. You can just start with a naked lv1 character, but maybe bring some money.
I know it sounds very negative but it was still good entertainment and pretty long. And not regretting purchase is the important part right?
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