Darkness Over Daggerford Enhanced Edition Review

Ossian's award-winning Darkness Over Daggerford (2006) is a Forgotten Realms epic strongly influenced by the Baldur's Gate series, what with its world map system, explorative aspect and companion banter along with its large number of side quests, player stronghold and references to the lore of Bhaal.

DoD was supposed to be released as a commercial Premium Module, but Atari scrapped the program during its development. Not to be discouraged, Ossian completed the module and published it on IGN's Neverwinter Vault, free to download for all members - and the community rejoiced!

However, with the advent of Beamdog's Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, Ossian have been given another chance to upgrade and monetize their module 12 years later (it's currently available on Steam and on Beamdog, but will also eventually be available on GoG, too). Thus, bearing in mind the amount of passion and dedication that went into the creation of their adventure, one wishes the developers well.

A lot of work has gone into DoD:EE, which is now a full-blown professional/official release with extended OST, lots of VO work and lovely painted portraits for all important NPCs, not just companions.

Some of the non-companion VOs sound a little "newsreader-like", but they are still better than nothing. It is enjoyable listening to your companions comment on the environment as they walk over invisible triggers placed in key positions within the areas. I also enjoyed the fitting jingles that played in each inn (unique to each inn); it adds so much to immersion to not hear that stock-standard stuff that plays in every NWN module. 

Some of the criticisms that I leveled at DoD in my Darkness Over Daggerford walkthrough have also been addressed, such as wealth accumulation being too easy, some items being OP, the PC not having an opportunity to rest before leaving the caravan, and cutscenes causing the enemy to get the jump on the party. In at least once case, the stealth approach has been opened up, too.

Of course, some things were not addressed such as the ridiculous amount of scripted cutscenes, but at least they seem now to be safely skippable with the Esc key providing that you first wait until the cutscene is in full swing.

There are also hundreds of bugfixes and extensions (approaching 1,000) that are the result of the devs going over each and every quest with a fine-toothed comb.

Visually, there do not seem to be many improvements other than Beamdog's specular maps (shiny metal armor), normal maps (woodwork, brickwork), and advanced frame-buffer effects such as Sharpen, Vibrance, and so on. Framerates seem fine.

I encountered no bugs or CTDs while playing through the adventure. Thus, it is polished.

Along with the writing and descriptions of lore, the most impressive achievement of DoD is its Baldur's Gate-eque overworld map, complete with transitional waylays:

DoD is also notable for its DLA-built TNO tilesets that give a natural sense of terrain undulation and an eye-widening sense of elevation, a sort of precursor to the expertly sculpted terrain in Harp & Chrysanthemum:

All in all, congrats to Ossian and I wish them all the best with DoD and any future cRPG endeavors.

For ideas on characters to play, I kindly refer the reader to NWN Best Builds.

See also: Darkness Over Daggerford Walkthrough.

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