A Tangled Web - Part 1 & 2

Wow, what a great mod! I had played Part 1 many years ago (I guess when it first came out?) but I never finished for some reason. This had me going for quite some time, and I *never* would have been able to complete it without the extraordinarlily detailed Walkthrough and DM's Guide.

Now I have to catch my breath, get something to eat, and it's time for Part 2! :-)

Top 10 recommended!!   Very well made & entertaining/ challenging.

This series is absolutely one of the best on the vault. There is so much detail for vanilla, no haks mods, it's unbelieveable! The sheer amount of storyline, plot and writing that went into this mod makes it a very satisfying experience. The areas were cleverly designed and scripted, and it felt like a real adventure. Even though part three never came out, it still feels like there is some amount of module completition to it. Combat wise, nothing is too difficult, except for maybe the first few levels. There is still a challenge in multiplayer as well. I would recommend this mod to anyone looking for a good, story-driven action mod.

Part 1 is a truly gripping adventure. Potential clichés are given a novel and surprising twist, so there's rarely a dull moment. Areas are very well made from the original Bioware assets - the absence of custom content is in no way a drawback.

My first level solo rogue found plenty of opportunities to devise cunning solutions to encounters intended to challenge larger parties, but it was all do-able.

As always, save often, especially at key decision points.

There is some backtracking, with ample treasure but few high level items to spend it on (EDIT : until the start of Part 2). Defeating the final boss with a +1 rapier was a little tricky! Puzzles are fairly intuitive, but one is an audio puzzle without floaty text. These are very minor gripes, however.

SPOILER : as reported by another player on the old Vault, I found a bug in the Void quest. If you don't block the mine after releasing the Ice Witches, the Council won't speak to you, so it's impossible to complete the module. Fortunately I could revert to a much earlier save. Rocks are absurdly difficult to destroy but it can be done. The only weak point in the story - my chaotic good PC wouldn't voluntarily unleash ancient evil on the hapless miners if there were any other option.

Onwards to Part 2.

Part 2 is sustained entertainment throughout. Essentially an elaborate side quest, whose denouement remains tantalisingly out of reach (in a good way) until the very end.

My rogue was so well equipped after Part 1 that combat was rarely challenging (though interesting). For no obvious reason, there was an abundance of treasure, hence many trips to the merchants, but an arbitrary limit on using jump pointers instead of backtracking. 

MINOR SPOILER - Grimlock gridlock. Not sure if this was a bug, but grimlock followers were very reluctant to get out of the way of the player in tight corners. I decided to leave them behind, as I didn't really need their help.

I really enjoyed this module.

Indeed a good adventure

Another module that without the walk through you would never figure out what you had to do. Don't like this aspect and had to end it prematurely. Too bad. Some of the quests in the first part did not end properly, like the Amulet in the Sundial, and I had to go back in the mine for the moss after sealing it off, not a good feeling. Okay I suppose, but I like mods with henchpersons, stones of recall (this did have carts in certain areas that you could take back to town) and a better story. Too bad.

When I started this, I wasn't aware it's an unfinished trilogy, but maybe that's for the better, because I might not have played it otherwise, and that would have been a bit of a pity.

I am somewhat torn on the main plot, not so much because it's unfinished but because I didn't find it all that interesting and convincing. When you already advertise a story as a tale of intrigue and deception, it's pretty hard to actually follow up and deceive the players in surprising ways. In that regard I thought the module did not succeed; there weren't any real twists to speak of, everything was a bit predictable, although who knows, maybe it was intentional and the big twists were planned for the third module. I can't really imagine what they could be though. Whenever there was something with the likeness of a small twist in these two modules, I also thought it rather unlikely, not very believable, with regard to the characters' motivations. There were some apparent plot holes as well (but again, unfinished trilogy). And I thought sometimes the author went a bit overboard with all the lore dumps in custom books; I always feel compelled to read them sooner or later because they might contain interesting information, but some of them were walls of texts with hardly any relevance to the plot.

That being said, whenever it was not about the big main plot but about smaller adventures, for which the main plot was just the frame, the campaign was very enjoyable. And that was really the main part, the plot didn't actually matter all that much. Dialogues and flavor text were well-written, area design and lighting was very atmospheric, the places felt alive and exploration rewarding. I never really thought about the module not using CEP or any other haks because it made such creative use of the default content, and also featured lots of unique custom items and scripted systems, including interesting fast travel and resting systems that were at the same time limited and very open, encouraging the player to use them strategically.

Since it's designed to be played with a group (although it's not necessary), there weren't any companions in the first module, and just 3 minor ones in the sequel, and traveling with them felt a bit more like an escort mission, since they felt rather vulnerable compared to my own cleric PC and her summons, but that was alright. I found a couple of bugs, but nothing major, I think, and nothing related to the EE (fully compatible!). At least two quests from the first module could not be completed because I suppose they were planned to be resolved in part 3 only (but it wasn't that clear). And there were one or two instances when you had to do or go along with something bad without the game clearly telling you that it's meant to be part of the plot, so there's a risk that players just reload and try to find ways around it that don't exist.

All in all, even though this series probably won't make it into my all time favorites list, it was competently and impressively done and contained some grand adventures. What the overall main plot lacked in creativity, the area design, the systems, and all the little stories more than made up for.