If you had told me a year ago I would enjoy replaying the Neverwinter Nights Official Campaign a year later, I would have laughed heartily in your face.

Yet, I am doing just that at the moment. Enjoying replaying the NWN OC, that is. I’ve been enjoying it so much I’ve eschewed the multiplayer game for the past few days.

I suppose I have lowered my expectations in terms of story. ( I was bitterly disappointed with the NWN OC and hadn’t even bothered to complete it past the overrated Charwood quest.) I’m just enjoying the game aspect of it the second time around.

I’m currently playing a druid which is hands down my favourite character class because of its versatility. Currently at level 9, he has Barkskin and Stoneskin to protect him and Bull’s Strength to pump him up. He doesn’t dish out much damage in melee combat but I enjoy getting close and personal with the sabre. The Call Lightning spell — Shazam! — comes in handy whenever I want to soften up a group of foes. My only disappointment is that I can’t play a transforming Shapeshifter in the original campaign.

The druid, being one with nature, is also capable of having quite a menagerie with him as he stalks around. At one point, my druid had three Dire Wolves trotting behind him. The faithful beasts were ever ready to die on their master’s behalf and frequently did so.

(Oddly, the Dire Wolf animal companion, unlike the Summon Creature III version, isn’t capable of using Knockdown and Power Attack.)

I was able to complete most of the early battles without raising a sweat even with the difficulty level set to the max. Admittedly, I am frequently abusing the pause button and the teleport-to-safety option.

(My druid did, however, get his nature-lovin’ ass handed to him on two occasions: the final battle of Chapter I and a battle with a Dire Bear early in Chapter II. God bless save’n’reload.)

I’m thinking of getting the Henchmen Inventory and AI Mod to boost the AI of NPCs. I did try a pre-1.0 version of the mod over a year ago and battles were tougher and much more satisfying with it.

The only thing that’s preventing me from installing the new version is the prospect of reinstalling the entire game should the mod break something. To be fair, the current maintainer of the mod has provided details of the mod’s problems in a lengthy text file and there seem to be easy workarounds for every documented problem.