Neverwinter Nights Premium Module Reviews

GamerDad has written up an article that reviews all four of BioWare's premium modules for Neverwinter Nights. They've given Witch's Wake a 2.5/5, ShadowGuard a 3.5/5, Kingmaker a 4.5/5, and Pirates of the Sword Coast a 4.5/5. A snip from their summary:
The four modules combined cost just over $20, and provided me with about 30 hours of gaming time for a single run. Add the replayability of different character classes and types as well as story-impacting decisions in the KingMaker and Pirates of the Sword Coast modules and I have gotten well over 50 hours from these modules. The quality of modules is certainly very high.

I compare this with the freely available Eye of the Beholder, which is a recreation of the classic game. Eye of the Beholder is about 30 hours long and freely available and is one of the highest rated modules at the Neverwinter Vault, but like the classic game offers minimal role playing. The focus is on hack-and-slash action against a wide variety of enemies and gathering up loot. I had played this module some time ago, and enjoyed it but in terms of production values and polish it does feel like a fan work. I replayed again after finishing all four '˜premium modules', and there is clearly a distinction, particularly with regards to the KingMaker and Pirates of the Sword Coast modules, which are superior in pretty much every way to Eye of the Beholder.