At First Sight

Dreamcatcher is the sequel to Shadowlords, and your character is assumed to have been through that series. This is a fairly large adventure in scope, taking you from the Midsummer Festival in Waterdeep to the heart of Evermeet, the island of the elves. Last time, you meddled in the affairs of the gods of death; this time, the stakes have been raised.

The Rest Of It (some spoilers)

A small module is provided with D1: Skyfall that lets you boost your character to the required level and recieve the plot tokens that show you have a relationship with the appropriate henchman.

The overall quality of the modules has increased dramatically. There's a lot less useless filler - some areas are still a bit too big, but every corner holds some interesting feature or bonus. Exploring around is fun and often rewarding.

The plot is captivating as usual, though the player might feel railroaded at some points (where you have to do what the plot demands or you simply can't proceed). Fans of Lovecraftian fiction may feel amused or annoyed at the inclusion of various elements from the mythos. They seemed rather poorly tacked-on to me, but perhaps others will enjoy the references. (From what I understand, Lovecraft's worlds are pretty much "open-source writing".)

Aside from the "It's in the script!" parts, there are many opportunities for roleplaying. An interesting addition are "vows" - sometimes is conversation you get an option like "[Vow] I swear I will not let this crime go unpunished!" and when you later come across the criminals, you get Lawful or Chaotic points depending on wether you kill or pardon them. Good way to even out the score if your character is not feeling sufficiently Lawful (or Chaotic).

The story between you and your henchman also develops throughout the modules, letting you decide what your character feels as the two of you are torn apart and then reunited. The gender restrictions on romance still apply, though looking through the conversations in the toolset shows that they have <male form/female form> tags in all the appropriate places. It seems that changing the "is PC male" script to always return TRUE could make Teira and Nooble bisexual, but I haven't tested the theory.

The visuals have improved. The author uses community-made content liberally. Each part of the series boasts at least one custom tileset (a swamp, the bottom of the ocean, or a really cool sequence involving a dragon), which lends a unique look to both the modules and the series as a whole. There are many cutscenes using the Gestalt camera system, which are interesting but sloppily-made. The GUI is never cleared away, "fade to black" is accomplished with a "Darkness" spell effect, and I often got my camera stuck in an akward position after a cutscene had played out.

All the "Unique Use" items from the previous series are still supported, and there are many new ones to be found. My personal favourite is a gem that you can "attune" to yourself and use as a psionic focus for a number of interesting effects (if your will is strong enough).

There are also some new weapon types, mostly Oriental ones like sais or nunchuks. They're mostly useless, except for padding the inventory of a merchant from the Far East (an interesting recurring character in the series), and they make it really difficult to reconcile the various .haks with the CEP.

In Closing...

Dreamcatcher is considered one of the best series around, and I can vouch for that. There would be little reason to play Shadowlords if it wasn't required for this campain. It may be a bit more linear than the prequel, but you'll probably re-visit it just for the henchman interaction and some of the more impressive scripted events.