role-playing

In a world populated with excellent RPG games, IWD2 stands out for its solid foundation of compelling story line, great game play, and high replayability. It's hard to please all RPG fans who desire different mixes of action, quest, and character development. IWD2 strikes a nice balance between quest-laden Baldur's Gate and Diablo's mindless click-fest. There are plenty of hack and slash, including all-out melees with a multitude of foes and harrowing battles against powerful monsters. While many quests are of the "go there and fetch this" variety, some are quite lengthy and challenging. But the most compelling raison d'etre for IWD2 must be its implementation of the vastly improved AD&D 3rd Edition rule set. The 3rd Edition offers not only new races and sub-races, but also new rules, classes, skills, feats, and weapons. Coupled with multi-classing, the changes make possible a mind-boggling number of party combinations. Even better, the special Heart of Fury mode with insanely challenging combat and vastly upgraded weapons is almost another game within a game. Throw in an intuitive user interface and beautifully rendered graphics and there's little doubt IWD2 is a winner in the crowded RPG arena.

IWD2 is set 30 years after the events in the original Icewind Dale, when a band of adventurers issued from Easthaven to thwart the plan of a demon to turn region into his private playground. Many characters from the original Icewind Dale make cameo appearances. It's not necessary to have played Icewind Dale, but if you have, you'll certainly appreciate the connections.

IWD2 is a revisit to that famous region of the fabled Forgotten Realms. The story begins when goblin hordes invaded the Ten-Towns, one of which had already been overrun. Bands of mercenaries, of which you are a part, were summoned to the defense of Targos, the goblins' next target. As soon as you arrive, you would have to fend off goblin attacks. Soon it becomes apparent that greater evils are behind the goblin threat and you find yourself thrust to the forefront of the conflict, for gold or for glory. Your adventure takes you through many exotic locales, including the great oak of Kuldahar, the warrens of Dragon's Eye, the steaming jungles of Chult, and the ruined elven fortress Severed Hand. The plot is fairly linear; you won't be going back and forth between locales to accomplish quests. Nevertheless, the game is surprisingly replayable, thanks to the reasons below.

The new rules are vast improvements for several reasons. Gone are the cryptic THAC0, the counter-intuitive negative armor rating, and the rather complicated types of saving throws. Now, armor bonuses are additive; however wearing armor increases arcane spell failures and hinders certain abilities such as Hide and Move Silently. Saving throws are reduced to 3 types: Fortitude, Reflex, and Will, which are directly affected by your ability ratings, racial bonuses and magical enhancements. You allocate points among a bevy of new skills, such as Bluff and Diplomacy, and feats, such as Ambidexterity and Two-weapon fighting. This gives unprecedented control over the attributes of your characters. New races include half-orcs, Aasimar, Tiefling, Duergar, Drow, and Deep-Gnomes. Each race comes with its own bonuses and disadvantages; some are more powerful than others, but advance in levels more slowly. New classes include monks, barbarians, and sorcerers. Experience level now caps at 30, allowing the creation of even more powerful multi-classed characters. In fact, experimenting with different party combinations is half of the fun, and playing the game again with a new party is almost as fun as playing a new game!

The battles in IWD2 are intense and furious. For some reason, the designers tend to favor the "attack as soon as party moves to a new area" approach. This wouldn't be so bad except that after a long journey most of your defensive spells will have worn off. The result is often a frantic scramble to escape damage, cast defensive spells, summon supports, and finally counter-attack. Combat almost certainly requires a tactical approach, as enemy parties are always well-balanced, complete with both tankers and magic users. The AI is excellent. Enemies will often go for the weakest member of my party, much to my chagrin. When attacked, enemies will cast the appropriate defensive spells. In short, you can't rush in hacking and slashing and expect to last; the enemies are just too powerful for a single-minded approach. This also necessitates making up a balanced party.

The Heart of Fury mode deserves special mention. This mode can only be accessed from the configuration screen, and a dialog box pops up to warn you of the implications. You shouldn't even play in this mode with characters lower than level 15. Heart of Fury, in short, stands for insane difficulty. Not only are monsters more numerous, they also are immensely powerful and have astronomical attack and damage ratings. Your rewards are proportionately powerful magical items, including a +10 magic sword when everything else maxes out at +5, and more experience points. You probably won't get the most out of IWD2 until you play through the game in this mode.

Much ado has been made about the venerable but dated Bioware Infinity Engine. What it lacks in 3-D camera angles it makes up for in polish and ease of use. Despite its popularity, I just find Neverwinter Nights' interface clunky, and the constant need to pan and zoom tiring. IWD2's interface is intuitive and does a great job of organizing the wealth of information required to effectively manage an RPG party. The fixed background is gorgeous, and the sprites and spell effects animations are beautifully rendered. The soundtrack is superb and the voiceover is competent, if sometimes overwrought. There are no famous names from Hollywood, but I recognize minor actors from "Armageddon" and "Speed".

Thanks to its implementation of new AD&D rules and its excellent game play and interface, IWD2 deserves to be a standout in the crowd.

I honestly hope that people who read these reviews pay more attention to those praising Icewind Dale II than those that in my mind belittle a great game. Icewind Dale II is similar to the other Forgotten Realms games, but it is unique in its own right.

Icewind Dale II seems to have found the balance between the heavily quest-based Baldur's Gate II and the hack-your-way-to-fame Icewind Dale. The new third edition rules make Icewind Dale different from the other games as well, and they add a whole new challenge to the game, making the perfect characters. The vast amount of skills and feats all characters can choose from, not to mention all the new races (Drow, tieflings, deep gnomes, gray dwarves, among many others) and subclasses offered, make characters unique, and each level almost makes a player giddy when they try to decide whether they should give their rogue more hide skill for the ever useful sneak attack or maybe more to pick pocket or open locks for the always fun five-finger discount shopping. The addition of the bluff, diplomacy, and intimidate skills also make for a nice variety in NPC dialogue, and deciding whether you want to use your nice little paladin to go negotiate or an evil dreadmaster of bane to threaten an undead life to your enemies can put a player into a moral dilemma. A player's character class can affect NPC dialogue as well, the most obvious class being a cleric which has something to say whenever you run up against a different order or cult. The joys of threatening to kill half the members of a village of druids with my dreadmaster of bane, raise their corpses as undead, and then laugh as they tear into their surviving friends remains potent in my memory. The creation of characters and a well balanced party might dissuade some from this game and the lack of character interaction is disappointing, but characters are far from stale and part of the fun in my mind.

Although the graphics remain the same as all of the recent Forgotten Realms games, players should still appreciate the beauty of the artwork within the game. The one thing I've seen on most reviews, even ones by people who test games as a job, that remains constant is that the fighting in Icewind Dale II is hard, or even impossible according to some. I've played the game on the normal D&D rules throughout and I understand why people describe it as hard. Sure I've had to reload the game a few times after having a character or two die, but I remember spending a hour or two on the final battle of Baldur's Gate II and reloading on all the other games as well. Then again some reloads were just because I wanted a better-looking battle. The reason people probably complain about Icewind Dale II being too difficult in fighting is because battles need to be planned for once, and yes monsters will spawn behind you and try to surround you, a problem perhaps, realistic definitely. I won't discuss strategy in a review, but I will say it's required in most fights in Icewind Dale II and can make fights quite easy. As the makers said, the game has a feature that varies the difficulty depending on your party's skill, not the skill of the player, so plan your battles carefully or turn down the difficulty if you need (a feature all the recent Forgotten Realms games offer) because you're in for one difficult good time.

The story in Icewind Dale II is not anywhere near the level of Baldur's Gate II, but it was not intended to be. You are not a hero that has the blood of the god of murder in your veins, you're a band of mercenaries out for some coin who just happen to save the North in the process. When Icewind Dale II is looked at by itself rather than a comparison to the other Forgotten Realms games, the story will draw you in and is very well done. The big baddies of the story aren't the devilish Irenicus from Baldur's Gate II who seemed to be pulling at the very core of your character's self, but two outcasts who seek revenge. If they seem to come off as childish and vengeful but immensely powerful, then that is because of the story behind their creation which is quite sad and not for me to tell.

The one complaint I can offer about the game comes from a very common cliché, to the victor go the spoils. I find myself spending anywhere from ten minutes to an hour planning out my spending and selling. Charisma as well as some skills can affect the price of goods or the price which you can sell your goods, and in addition to that, supply and demand plays a role as well, sell all things of one type (a good example being gems) at one time from the same character or prices will go down. Although it's a complaint, it's realistic that a charismatic character could barter better prices especially if trained in that area, and besides, who can complain about coming back to town with sacks bulging with gold and gems, bags full of all sorts of potions, and characters laden with all sorts of magical means of destruction ranging from nondescript weapons of immense power to armors of such a design as to have an effect by themselves. Just remember to buy all the potion bags, scroll cases, and gem bags that you see, and always hold onto bags of holding when they're found.

Icewind Dale 2 is a computer RPG, and the last one to use the Infinity Engine popularized by the Baldur's Gate series. Icewind Dale 2 is a much more linear game, which is often for the best. There's no wandering around for 4 hours trying to figure out what you should do next. The combat system should be familiar to anyone who's played Baldur's Gate or Knights of the Old Republic on XBox. It's basically turn-based real-time. The 3rd edition D&D rules it uses allow for a lot of customization for your party, and it's never too overwhelming. The plot is a little weak, but well-written, and the puzzles and battles are challenging but not impossible. This is probably one of the best RPG's available today.