Icewind Dale 2 Review

[seal cub clubbing club]

Alright, unlike my previous post i am going to be fair this time, so let's get right too it.

The good:
1. The story, the characters and their scripts are all written very well. and the plot is still relevant too many people today, despite some characters literally being demonized, hehe

2. The combat, if you played any other CRPG and enjoyed it, you'll enjoy this one too. it's the familiar and comfortable even though its on a home brew of 3rd edition.

3. The graphics, back when it released it got flak for already being dated. Luckily with the new games being unreal engine slop and us gamers getting a prescription for nostalgia goggles, we are now able to appreciate this games graphics.

4. Enemy/trap placement, the enemies generally know that your coming and will have prepared accordingly. though you will have some quest givers pointing out weak points. if your gonna run in without a thought you will have a bad time. Expect archers on walls, closed gates and enemy party buffs.

5. Level design, a bunch of new areas with the last few chapters being copied from the first game. so if you liked those you will enjoy these, but not all of them returned so if there's some you hated you might be in luck if its not in here. The maps are also a lot smaller. and you will be transitioning a lot, but the load times are gnome sized.

6. Deeper quests and dialogue, now these are deeper COMPARED too ice wind dale 1. so yes, if your a half orc, some might now comment on that, you might even get past a patrol or get an item without violence. But dont expect to get into secret new areas in the game just because your mom took fat green D

7. there's a paladin quest chain for an epic weapon thats rather long, hard and edgy, hehe

8. Voice acting, ranges from weeping IRL to a secretary chewing on wallpaper.

9. Quest items dont despawn when you rest, a small detail but i appreciate it :)

10. there's new game+

the bad

1. Level scaling, this ruined combat for me, even more so then in oblivion or world of war craft. All off these carefully thought out positions and traps mentioned above? Gone! Just a giant horde of enemies mindlessly running towards you to punish you for doing all the side quests.

so stay level 1? Problem with that is your HP. while you won't be fighting a horrid mess of enemy spawns, you will still get one shot by slightly higher level enemies.

so unless you are a very specific level for the place you are currently in, it is entirely possible too soft lock yourself.

(finally)2. Art! Its pretty unclear what you can or cannot touch from time too time, so pixel hunting is a semi-thing here.

3. 3rd edition rules, so if you spend your life min/maxing AD&D you might not like your -1AC too smelly sock damage or whatever

4. chain pulling, 30/70 chance when entering a new area that you will pull the entire zone, you'll be rest spamming from behind a door a LOT

5. The secretary chewing on wallpaper is one of the main villains.

so final verdict; it's a good game with a few but massive flaws, certainly a worthy successor too ice wind dale 1. It needs an enhanced edition more then we need an ice wind dale 3, and there's a mod for that! From what i have seen of lets plays and reviews, i advice buying this game only if you are going to download the mod. i did it without the mod and resorted too making custom max level characters just to make the combat tolerable.

Thank you if you read all this, you must truly be a fan of the series if you did suffer through this text wall :)

[iamdorf]

I am a huge fan of the series so naturally I read your whole post :). It's been a looong time since I played the second game but I played the heck out of it. It is what introduced me to dnd. In fact I got so used to those rules that when I first tried to play the first game I couldn't stand it. Since I've gotten used to the enhanced edition and 2e rules it would probably be hard to play the second one now. I do feel that the dialog options are superior in the second one. That being said these games scratch a particular itch and I love them.

[seal cub clubbing club]

@iamdorf all fair and good :)

[[‡]=Storky=[‡]]

Review by a guy who calls IWD2 a "dungeon crawler". then gets beaten by the game on the first level and goes whine on the steam forums to the section of other game.
No thanks

[seal cub clubbing club]

you do infact crawl dungeons in icewind dale :)
Hm, yea perhaps if i sucked more at the game and didnt complete all the sidequests on insane the game wouldnt have impeded my progress with an army of orogs strait out of the tutorial, awell

[Mati_Lublin]

Two points from me:
1. Traps - yes, there're traps but in whole game only three of them are dangerous, usually you can soak damage with almost no problem.
2. I get it, for someone used to 2nd edition this one is weird - but for me 3rd edition is more intuitive and easier to understand. Besides, I prefer set amount points to distribute then hours of dice throwing to reach good score.

[seal cub clubbing club]

update: i installed the EE mod for IWD2 and its 50 times better and way easier now ^^