Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition

I played the original who knows when. This is a rich, action heavy party-based game. The pathfinding is bad, it is easy to make bad builds and party syneries, and combat is ostensibly very RNG heavy. But knowing the systems and encounters yields a satisfying, deep little classic which merits a remaster for the sequel as well.

Mainly a dungeon crawl with limited plot, this game lets you create your entire party and launch into an extensive quest. If you like Baldur's Gate 2 but didn't much care for those annoying mages, you may love Icewind Dale which requires a bit more brute force in the battles and much less "mage chess" like Baldur's Gate. Either way, this is worth playing through.

One of the best games of all time!

Everything was well done, if a little behind the times in UI and other 'quality of life' features that can't all be corrected by a revamped edition. Based on my memory of enjoying Icewind Dale II about two decades ago, I was a little underwhelmed (I'd skipped Icewind Dale 1, back in the day). The story was well done, but still didn't resonate in any big way. Somewhere around 70% of the way through the game, I even found it a little difficult to motivate me to finish, and I finish EVERY game I play (except for Simpsons Hit & Run, which was fun, but way too long for what it was, and a few games I've ditched barely a couple of missions in). Having been so many years away from D&D spells, I found the number of spells overwhelming and time consuming to go through all those descriptions and trial and error to test them. The number of spells could have been cut in half, and if done properly, it would have only improved the game. It should be noted that the original, non-enhanced edition didn't have so many spells, and apparently some of the added spells ultimately helped balance the spellbook, but that doesn't mean other useless or redundant spells couldn't have been cut. I finally started to get the hang of the breadth of spells by the time I played Heart of Winter and Trials of the Luremaster (after beating the main game, and by loading a saved game I kept back in Kuldahar). This may be part of the reason I enjoyed HoW slightly more than the base game, and while Luremaster isn't as good as either, and is mostly a dungeon crawl, based on tepid reviews I'd read of it beforehand, I found Luremaster to be FAR better than I expected. Interesting story, if a bit dark, and a very fully realized sort of DLC that took me well into double digit hours to complete. Its dungeons were better done than any in the main game, with some outside the box ideas/game mechanics to add spice.

Icewind Dale is a linear role playing dungeon crawler with occasional RPG elements in which you take a party of custom created heroes across the Spine of the World. If that sounds like your style, give it a try. Personally I missed the RPG in BG.