Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition

I am pleased with this - more than any other Beamdog "upgrade". Maybe its because modders had not made this title such a priority. Maybe its because Beamdog didnt shoe horn in unwanted content. Whatever it is, it works on this title. Very playable. Different to Baldurs gate in that you dont recruit people, you make your party from the start. What the game loses in storylines (for NPC's) it makes up for in combat. The enemy makeup and, perhaps most importantly, placement on the map, makes up for it. Hitherto useless spells like stinking cloud suddenly have a purpose. Ranged weapons are no longer a luxury but a necessity. And intelligent spell selection is of paramount importance. Its a bit like the final fantasy tactics version of final fantasy.

After having already played Icewind Dale II, this game was pretty much what I expected. It was fun, not to an addictive degree, but enjoyable. The gameplay is linear, with one quest leading directly to the next, but heck, most games are that way, and the complexity and room for creativity in D&D battles keeps things interesting. I didn't give 5 stars because I was disappointed that the game ended with characters at only level 18 or so. That means high-level abilities are completely off the table, and level 8/9 wizard spells are basically off the table. I would have preferred a longer game. I can easily think of some simple ways the game could have been made much longer without much more development time/budget. Also, I would have preferred higher difficulty. I played on Hard and found that to be only moderately difficult. I played the expansion (Heart of Winter) on Insane difficulty, and that wasn't terribly challenging, either, even though I started with new characters instead of carrying over my characters and all their gear. I'm fairly well-versed in D&D gameplay, but there should be an option for an even higher difficulty level. Still, the game was fun, and I also liked the bonus dungeon in Heart of Winter. That dungeon seemed bland at first, but having gone into it at the very beginning of the expansion, it got very challenging at times, and knowing that the only way out is to progress deeper into it made things very interesting. The final battle in the expansion was too easy, though, even on Insane difficulty. Also, like the main game, it ended too soon, with characters around level 18. I had bought tons of spells that I never even got to use. Still well worth the sale price, and surely worth the normal price if you have the $.

Yep, this was my first IE game. I just was astonished, this was like a dream come true back then, seemed impossible something so good. I had played diablo, some people say they are similar lol, they never played both. That was a good game, bought it here too, but IWD is a legend. This is more like baldur's 1 (true gem yep) but straightforward. The setting and NPC's are just beautiful and the EE holds very well today. I'm replaying it. I have bought the Infinity Games 5 or 6 times during my lifetime and these days my backlog is so large I'm afraid not playing them all again as time is scarce today. Still I enjoy them as much as I used to do. I'm rushing them, but still give me peace of mind and good vibe. I stopped playing anything else for the pleasure to travel to kuldahar, easthaven and the hand. Kresselack's tomb of my memories still was a charming place to visit. Many youngsters and magazines who repeat the stories they have heard say Torment is the best IE game... No way! IMHO Baldur's 1 for being the 1rst and IWD are much better, not so original as torment, but far more true to the spirit. BG2 both parts are the summit, and NWN Hordes of the underdark and the toasty Mephistopheles still visit my dreams, I play steam version, yet I bought it here aswell, not that I can afford to waste money but these games have provided so fun that I'll always support them. The EE runs flawlessly. These and the original XCOM (ufo:enemy unknown) are milestones, true there were very good games, but these two were advanced to their time. Now just do yourself a favor, install it and save the north. Once you start you won't stop.

If you're looking for a well crafted, focused, relatively tactical D&D game, this is the one for you. While this won't scratch your itch if you're looking for a sandbox style RPG that lets you do whatever you want, this will if you're looking for a linear and highly focused Action RPG game. There is a lot of room for tactical play, and while there isn't a ton of re-playability in the story, it's an interesting D&D story that would be right at home on the Tabletop. If you like 2E AD&D, these rules will be awesome. If not, don't be put off, as it's fairly intuitive once you understand it's concepts.

Awesome old school D&D with a party based system. In today's time, the controls feel really clunky until a person gets use to it & adjusts towards the intentional purposes of the game. After changing the framerate to 45, showing the AOE, & enabling the cheats (if ever needed by pressing ctrl + spacebar), the game felt much better to me with the following changes: SetPrivateProfileString('Program Options','Maximum Frame Rate','45') SetPrivateProfileString('Game Options','Show AOE','1') SetPrivateProfileString('Program Options','Debug Mode','1')