Icewind Dale is the next game in the Atari/Hasbro series of AD&D 2nd edition computer role-playing games set in the world of Faerun (Forgotten Realms campaign setting). Just like the previous two games released on GOG (Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment), Icewind Dale has its own peculiarities compared to the other games in the series (despite the fact that it generally looks and feels the same). For those of you who have never played any games in this series, Icewind Dale, just like its predecessors Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment, features a rather faithful recreation of the 2nd edition of AD&D ruleset on top of a real-time game interface, which means that the game is generally not turn-based, but you can pause it at any time to make decisions. However, underneath this real-time layer there is a real AD&D system, with combat rounds, THACO/AC, and other AD&D mechanics (if you're not familiar with the ruleset, you may want to read the manual and possibly look up some other ruleset references for the 2nd edition of AD&D). Now, a very important part is that just like Baldur's Gate and Planescape:Torment, Icewind Dale has its own peculiarities that may either attract you or turn you away, so make sure you read this part carefully. While BG and PST were mostly oriented towards character development, Icewind Dale focuses on combat and dungeon crawling. Do NOT expect large, intricate, deep dialogs like in PST that suck you into the game world and make you feel like you're reading an interactive book. Do NOT expect a large free-to-roam world like in Baldur's Gate where you can go anywhere in any order you please (well, almost) and where you focus on interrelations of your main character with your other party members. In Icewind Dale, you create your full party of 6 characters (yes, you create all of them), and the game is from that point much more linear than BG or PST. Yes, there are some twists for the expansion packs (and this GOG version features both Heart of Winter and Trials of the Luremaster preinstalled, which is a great plus!), but mostly the storyline progresses in a linear fashion. However, the heart of this game lies in the battles. This game is much more heavily oriented towards combat and AD&D tactics than dialogs. Expect a LOT of battles, and expect spending a LOT of time in a certain dungeon, mostly fighting instead of interacting with other NPCs. If that's what you're looking for in a D&D role-playing game, Icewind Dale truly excels at that, and it presents one of the best AD&D hack-and-slash experiences I've had so far. Truly, it has a decent selection of spells and there are many AD&D options for the development of your character (if I recall correctly, you can go up to level 30 in this game). You can multi-class and dual-class. Being the owner of all six characters in the party you are able to come up with any crazy sorts of parties you only want. You can even go for a challenge and play with, say, four characters instead of six. You are pretty much in charge here, and the game never fails to come up with a combat situation to hone and improve your characters' skills and tactics. However, if you're looking for a dialog-based or very plot-centric, non-linear RPG game, Icewind Dale may not be the game for you - in that case, consider Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment instead, also available from GOG. Personally I love all the games in the Infinity Engine series, and Icewind Dale is no exception. At just $9.99 for both the game, both expansion packs, and a bunch of good bonuses, it's an awesome deal that you probably don't want to miss! Overall score: 10/10.
Planescape Torment, among other classics released in the Infinity Engine game series (another title that is already available here at GOG at the moment of writing is Baldur's Gate), was one of those games that not many people knew about and not everybody actually played - the game was not advertised as well as Baldur's Gate, at least in my area, and it was mostly still shadowed by Baldur's Gate and its expansion that was, as far as I remember, out not so long ago back then. Therefore, not many people knew originally just how astonishing and amazing this game was. Truly, while Bioware did an impressive job with Baldur's Gate storyline and characters, they really outdid themselves in Planescape Torment. The tone of the storyline is much darker than that in Baldur's Gate - you awaken in the mortuary, not remembering who you are and what happened to you. The game features a dark, but very immersive and detailed storyline, with a humongous focus on dialogs. It feels like an interactive story, and a very high-quality interactive story written by a professional and famous novelist. The dialog options are numerous and the player's choices truly affect how the game develops and what happens to the player. The game also features some of the most interesting and unusual companions that join the player as he progresses, and very interesting and innovative spells that sometimes have a very interesting effect. It's interesting to play through this game more than once, it has a great replay value because it's interesting to see how the world reacts to different decisions and how the game can be played with a more combat-oriented approach or with a more dialog-oriented approach (the latter is by far the most polished and detailed one in Planescape Torment). The game utilizes the AD&D 2nd Edition game mechanics that are largely similar to the ones used in Baldur's Gate but tweaked to fit the setting (e.g. the character building process is different, and so are the spells and the weapons). The game uses the real-time layer on top of the AD&D ruleset, which means that the game progresses in realtime unless you pause the game temporarily to make decisions. Overall, Planescape Torment is a game that maybe you never knew about but that now you don't want to miss for sure. While the original was shipped on 4 CDs that required changing from time to time, the GOG release simplifies it all to a simple, one-executable installation that you can then just play and enjoy. The Widescreen Mod is available at gibberlings3.net for those of you who will be willing to increase the game resolution, and when combined with the UI fix mod (also available at Gibberlings Three) the game truly shines visually, too, even on a modern system. OVERALL: 10/10. Another Infinity Engine masterpiece that was so underappreciated back in its day. Don't miss an amazing chance to own this game now as a simple one-file download for only $9.99!
During my entire "career" as a gamer there were a few influential role-playing games that defined what a good fantasy-themed CRPG should be like, as opposed to a mediocre or a bad one. Alongside such classic eternal titles as Ultima and TSR's original early AD&D games (Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures, anyone?), the Infinity Engine series (which debuted with the game you're looking at right now - Baldur's Gate) became the critically acclaimed standard of what a high quality CRPG title should be. Baldur's Gate masterfully combines a wonderfully written, deep, immersive, well thought-out story that makes you forget about the reality and just live in Faerun for at least a 100 hours of your life with the masterfully executed AD&D mechanics converted for use in a computer role-playing game environment. Baldur's Gate manages to introduce a thin real-time layer on top of the turn-based AD&D 2nd Edition mechanics, thus making the game feel like a true and faithful AD&D RPG but at the same time increasing the pace of the gameplay. This type of mechanics became largely standard in many future AD&D/D&D titles to come, including all the other Infinity Engine series and going into the newer titles such as Neverwinter Nights. You can still feel all the AD&D mechanics at work here - THAC0, AC, combat rounds, but at the same time you make your decisions in real-time with the possibility to pause the game at any moment in time. While the game mechanics will definitely please all of you hardcore AD&D fans out there, it is the story and the characters that truly define Baldur's Gate as an impressive and amazing title that is simply a must play. You literally care about every character in the game, your party members join you (and you make the decision of who to take and who not to take with you) and may leave you if you act in a way that they don't like. There are dozens and dozens of side quests to complete in addition to a long and immersive main storyline, and many locations to visit and explore that have many surprises for you in store. Be ready to spend a lot of time playing this game, depending on how in-depth your playthrough may be your total playtime may as well become a three-digit number. And you'll never feel sorry for putting so much time in this game. For those of you who did not have the pleasure of buying and playing Baldur's Gate when it was first released, I would like to say that the original was released on 5 CDs, with the 6th CD released later as the expansion (Tales of the Sword Coast). This GOG release contains everything that the original game and ToTSC offered, and is fully pre-patched to the latest version. At the same time, it liberates you from the necessity of installing from multiple CDs or from switching CDs during the playtime - it's a simple click-and-install routine, just like with any other GOG game, which is, to tell the truth, a huge relief. The game also works fine on Linux using Wine - no special configuration is necessary, you just install the game and click on the shortcut to run it. Works flawlessly out of the box, as they say. The game resolution is low by modern standards (640x480), but there is a Widescreen Mod available on gibberlings3.net that would allow you to increase the resolution of the game to virtually anything you want. OVERALL SCORE: 10/10. Baldur's Gate is an eternal classic that no true fan of the CRPG genre should miss. Along with Ultima and the TSR golden AD&D game series, it defined what a high-quality fantasy-themed CRPG should be like, and it literally helped shape the genre.
I was thinking for a long time about whether to give this particular release of the game four stars or five stars, and finally my hand moved to the four-star rating. Now before you decide to flame me for that, please listen to the reasons why I did it. First things first, I'd like to make it absolutely clear that the game itself is no less than truly awesome and it deserves 6 stars out of 5, but as for why this particular release (GOG release) is a bit lacking in my opinion, read on this review. But first of all, let's talk about the game itself. Heroes of Might & Magic 2 is an eternal masterpiece, a truly great and wonderful game that I feel very nostalgic about and that I could not resist buying from GOG when it became available, and you certainly won't regret it if you buy it - it'll provide you with hundreds of hours of great, unsurpassed gameplay that only Heroes of Might & Magic 3 can rival to this date. This game is absolutely unique, and it's one of the first three games (HoMM 1-3) that faithfully kept and preserved the atmosphere that got absolutely ruined in the next installments (especially HoMM 4). Now, the GOG release. On the positive side of things, this release is a two-in-one package that includes both the original game itself and the expansion pack (collectively known as "Heroes of Might & Magic 2 Gold Edition"). This is really great, because for just $10 you're getting two of some of the greatest games in the history of turn-based strategies, which is an awesome offer. Now, the part where the release is lacking - the CD music. The CD music is included in the release, yet it is recoded into OGG format with a significantly low bitrate (96 kbit/s) that does not allow to preserve all the vividness and depth of the original music, some of which featured operatic elements. Of course, if you don't care too much about music or if you can't hear the difference between a 96 kbit/s sound and a 256-384 kbit/s sound, and if it's OK for you if the music sounds a little less vivid than it did on the original CD, it won't be a problem for you, but for me the music in HoMM 2 is a great part of the original atmosphere, and I can't find a valid justification for the fact that the music was not encoded in a higher bitrate. It doesn't sound like a valid assumption that the only reason for this was the preservation of space. Now, there's another problem which is potentially more annoying for a broader audience - several tracks I've listened to had an audible strong click in the middle of a tune, which was probably due to the CD ripping fault or something like that - it's not too bad but it's definitely very noticeable (for instance, listen to homm2_05.ogg at about 00:29 - 00:30 or to homm2_06.ogg at about 01:31 - 01:33 - and there are other examples, too). Now, most of you won't notice or won't care about any of that stuff I was ranting about above - unless you're an audiophile and have an ear for music, you're unlikely to notice or care too much about any of that, so just go ahead and buy the game since it's absolutely fantabulous. Personally, however, I felt that HoMM 2 deserved a better treatment than that - it definitely deserved a clean, high-bitrate conversion of the original soundtrack which was one of the greatest aspects of the atmosphere of the game. Of course, you can always tell me "well, what did you want? it's just $9.99 for everything" - well, while it may be argued that it's already great that I can buy two of the best games in the history of PC gaming for just ten bucks, it would still only be fair on behalf of GOG Limited to let it be known to the customers that the soundtrack featured in this particular release is audibly inferior (in more than one way) to the original CD that was sold in 1996.