...he finally finished the game out of sheer, morbid curiosity." Yes, it took me that long. Reading the other reviews from GOG, and elsewhere on the internet, it's comforting to know that I'm not the only one who either took forever to work up the energy to complete this wretched child of the IE games, or just never bothered finishing it. I'll tell you what, though; I was a hair shy of permanently ending up in the latter category more than once during my one, and only, full play through. Look, I enjoy a challenge. The other IE games presented me with great challenges. Even NWN and NWN2 presented me with great obstacles and challenges. That being said, IWD2 was just plain old impossible. The only reason that I beat this game is because I made some modifications (mildly cheated), and set the difficulty down to "very easy" and, even with these changes, I found myself at a standstill at more than a few points. What does that tell you? Keep this in mind before you buy. How about the story, though? Well, it's about as stale as a bag of expired potato chips. I honestly don't know what else to say. I might as well have put a coat of paint on my fence, set up a lawn chair, and drank a beer while I sat and watched it dry. Most of the game is completely irrelevant to the plot, so don't be surprised if you find yourself wondering why you're characters are where they are, or doing what they're doing. The ending is even less rewarding and exciting than the rest of the game, incidentally. Keep that in mind, as well. Why two stars, then? Well, because it still gave me something to distract myself for a few days, and it is, technically, a game that is also an interactive video; a video game, which is what I paid for. That's the one thing keeping it from only getting one star.
You know, I remember when this game came out. I was 12 or 13 years old, at the time, and I recall that I had been mowing quite a few extra lawns to save up to be able to buy it when it came out. When I finally go my hands on it, though, I was disappointed. In the more primitive thought patterns of a young teenager, I remember wondering something similar to how it was possible that this could have possibly been the product of the same people that made an amazing game like Baldur's Gate 2. I decided to give it another try, and I was just disappointed. The plot was completely empty; boring and cliché. I spent the first few hours of gameplay trying to figure out why I could only have one person in my party before discovering that you don't actually have the option of forming an adventuring party and, shortly after, that you couldn't even select and order, or modify the equipment of, any of the simpletons (henchmen) that you can pay to follow you around, and holy cow... are they stupid. The gameplay is slow-paced and awkward, consisting of one long traipse through boxed-off areas filled with either ridiculously easy or overpowered enemies, countless containers filled with randomly generated and unexciting treasure (many of which are locked and trapped, yet have one low-cost generic item held inside), and an abundance of conversations to have with hollow characters that make it very difficult to care whether they live or die. The biggest problem I had though is that, while the idea of a single character embarking on an adventure is exciting, the idea of a single character walking out the door and essentially becoming the world's last hope for survival is not. There's A LOT more, but I only have so much room. The expansions were definitely an improvement on the original; "Hordes of the Underdark," especially, but I still don't understand why everyone enjoys them so much.
