This game main campaign's story falls short of BGII (and Planescape). The endless slashing through 5exp-rated brigands and spiders and orcs and skeletons dilate the RPG dynamics even further, and the fact that a hack-ya-slash-ya figter bursts through all the fights doesn't help the complexity much. However, the two expansions are excellent, balanced and offer an awesome degree of worthy customization to your main character (my favorite being the indestructible necromantic priest/blackguard annihilating enemies thru single cast of Implosion and Finger of Death). If you are a newcomer who likes RPGs, I suggest you start with the first expansion (Shadows...) and proceed on to the second (Hordes...). Both are written so that they happen to the same player character (but NOT to the character of the main campaign!). Knowing the story of the main campaign has virtually no impact on your enjoyment of the two expansions, aside from being the background for an NPC you can recruit. So, get it, play thru the expansions, enjoy it, and do it again. Then, maybe get a few new campaigns from the community. Then, maybe, try the main game campaign... or don't. In a nutshell, buy it, play the two expansions, ignore the tedious original campaign. It is still worth the money, and this gaming package gets five stars.
This is a very decent title. I somehow felt it was inferior to the first IWD in both atmosphere and difficulty, and found the extremely linear story tedious at times. There are interesting references to the story of the first IWD, but overall, I found there was even less lore than in the original, it's just just plain hack and slash. Final showdown was not entirely satisfying, either. Worth playing, but a bit weaker than the first IWD and miles behing the epic scale of either BGII or Planescape. I had some decent fun. If you want to have a look at the new rules in a decent Infinite environment, this one is worth a shot... tho the fact that old-fashioned party combos such as Paladin+healer cleric+bombing sorceror+controlling mage still faceroll all enemies with minimal effort somehow makes the newly availible Drow female warrior/priest or Svirfneblin illusionist much less appealing.
The game is uselessly complicated and much less fun than the good old Wardlords were. Worse, it was incredibly bugged on release and no amount of patching seems to have helped. I was really determined to give it a go – twice, last one being some 2 years ago. It feels fun at the start, but soon gets dreary, especially with all the crashes and reloading involved. Avoid if you can. This game might be old, but has never been good.
