Icewind Dale 2 Complete

I never was a fan of Icewind Dale. I remember abandoning the game after playing it for a while. It was shortly after it first came out and I had just finished Baldur's Gate and expected more: more story, more immersiveness and less linearity. It felt like a hack'n'slay-game in comparison. Now I decided to give Icewind Dale 2 a try and am quite happy with it. The combat is tough and very strategic. The amount of sidequests is just right and so is the layout of the different areas. It just almost never gets boring. It is still true, though, that, like its predecessor, it lacks the open world that Baldur's Gate offered. Somewhat like Neverwinter Nights 2, the game and it's storyline more or less run on rails and it is almost impossible to derail the whole thing. But while I disliked this fact about Neverwinter Nights 2, I actually like it about Icewind Dale 2. It never gives you the feeling of being forced to do something when you acutally want to do something else. Its like every curve of the railroad seems reasonable, every change of speed justified, every stop just in time. This is a hard thing to accomplish in game-design, I assume! Even apart from that, the storytelling is good: You have to act like a hero at times, but on other occasion, you need to make questionable decisions. All of them seemed natural enough for me. This adds to the overall atmosphere of the game and makes the story believable. I didn't finde any obvious flaws. It's challenging but well balanced, polished, well thought-out, features an intriguing enough story and runs reasonably well even on newer machines. If anything, it is time-consuming as it is surprisingly long. What starts of as a simple mercenary mission step by step becomes a deep story with some surprising twists. I would compare the game to the german title Drakensang, which is somewhat reminiscient of it here and there - and is equally long and winding.

The nostalgia hits hard, waited for years for someone, somehow, to rescue this when I heard the source code was lost. The fact some industrious superheroes rebuilt it from the ashes makes it even more amazeballs. Plays flawlessly on a modern system. Now my BG/IWD/NWN collection is complete again, all is well in the Forgotten Realms.

Still a great game. Thanks to GOG holds up on newer systems!

Fun. A little old-school game that calls me back to my younger days of playing rpgs.

A fine successor to the original. Some parts I had despaired of being able to get past without cheating but I eventually won through sweat and tears alone. Some advice I have is to pay close attention to your characters path finding because the game will have them all over the place if you let it. That is the only reason I am taking off a star. If you choose the good option for the final battle against madae and isair, make certain to help keep those monks alive when they come to help. I buffed up Ormis and his flying monk fists kept madae busy while I pounded on isair.