Icewind Dale 2 Complete

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.

On inital launch, nothing happened. Went to the game directory and launched from there, recieved an error message "iwd2.exe the application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000022)". This is due to windows 10 not natively having directplay installed, as its really old. After installing that through the control panel >Programs and Featuers > Turn Windows features on or off > Legacy Components - DirectPlay, the game ran. Gog have bundled a ddraw/wine emulator thing for some compatibility issues, this is located in the same folder as your iw2.exe, you can use this to change emulation types. The one they default too will give you slightly longer load times but has the best mouse movenment. if the load times bother you, you can change it with the setup-ddrawfix.exe.

I love all the baldurs gate series, icewind dale series, have the enhanced editions etc which are great in my opinion truly. This game is a step above the rest in every regard, it has been really well thought out not just in the new rules, but in the fights them selves which see you requiring different tactics for different battles across the game, which means the importance of variety in your party and the ability to be more all rounded is important. I can't stress how good this game is for the people that loved the infinity engine games. Some of the battles are really hard, even early in the game and require thinking which puts some people off, but if your willing to persevere it's an extremely rewarding experience and might i say, no rpg's today bring such a complete experience where the locations change so vividly, so do the opponents, the challenges, and then to top it all off you have the superb new 3.0 edition rules to go with all of that new content. You cant lose purchasing this game if you love rpg's, not in my opinion.

First things first: The game works fine out of the box, but make sure to delete or rename ddraw.dll in the main folder. IWD2 is said to have had a rushed production, and it definitely shows. Apparently, the team at Black Isle had trouble getting the (at the time) freshly released D&D 3rd edition rules to work with the trusty old Infinity Engine, which powered Baldur's Gate I and II, Planescape: Torment, and the first Icewind Dale game before. Still, even though IWD2 cannot hold a candle to either of those games, there is still plenty to enjoy for fans of CRPGs. Much like in IWD, one gets to create a whole party from scratch, which requires having a firm understanding of the 3rd edition ruleset. While there are preset parties, coming up with a custom party is what makes these games so endearing in the first place. The first few chapters taking place in the town of Targos and beyond are easily the best parts of the game: challenging, atmospheric, and filled with a healthy amount of dialogue and narrative. The talking soon dries up, however, and the game instead turns into a linear dungeon crawler. The linearity is not a bad thing, though, as it allows the developers to create carefully curated encounters that require proper tactics to beat. Past the fourth chapter, however, things start to become dull. One gets to re-visit locations from the first IWD, including reused assets, and in order to keep those fresh, the developers decided to fill them with utterly boring puzzles. A lot of this is just tedious padding bar of any actual challenge, aside from testing one's patience. The only reason the game remains tolerable during those parts is how solid the foundation is. The Infinity Engine never looked better, Inon Zur's score is simply beautiful, and the character system is pleasantly complex throughout. Overall, I consider IWD the better game, but if you've already beaten that one and want more, IWDII is well worth playing.

Though this game is light on story, it captures the sense of fantasy adventure perfectly, with a wide variety of locations, tons of neat items to find, and numerous TOUGH, but entertaining battles to be fought that require you have a strong grasp of your party's strengths and weakness. While all chapters are solid, my favorite is the first by far, as you go from no-name sell sword to heroic warriors taking the fight to the goblin horde themselves. It's a classic scenario, told many times over, but it's done so well here. And the victory doesn't come easy, but when you've finally taken down the big bad and you're rifling through the piles of loot, you can't help but think back to the moment you first got off that boat and were scrounging for discarded leather armor. It's a feeling of elation these IE games always captured very well and especially so here. Another moment of mention, is the battle to acquire one of the more powerful swords in the game. As far as the classic IE party v. party battles go, it don't get much more epic (and hectic) than this. So maybe the story is there after all, it's the story of your rag-tag group of nobodies clawing their way to find their place among the heroes of legend, and when it comes to nerdy fantasy games, what more could you ask for?