Icewind Dale 2 Complete

As an avid role-player from right around the time shortly after the game was discovered (not invented...who knows when that really happened), I find all the Baldur's Gate Games as well as Icewind Dale 1 to be very pleasurable and entetertaining games. But this game was an attempt by someone not from TSR at taking over the reins as well as the gaming system, and trying to fix something that was never broken to begin with. The only possible reason for doing so would be to try to create more revenue from an old source....like beating a dead horse in a way, or trying to extract blood from a stone in another. In my humble (and rather old) opinion, the game stinks!

The best, improved by the addition of THIRD EDITION rules of D&D!

I love this game awesome game one of the best ! :]

Great game. Not better than Bulder's Gate 1 or 2 but a great game none the less. Why? Well the game feels a little ...hollow I suppose. The story will not grab you as much as Icewind Dale 1 did (or BG2 for that matter) BUT, but, the game play is fan(bloody)tastic. The new rule set (v3 I think) is implemented well (for the most part) and there is a new spell selection screen, animations etc. Well worth getting if you enjoyed Icewind Dale 1. Just do not expect it to be as good as Bulder's Gate 2. By the way, I still have the cd for this game and I still play it. It is fun. Pure and simple :)

The worst aspect of this game is the horrible Warcraft-style combat: real-time with pause. It was horrible in Baldur's Gate - it's horrible here. On higher difficulties you are forced to micro-manage your party because the AI is brain dead, which means pausing the game every half second. So, why not make it turn based in the first place? Rounds don't translate well into realtime: when you issue orders there is a delay. This can be fatal when your squishy mage just took a critical hit and your "drink healing potion" command takes 5 seconds to execute. Mages run out of spell quite quickly (that's Dungeon & Dragons rules) and your brain dead mage will run into melee when he runs out of throwing daggers. Be prepared to rest after every major battle - spells need to be relearned, again D&D rules. Party-based RPGs should be turn based! No exceptions! My second issue are the tedious levels. ACT II in particular got boring really fast. The maps are usually just filled with combat encounters with bullets sponges, so the gameplay loop is, combat, rest, combat, rest, combat, rest. Next map, rinse and repeat. The maps don't look really good and don't reward exploration. It is a hard game that provides a challenge. I actually beat it on "normal" (which translates to hard in today's standards) (original CD version, not here on GOG), and I will never play it again. It was tedious, not enjoyable or fun. Icewind Dale was slightly better because it was a bit more original and the story was better. NOT RECOMMENDED.