Icewind Dale 2

Return to the frigid north of the Forgotten Realms in the sequel to the critically acclaimed Icewind Dale. Will you heed the call to arms and face the greatest threat to the Spine of the World?

Return to the Spine of the World, that famous mountain range deep within Dungeons & Dragon's official world, the Forgotten Realms, for party-based adventure par excellence. Icewind Dale II is a throwback to an earlier time when D&D simulation meant six party members, 2-D graphics, and a heavy focus on story and real-time strategy game tactics.

Icewind Dale II plays like Baldur's Gate with one major difference: you create and control your entire party, which leaves you free to experiment with the huge array of options D&D 3rd Edition makes possible. Halfling paladins, wizards with thieving skills, it's all possible because Black Isle dutifully added all the new skills, rules, options, and feats given to D&D characters in the tabletop game.

The story line is long and epic and maybe too focused for its own good. You can experiment with any character combination you want, but you can't really range far and wide, adventuring as you wish. The story concerns a goblin army that is threatening human settlements far to the north. Infernal implications quickly surface as you learn that the goblins' masters might not be of this prime-material plane. The combat is fast, furious, constant, and extremely challenging. One of the reasons Baldur's Gate II worked so well was that your priest always had enough healing powers and Raise Dead spells handy. In Icewind Dale II, you begin at first level, so for half the game you must trudge homeward whenever somebody dies, which is frequent. The enemy appears in large numbers, usually with a spell caster in tow--and just beyond one group of enemies is another one. It's relentless and strategically satisfying, if more than a little frustrating too.

Fans of the earlier games who were perhaps a bit unsatisfied with the single-PC focus of Neverwinter Nights will delight in another chance to play party-based D&D. --Bob Andrews

Pros:

Full implementation of D&D 3rd Edition rules
Same old glorious tactical gameplay as the Baldur's Gate series

Cons:

Retro looking in this 3-D age of Neverwinter Nights
Often too difficult for its own good

Customer Reviews:

Icewind Dale II
A pretty good rpg game Not as good as Baldurs Gate 2 But still a good game Considering it's age and that it can be purchased rather cheaply It is well worth 10 bucks :)
--2006-07-29

Loads of Fun
I am having a great time playing this game. I play it almost all day. I like the fact you get to choose your own people to play. I get to arrange the different people to my best estimate of a challenging game.
--2006-07-15

Could be a lot funner.
Playing Icewind Dale II reminds me of all of those novels written by American authors in the late 19th century. Though many of the novels were very well written, they never seemed to suck me in and continue reading the book. Icewind Dale II is like that. It looks nice, it supposedly improves gameplay, and it gives the player more character creation options, but I just don't really want to play it. Why? Well, at the end of the day, it seems as if Icewind Dale II is hurt by a extremely corny story; it is bogged down in numerous irrelevent puzzles involving you running around constantly; it is just not as fun as its predescessor.

I bought this game for one reason and that reason was that I was addicted to Baldur's Gate II and needed to expand my party based rpg addiction to another realm. Icewind Dale II seemed to be the logical option. I was wrong. I was immediately confronted with a story so corny that it is almost embarassing to take part in. I was confronted with gameplay that caused me to run back and forth from one place to another constantly. I was confronted with battles so easy that I was soon bored.

I tried to play it again, but again I was plagued with the same problems. I installed a bunch of unofficial patches, but those did not solve the problems with the terrible puzzles and whatever else.

The overload of puzzles and corniness would be ok if you could diverge from the one path as you could in Baldur's Gate II, where you could accomplish quests at the order that you wanted to. Here you had to accomplish everything in a linear order and could never diverge from the path. Furthermore, the story seemed to be a retread of the story from the original Icewind Dale. In fact, the design of the game seemed to paralell it completely.

The final problem with this game concerns the fact that it is difficult to play if you have no knowledge of dungeons and dragons rules. If you do not know how to use rogues or are unfamiliar with feats and the like, this game will pose a very high learning curve that you may not want to climb. I was mostly familiar with the rules, but it was easy to see that someone who did not know them as well could easily make mistakes or be unfamiliar with the use of certain classes (even though the rule book was pretty exhaustive).

All in all, I do not think that this is a good game. I would just go with Baldur's Gate II or Icewind Dale I instead of this game.
--2006-07-11

Great Game
Just thought I'd share my my opinion.
I think ID2 is a great game with a very deep lore, great graphics, replayability and more. If your into RPG games this is right up your alley.
--2006-07-09

Lots of fun, not a bad story either.
Anyone who's a fan of the Black Isle games based on the infinity engine should enjoy this game. They changed up the character creation a little, so you seemingly have more control over your character's strengths and weaknesses. While IWDII doesn't have the depth of Torment or the NPC interaction of the Baldur's Gate series, it still has a good story and a nice interface. Graphically it's subpar to the NWN series, but I think that might actually be a benefit, as I found the 3D aspect of NWN to be a hinderence at times. Some tips for those interested:

1. Make a party of 4 characters. They will level up faster and have less hang ups with the AI. With 6 members, I found I needed to start over and import them into a new game after the prologue because they were under powered, and 2 of them always end up wandering off on me. Those problems are abated with only 4 characters.
2. Multiclassing is key. Having thief abilities is nice, but you don't really need more than 3 or 4 levels as rogue. Sink all the points into picking locks, and traps. Multiclass into a ranger or mage. You won't have to worry about armor hindering thief skills. Adding a few levels of fighter to cleric or barbarian helps learn more weapon skills, and in the case of a cleric, a boost to HP. These are just a few ideas...
3. For the warriors, focus on only a couple differnt weapons. Make sure you have at least one of them blunt weapons, as some foes aren't as vulnerable to the bladed variety. Also, have at least 2 members competent with ranged weapons.
--2006-02-19

- Vivendi Universal