What people search:
 | Title : Icewind Dale 2
Author : Black Isle Studios
Release Date : 20020827
Binding : CD-ROM
Regular Price : $29.99
Amazon.com Price : $23.99
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Editorial Reviews :
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
Buyer Reviews :
I have played every game in the Baldur's Gate engine and enjoyed them all. However this one (and IWD part one) was the least fun. It had the same spells and classes, sometimes even more, but there weren't very many NPCs (people you can walk up and talk to), and it's really hard to multiclass later in the game if you screw up building your party since they added an experience penalty to characters that are dual-class but more than 1 level apart (like 10th level fighter/5th level mage would be penalized 20% exp until the mage part got up to level 9).
The thing that I disliked the most was quite simply the running around trying to figure out stupid [stuff.] And by stupid [stuff] I mean stuff that didn't really advance the plot very much, if at all, and in some cases took a really long time. For example in the Dragon's Eye portion of the game there are 4 levels. I ran back and forth about 100 times between the first 3 before reading a cheat guide and figuring out how to open the...door to the 4th level. At that point I simply wanted to punch the monitor.
I would not recommend this game to someone unless they needed one more fix of Bioware's old D&D engine before moving on to Neverwinter Nights or something else. That's why I got this (also to kill time until I could afford a new video card) but I would have been better off replaying Baldur's Gate II, which had more character interaction and a much more engrossing storyline, not to mention a much less linear and restrictive pattern.
(by twigles)
Features/Technical Specs :
* Epic party-based Dungeons and Dragons adventure
* New playable races such as the sinister Dark Elf and the skull-smashing Half-Orc
* Auto-balancing game-play balances the conflict to match your skill level
* Real-time combat with the ability to pause at any moment to refine your strategy
* Improved multiplayer support for up to 6 players
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