Reviewed: October 21, 2002
Reviewed by: Richard Cross
Publisher
Interplay
Developer
Black Isle Studios
Released: August 27, 2002
Genre: RPG
Players: 6
ESRB: Teen
8
9
9
9
8.6
System Requirements
Recommended System
What am I up to when I am not reviewing games? Hmmm, let’s see, I have been spending way too much time playing Neverwinter Nights on the PC. For those of you that don’t know, Neverwinter Nights was one of the first games that implemented the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition Rules. Icewind Dale II continues in this tradition and has added some other great features as well.
One of the main differences between these two games is that Icewind Dale II supports up to six people in your party. You are in direct control of each of these characters, and you can control their actions and also their upgrade path as they gain experience and level up. Neverwinter Nights only allows one character and one sidekick. The downside to NWN is that you are not even able to control your sidekick; you can just give them some basic instructions.
Well, I can’t tell you how excited I was to finally get Icewind Dale II in the mailbox. After reading the entire front and back cover of the box, I ripped it open and proceeded to install the game on the computer. Installation went well without a hitch, and within minutes I was ready to run my newly found treasure. I fired up the game and watched the intro movie.
From the very start of the game you get the feeling that you are being immersed into the world of Icewind Dale II. The story line is much deeper than the original, with your party traveling throughout the Spine of the World and beyond. After the initial movie and a brief history of who and where you are, you are ready to begin creating your adventure party. This is done in one of two ways.
The first method is to create each of the people in your party one at a time. You can select the way they look from an incredible gallery of professionally illustrated fantasy portraits, as well as the way they act and their versious strengths and weaknesses. Hopefully if you select this route you have some experience with Dungeons & Dragons and the AD&D 3rd Edition Rules. Like I said before, you can do this for up to six members of your party, or, you can be lazy and just go with method #2 and select a pre-made party that will have you adventuring in a matter of minutes. If you are the type that likes to dive in and start slashing then I would suggest the latter method.
The game starts off slowly with you and your men having only armed with sticks. The good thing is that it doesn’t take very long to get some real weapons to protect yourself. Oh, did I say protect yourself? You bet I did! A good example of Icewind Dale II would be to compare it to Diablo 2 with six people. This is definitely a hack and slash type game where the combat gets quite hot and heavy within the first half hour of playing it. Meanwhile, the story draws you in and gives you some good information on the background of the original Icewind Dale.
The original Icewind Dale was a very good game, it just didn’t have a very timely release. It came out about the same time as Diablo 2 and Baldur’s Gate 2, and the sales of Icewind Dale never really took off. This is called a sleeper hit because over time, gamers (like you and I) will read reviews and hear exciting stories about the original game. You may even be so intrigued with this game that you will want to purchase the original just to see how it all started.
This sequel is set about thirty years in the future from the original, and is larger than the original and all of its expansion packs combined. While it doesn't approach the scale or scope of Baldur’s Gate 2 or Neverwinter Nights, it will still take many long hours for you to battle your way through the entire game.
There have been some great additions added with the inclusion of the AD&D 3rd Edition (3E) Rules. Once your character levels up, you get the option of moving up a level in your current class or you can select an entirely different class. You can now have multi-classed characters as well as characters that are just a higher level within the same class.
Once you have leveled up in your current class or a new class you get to increase your level in certain skills and feats. The skills that you can select include animal empathy, concentration, lore, move silently, open lock, and many more. Each of these skills will help you throughout the game in their respective area. The feats that you can select include ambidexterity, blind-fight, dash, power attack, and many, many more. You can find the entire list of skills and feats and a description of their uses at the official website.
There always seems to be downside to every game and IWD2 was no exception. I was only able to find one that really irked me during all the time that I played. The pathfinding for the computer AI controlled characters is very poor. I actually had to baby-sit my adventuring team through some of the areas because they weren’t smart enough to find their own way. In my opinion the pathfinding AI in this game is its weakest point. While it doesn’t seem to affect every area that you venture into, it is prevalent in most of the game. That said, let’s get to the good stuff!
Hopefully you noticed in the beginning paragraph that I mentioned that I have been playing many hours of Neverwinter Nights. Well, I would like to finish the thought that I started in this section. NWN is a beautiful looking game, and after playing it for so many hours and getting used to its beauty, I couldn’t help but notice that the Infinity Engine that is used in Icewind Dale II is really starting to show its age.
Don’t get me wrong, the graphics in IWD2 are spectacular, and the detail that the artists have contributed is astonishing. However, this engine has been around for a few years now and games like Neverwinter Nights have passed up this older technology. Increasing the game’s resolution does seem to help the graphical quality and it looks much better running at 1024x768 or higher.
The animations are truly spectacular, as well as the character portraits. The creatures have all had detail added to them and the spell effects are tremendous. All of these graphics and animations look better than the original because the game supports resolutions of 800x600 and all the way up to 2048x1536. One thing to note is that the higher resolutions are not supported by the IWD2 technical support team.
In most games I get really tired of hearing voice-acting dialog that just repeats itself over and over again. The sound effects and voice acting in this game are really top notch and make excellent use of EAX technology. The dialog rarely repeats itself, and the inflections and emotions in the voices make you feel as if the game is talking directly to you.
The music has quite a bit of variety and is also excellent quality. The design team responsible for the audio portion of this game should congratulate themselves on a job well done. Hopefully other developers out there will take notice and do the same.
The replay value of this IWD2 is endless. With the ability to generate new characters and parties over and over again; you could really play this game forever, or at least until the next game in the series is released anyway. The third edition rules open up so many options for the player that it makes generating a new character extremely fun and entertaining. You can select from so many different options of classes, type, gender, and feats that you could literally play this game over and over again and never have the same type of character a second time. This is an example of true value.
Most people that spend their hard earned cash to purchase a game would like to get more than a few days out of it. With this game, you can play it through and have everything be different each time you play. Now there are obvious limitations to that, the storyline and quests have a finite limit as in any game, but here at least the developers took the time during development so that the player can get his money’s worth.
I highly recommend Icewind Dale II to anyone that enjoys a good RPG. Black Isle Studios have years of experience writing these types of games, and each one is better than the last. The good points in this game truly outnumber the bad and IWD2 was really a joy to play.
Hopefully we will see a trilogy in this series and the next version will actually have a new engine that can give us a greater visual experience. I also hope that the developers spend a bit more time on the pathfinding AI so that I don’t have to continually watch my party and manually guide them through some of the tougher areas. For those of you that enjoy a good RPG, head to your nearest software store to pick up Icewind Dale II!