Icewind Dale II

If someone says D&D most of the time you will think, tabletop role-playing that is secluded to Geeks. If someone says 3rd edition D&D you would most likely punch them for incoherent speech, what does D&D have to do with Icewind Dale II I hear you ask? A lot, well not a lot, a hell of a lot.

Scratch your head its time for a story.
The story goes like this, just after the Ten Towns gets saved from evil, a new evil arises, surprise, surprise, and also just as this happens a bunch of adventurers (you the player) fresh for the battle and the rest as they say, is history.

To give the game credit though the narrative style of the game is absolutely fantastic, a woman's voice narrates the intro screens that introduce each of the games chapters, similar to levels but on a grander scale.

The games story is fed to you through encounters with NPC's the main story line is unchangeable but you can make it flow certain ways by doing certain quests or not doing them, something that is highly annoying though is if you slay a character who is integral to the story line, doing so will give you a game over and force you to load the game from the last save, a good thing is though, most of the main game characters have a voice, so it is wise that if the person has a voice don't kill them.

Also the story will still go the same way no matter what you do, because of the aforementioned NPC slaying turning game over, so the freedom to do what you want is severely limited to the point that some players will get annoyed, but because of the drift of the game you will more than likely find yourself wanting to see what's past the next battle.

Look Ma, I'm the ring bearer!
Character generation, this game has a great character generation system, which rivals that of any RPG. You have the basics, the race, gender, class, alignment, then it has the more obscure ones like your favoured enemy, and if you're so inclined you can even write a biography for your character.

Characters can range from, Paladins to Rogues, all the standard fantasy fair type classes, you can also multi-class to make a Paladin Rogue for example, multi-classing will give you either a lot of heart ache or a lot of stopping power depending on your choices, because each race has its plus and minus's, then coupling that with the multi-classing choosing the wrong class can heave heavy penalty's on your character.

There is also your races favoured class, and if your character chooses their favoured race class and then switches to a new class they will not receive any of the aforementioned multi-classing penalty's. All this class switching sounds confusing, because it is, but if you read the manual, thoroughly, the switching will seem somewhat less confusing. After you've decided your class, you get to the skills, this skills can range from Diplomacy to Intimidate, skills vary from class to class, so a Paladin could learn Diplomacy but not Pick Pocket and so on, some of these skills are used independently, so as soon as you talk to an NPC your diplomacy skill takes effect, where as skills like Pick Pocket must be manually used.

Next up are the feats, these are kind of like the characters special, they are also classed based and are similar to spells. You can get weapon feats so that you are more proficient with weapons, also like skills, some feats are always in use, like the weapon proficiency's ones, where as some are used manually in the same manner as skills, via the interface.

You get to make up to 6 characters, you could do it with less but you would be fairly hard put to kill anything. Each character is easily distinguishable from each other, a dwarf is short, a human is tall etc, so your not going to get yourself muddled up all of a sudden, but the strange thing is, at any time you can change your characters hair colour, in an instant, although this is good it does seem kind of strange.

A Goblin just killed me, that Merchant scammed me
Combat, this is the main bread and butter of this game, the games combat is extremely balanced, which will put a lot of people off, because unlike most games where after a certain amount of time your party becomes a bunch of walking tanks, this game you are fairly hard put all the way through the game.

In IWD2 the stronger you party becomes the less exp you will get from killing monsters, initially if you party is around level 2 and you kill an Orc, you will get 300exp which is then shared between all the members, but if you party's average level is 3, that exp will half to 150exp, this is a very interesting way to deal exp but seems to work quite well since monsters are quickly replaced through the areas with stronger ones so you wont find yourself not levelling because you are getting less experience points per kill.

The game is default is real-time combat, in which you just slog it out with the enemy, at the beginning of the game this is acceptable, but if you try to fight a hard or large battle in real-time you will be slaughtered, so by pressing the Space bar or the spinning globe the game will pause, in which case you can take as much time as you want to deal orders to your troops, I was very sceptical of this approach but it works extremely well as the battles flow quickly, where as they would flow slowly if they used a traditional turn-based combat.

The game has a lot of spells to learn, spell learning is dependant on class and can be used by via scrolls, which once used is gone for good, or from the characters memory. Unlike most games that have a magic bar, this game has a set amount of spells per day, if your Wizard has memorized the Magic Missile spell, he may use it once a day, unless he has more of the spell, and after which time he will have to wait till the next day before he can use it again, this is a unique approach which may annoy magic fans who will find themselves resting their party frequently so that their magicians can use their spells again.

Looking a little sad?
This game is ugly, graphically speaking, OK. That's a lie but it isn't beautiful at that. The game uses the same engine as used in Baldurs Gate and its subsequent sequels. The engine is still very good but it starting to show its age, the games view is the classic top down view that has become somewhat of a RPG stable.

The games areas are beautifully crafted, with little details here and their that make them very well done, also unlike other games of the genre the areas do not seem forced, the areas are cruelly realistic, everything feels natural and it is a credit to the developer that they managed to pull this off. All the areas are cluttered with junk that obscures your path, although almost none of it is destructible which is kind of annoying.

All of the games monsters are easily distinguishable, there is no way you will be confused with what your fighting, Goblins or Trolls your going to know what's taking you down, the range of monsters in the game could be called gargantuan, although the games graphical engine is not very technically powerful all the monsters look charming, from the spike shoulder pads on half-goblins to the morning stars of Bugbears.

Spell effects, one would think they are stunning, but one would be wrong, the spell effects are all well done and also very distinguishable except they are not very spectacular, they are more under whelming if anything, but again, they serve their purpose. Overall the graphics are decent but won't blow you away.

What did you say?
Audio, it can make or break a game as much as the graphics, maybe more so, lucky this games music is outstanding.

The game is set in the north, which means snow, one would expect dreary depressing music, but instead you are treated to a wonderful orchestral score that is extremely epic and gives you a sense of purpose, when walking through the games initial town an extremely wonderful tune plays and actually makes you want to save the town even more, at first you may think, what a crap looking town until the music kicks in you'll be thinking, now where is this orchestra and why cant I give them my hard earned gold.

A strange yet common thing in IWD2 is the voices, for some reason only the main NPC's and sometimes not even all of them, feature voice actors. Of these few voice actors they are all stunning, the voices are greatly cast, especially the woman's voice that speaks in the FMV's and Chapter introductions.

Sound effects are great, spiders screech, goblins grunt, and humans grunt too. Weapons slash and spells explode, do I have a point? No not really, the sound effects speak for themselves, top marks all around for the various effects in the game.

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, we'll make it, Tomorrow!
Will this game last? Yes, that's all there is to say, as far as RPG length goes it slides into one of the longer games, the games length is extreme and will have you hacking away for many weeks before you finally topple the beast, and then you may decide to play through the game again, with a different party.
Multiplayer is also integrated into the game, allowing you to play over LAN or over the net via Gamespy. This always adds more length to a title, but given the nature of IWD2 most players will not appreciate this and will stick to the single player game.

System Requirements - Pentium II 350 MHz, 64 MB RAM, Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP, DirectX 8.0, 8 MB DirectX-compatible 3D accelerator, DirectX-compatible sound card, 4x CD-ROM drive, and 700 MB hard-disk space.