Great game with enjoyable combat, levelling and loot gathering. Light on rpging and interaction, but has classy story.

User Rating: 9 | Icewind Dale (DVD) PC
By thibbledorfP | Review Date:
Icewind Dale... what can I say? Normally I like heavier RPG's along the lines of Baldurs Gate, but IWD was of such high-quality, I rather like the dungeon-crawling game. It knows what its focus is... combat. You develop a group of six characters, with a wide variety of interesting skills, then go out into the world. The plot involves a missing caravan at first, but your adventurers discover a diabolical plan to dominate the region. Do you have the mettle to stop it?

GRAPHICS

I can summarise this as follows: Fans of quality 2d sprite graphics will like it, people who feel strongly against 2d graphics will not. The graphics are quality and well-done. Ironically, the best graphics are the indoors, not the rather plain icy plains. Good detail, spell effects... not bad at all.

SOUND

The sound is perfect. That is a word I never ever use. The music is the pinnacle of music for a game. Soaring and emotional orchestral scores will please your ears, but it is subtle and will never get old. Voice and FX are good as well, the voice actors for your pcs are interesting indeed. Only main plot characters will speak full lines to you, but the acting is grand. The real show here is the music. I got the soundtrack to the game, and I actually listen to it when doing homework etc. outside the game.

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay consists of extremely fun battles that demand strategy, but are fair. The character creation is extremely fun, and you do NOT need to have a standard party (2 warriors, a healer, thief, mage, random). Any combination of characters within reason will work, as there are different strategies possible. Having three mages would be interesting for example. The challenge, fun and strategy of combat is perfect here: hard in a way that makes you think, but easy to learn and use. The story is great, and the atmosphere and dialogue are classy. There are not many dialogue or quest-choices, and it is very linear. There are not many sub-quests. But it is a very classy hack-and-slash that even someone like me who loves hardcore rpgs, can grow to accept. The game has a great variety of well-designed random loot, no two games will play the same. The expansion adds great features, new options for classes, new spells and a search button ( a godsend!).

Now to the bad. Pathfinding is horrible, like in other IE games. But not enough to break it. The 'you must gather your party before venturing forth' voice is still there when you try to change areas without your whole party there. BG veterans will know what I mean. Sometimes it can get lonely without many npcs to talk to, but you have to accept the game for being a quality hack-and-slash. I

Other Helpful Reviews for Icewind Dale (DVD)

Load Comments (0)