Sorely unimpressed with IWD II - am I alone?

[trueheart78]

Lil bit of background before I get into the meat & potatoes.

After having played the baldur's gate 2(great game, I LOVED it, every single minute), I thought about getting IWD. Well, before I did that, I got the tob expansion, and played through that - it seemed quite linear, but it finished up all that I loved about bg2, and now that game has a special place in my heart...

Then Icewind dale, I purchased that, the how expansion, even downloaded the Totlm expansion(I'm on dialup, so that's a job). Well, it was great, up til how. Then, it was good... until I went to totlm... boy I hated that, and it seems as though the quality in iwd went down abit. Nonetheless, when i finally finished iwd, I was joyous. So I went and got me iwd 2...

I am very lukewarm about this game. I'm not sure if it's because of the seemingly endless plodding(in iwd, even though some dungeons took forever, they only ever seemed to take but 2 minutes to walk through when clear), the lack of balanced encounters(sure, I hate the worg rides as much as everyone, but me taking out a white dragon and 3+ wyrms at lvl 9, without a hitch? and then going sinde the cave entrance and doing it again, without even resting?), or the use of 3rd edition rules - they just seem too leniant for me, as opposed to all my play with 2nd ed.

Perhaps I over-excited myself about this game(it happens), but I honestly can't wait for my friend to get done playing iwd so I can get my disks back and play it some more, but I have to wait for him to finish, and we all know how fun that is.

So, my question to you is, am I the only one that's slightly disappointed in iwd 2?

[andrewas]

Your not the only one that was dissapointed in IWD2.

On the plus side, you can use it to play BG2 with the third ed ruleset and better graphics, assuming Weimer ever fininshed the conversion.

[Magness]

You hated TOTL, trueheart78? I loved it! It was FREE! How can anyone hate that? It was a very amusing small add-on to IWD/HOW. About the only annoyance in it was the size of the first dungeon that you have to clear. It tended to slow down my computer due to its immense size.


On the balance issues... Some people had considerably more trouble with the white dragons (for example) than others. There are 2 versions of the white dragon ambush. Version 1, 1 WD outside, 1 WD in the cave; wyrms split between the two. Version 2: Both WD's and all wyrms inside the cave. That said, IIRC it took me a couple of tries to take out the WD outside the cave and even when I succeeded, I had to rest.

The early "wardrums" area was quite a challenging area early on.

A lot of the "ease" of these battles have to do with one's choice of combat tactics and DnD experience. You and I are apparantly experienced with the previous BG and IWD D&D games and probably have solid tactics and do fairly well in the battles. However, everyone playing these games are not as tactically experienced as us and are probably having much more trouble. This is what I'm seeing from reading this and the Interplay IWD2 forums. Heck, it took me a few times to beat the final battle the very first time I fought it. I&M were beating me senseless until I came up with a good set of tactics. Now, I can take a party of 6 at level 16 (the normal "normal mode" party level for a party of 6) and totally whup the twins in no time flat, cuz of my refined tactics and spell choices.

BTW, have you tried playing IWD2 in HoF mode? Particularly with a non-HoF optimized, non-powergamed party? It can be quite a challenge. It must have taken me 5-6 times to clean up Guthma's fortress (on the outside). I absolutely loved that battle, even though it took me 5-6 tries. Incredibly challenging. Also, some of those battles in the Fields of slaughter were horrifyingly difficult. It took me 5-6 times to defeat Saablic Tan and his minions.


It's hard to bash BIS over the 3rd ed rules. They were forced to make them compliant with the dictates of WotC due to their DnD licensing agreements.

Concerning the 3rd ed rules, what do you mean by "too lenient"? Do you mean things like any race being able to play any class, for example? I LOVED that. I've always found the 2nd ed rules too ridiculously constricting and I've been playing DnD CRPG's since the old SSI gold box games.

[Faceman]

I was and still am unimpressed of IWD2 too. For several reasons.

I don't like 3rd ed. - I have no problem with everyone being able to be everything BUT I have a problem with everyone being able to be everything at the same time. I like true-class chars, maybe dual-class, maybe multi-class with 2 reasonable classes but I just can't take a Mage/Cleric/Rogue/Fighter/Paladin - NO NO NO!

Boring enemy encounters - Take the ice palace for example. There's your standard setup of Aurilites and winter wolves. You take them out once then around the corner there's another group of them and another and another and the funny thing is that it is in no way difficult but only boring.

Linear story - Well that's a general issue of IWD being more combat oriented than BG/BG2 and I also criticized that in ToB.

Overpowered enemies meet overpowered party - as 3rd ed rules make my party kickass at lvl8 I now also have to face BIG enemies. No monster has less than 150HP they all have high attack boni ...
While in BG2 the 200+HP were reserved for Dragons and VERY high demons in IWD2 every random encounter has them (in ToB too )

No party interaction - It's nice to be able to create the whole party yourself but I never did it in BG because I did not want to miss out on party banter.

Too little magic - The graphics are great but no enemy seems to use it.

[Magness]

Originally posted by Faceman: I was and still am unimpressed of IWD2 too. For several reasons. I don't like 3rd ed. - I have no problem with everyone being able to be everything BUT I have a problem with everyone being able to be everything at the same time. I like true-class chars, maybe dual-class, maybe multi-class with 2 reasonable classes but I just can't take a Mage/Cleric/Rogue/Fighter/Paladin - NO NO NO!

This isn't really a problem with 3rd ed., but with the lack of a DM to limit silly player choices. I agree that there are many people that make silly class combos, but without a DM to limit players, you'd need the game engine to act as DM and this would require creating DM-ish rules to force the limitations.

Boring enemy encounters - Take the ice palace for example. There's your standard setup of Aurilites and winter wolves. You take them out once then around the corner there's another group of them and another and another and the funny thing is that it is in no way difficult but only boring.

Some are boring, some are less so. Thing is, if you're in an Aurilite temps chuck full of Aurilites and winter wolves, what else would you expect to find there other than those Aurilites, etc.?

Linear story - Well that's a general issue of IWD being more combat oriented than BG/BG2 and I also criticized that in ToB.

I'm of the opinion that BG2's story was every bit as linear as IWD. All of BG2's side quests had nothing to do with BG2's story. They were there to create the impression of non-linearity and to provide you with the opportunity to earn the XP that gets you up to a high enough level to take on Irenicus.

Overpowered enemies meet overpowered party - as 3rd ed rules make my party kickass at lvl8 I now also have to face BIG enemies. No monster has less than 150HP they all have high attack boni ... While in BG2 the 200+HP were reserved for Dragons and VERY high demons in IWD2 every random encounter has them (in ToB too )

So your complaint isn't that the enemies are "overpowered". Just that your party is "overpowered". I think that your mistake is in thinking that a 2nd ed 8th level party should be the equivalent of a 3rd ed 9th level party.

No party interaction - It's nice to be able to create the whole party yourself but I never did it in BG because I did not want to miss out on party banter.

You like the party banter and apparantly prefer it over creating your own party. Other people prefer the reverse. All of that party interaction requires a LOT of design and programming work.

First of all, you have to create all of the NPC's and design a background for them. Then you have to script out all of the possible interactions that you want to allow for. Then you have to write up the code to support the interactions.

And this doesn't include the interactions between in-party NPC's and non-player NPC's.

I've suggested that it would have been nice if the Devs had take a middle road and used an idea that was used in the gold box SSI DnD games... the "limited" NPC. This limited NPC could join your party and would stay with your party while you remained in a certain area or until you completed a task.

Another idea I've suggested was a another "limited" NPC, one that would talk to you only when you asked them to join or to leave. No in-party interaction. This would have limited that amount of scripting required to add such NPC's.

Too little magic - The graphics are great but no enemy seems to use it.

Seemed to be plenty of spellcasters to me. Of course, I always made a special effort to wipe out spellcasters very quickly.

It really seems like personal preference plays a major part in one's perception of IWD2. People that like making their own parties, less or no party interaction, or less emphasis on magic like IWD2. Some people found the spell/counter-spell of BG2 to be boring. Some liked it.