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Its Cold Again!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 26 / 28
Date: February 28, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter is a wonderful add-on to Icewind Dale (see my review of Icewind Dale dated January 13, 2001 for further information). You must have the original game to play this add-on.

Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter begins in the town of Lonelywood. It is a town in fear of invasion with little in the way of amenities. The story builds from there.

The following features of ID:HOW are great: 1) New Area's to adventure in. 2) Requires 9th level or higher characters to play in the expansion. These can be imported from a completed game of ID. Alternatively, you can move in to the expansion from Kuldahar if you have not completed ID. Finally, you can create a brand new party of characters to adventure in ID:HOW. 3) You get to create all the members of your party to give you exactly the kind of party you want. 4) Capability to advance to 30th level (though you will probably need to adjust the difficulty of the game to do this). 5) Wonderful graphics that make you feel like you are in a very cold painting. 6) Partial use of D&D 3rd Edition Rules. 6) Special Abilities as follows: a) Paladin (Smite Evil, Divine Courage, Immunity to Disease, Spell access at 6th level). b) Ranger (Tracking, Spell access at 6th level). c) Druid (Shape change at 5th level, Elemental form at 11th level, Immunity to poison at 9th level, Immunity to fatigue, New experience table allowing progression past 14th level). d) Thief (Sneak Attack, Evasion at 7th level, Crippling Strike at 5th level). e) Bard (New songs that affect the party in different ways. New songs appear at the following levels-3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th). 7) Transport items such as gem bag (holds 20 gems or jewelry), potion bag (20 potions) and scroll cases (20 scrolls). 8) Hot key to illuminate doors (does not show you secret doors) and any items on the ground. 9) New spells for Mage and Cleric. The mage has 17 new spells of the following levels (Level 2: 1 spell, Level 3: 1 spell, Level 4: 3 spells, Level 5: 3 spells, Level 6: 3 spells, Level 7: 2 spells, Level 8: 4 spells). A Priest has 42 new spells of the following levels (Level 1: 2 spells, Level 2: 3 spells, Level 3: 10 spells, Level 4: 9 spells, Level 5: 7 spells, Level 6: 4 spells, Level 7: 7 spells). 10) New high level monsters. 11) Improved screen resolution for computers that can support it.

I believe you will enjoy this add-on to Icewind Dale. Be prepared to sleep at the computer. Make sure you have a wife who is understanding (and forgiving).

The Ice gods are cutting through my constitution!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 18
Date: December 28, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If you play this game(Icewind Dale) as well as Heart of Winter you may forget 'important' things like eating, sleeping and laundry. You may start hating your lousy job even more than you already do. This expansion adds a new town on the map, Lonlywood and many new locales. Your characters can become more powerful. In the case of Paladins and Rangers, they get spells early on and extra special abilities. Rangers get tracking but can only do it once per day(regardless of level) Wis of 18 can gain a lot of info but the day is long and you can only use it once. Don't use tracking in a smaller dungeon or outside towne unless you plan to rest up for a while(24 hours) Druids can attain the highest levels and can be the most powerful of characters. If you have a Paladin don't use a druid, or you'll have a morale failure. Druids can only be Neutral. If you have too high a reputaion your Druid gets weak(he thinks your a goody-two-shoes). Too low and the Paladin gets weak(er) anything above 16 will raise your Paladin's morale but lower your Druid. You never see this in IWD or HoW but it's there. There is a rep to maintain just like Baldur's Gate. Fallen Paladin's are no fun. They are weak fighters(not Wheapon Grande Masters) with no powers. For Roll play they are great though! In order to prosper in this game, a paladin(fallen or not) must have 18/00 strength, 18 charisma and 18 constitution and no less. Wisdom is somewhat important too, but not very.(that is only -my- opinion. play it your own way.) 18/00 STR gives him nearly the bonuses of a Grande Master Fighter at 18/99. And as for charm everyone gets morale boosts if he leads the party(with no druid). Elves make(in my humble opinion) the best Rangers, not half elves, they get a bounus to thier bows and swords and can attain +3 in misile attack(and reflex) because of dexterity of 19. Like I said in the IWD review, don't let any one tell you how to play. I can't stand most D&D players as they DO tell you how to play. Usually they say half elven rangers or else. But Half elves don't have dex bonuses nor do they have sword and bow bonuses. Who cares about constitution, they attack from a distance anyway. Elves are -perfect- shots with a bow! What a shame they aren't used to thier full potential(Legolos of Lord of the Rings style) Half elves are humans with some resistance. Bah! Elven mages gain nothing over human mages, no AC, just a reflex. +3(see tables) and cannot use a bow OR a sword! Haflings get sling bonuses bringing starting(thief lvl 1)THAC0 to 15 and make excellent theives and rear attackers but lousy fighters.
This is a great game and the expansion is good enough for me. There is also a free download with some new areas released by Bioware themselves. They must care about thier customers to do that! I am really impressed!
P. S. don't be afraid to use thieves in your Paladin party, they do much more than steal!

Really enhances Icewind Dale! Well worth picking up!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: May 23, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Most expansion sets only give you new characters and some new maps, but Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter actually IMPROVES the gameplay system and interface of Icewind Dale!

How so? Inventory screens are now streamlined and allow you to carry more stuff by giving you scroll and gem bags to keep non-essential items out of your main inventory. The interface is great in that you can maximize your viewing screen by using BGII-style hot keys to drop away unnecessary status panels. More areas have been added as well as some tweaking of the AD&D rules and some more spells! If you want to max out your party's experience, you can configure the mode that allows you to score max experience at the expense of dealing with some really tough enemy AI.

What's cool is numerous ways you can start a game in the Heart of Winter universe. Installing the add on, you can enhance your current in-progress Icewind Dale game that you're still playing and immediately jump to HOW at the conclusion. Doing this gives you the benefits of the HOW enhancements while still playing the first game. You can opt to import your previous party ifyou've already beaten IWD and start right at the HOW story, or you can use your existing game and access HOW through the locked door in Kuldehar. Pretty cool, but in any event you'll need the first IWD game to use this! Not a standalone product!

Great game and well worth picking up. I happen to think IWD was the better of the BG series of games thanks to the heavy combat and minimal exploration. HOW will keep you busy until IWD II comes out very soon!

A Worthy Expansion to an Amazing Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: March 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

When the original Icewind Dale came out, I was absolutely stunned by the depth and story that it contained. The combat system (same one as Baldur's Gate) is truly amazing. And this expansion only makes it better. The new resolution (800x600) is great and all of the little interface features alone make it worth the purchase. But the kicker is the raised experiance cap (30th level baby!) and the new lands to explore. All in all, if you've got Icewind Dale (or even if you don't), then you need to buy this game.

A Worthy Companion

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter is the worthy companion to the best selling Icewind Dale role-playing game. The two together have everything one looks for in such a game; from an incredible setting, to a highly original plot, to excellent multiple roleplaying options, to outstanding graphics, to extraordinary accuracy in relation to Dungeons & Dragons, and much, much more!
There is something here for everyone as the variety of challenges is large indeed, including battles, puzzle solving, and dialogue among others.
The game is set on Toril and specifically in Faerun. It deals with a great evil that has arisen and descended upon the region bringing the people misery and despair.
The story as a whole is excellent! The plot is so incredibly well written and presented that the gamer feels that they have been transported to another plane of existence and are actually present among the characters, seeing what they see, feeling what they feel, sensing what they sense. Moreover, the game does a great job of presenting the distinct cultures and civilizations of the inhabitants/peoples of Fearun, and Icewind Dale in particular. This has, without a doubt, been achieved as a result of a great deal of research that has gone into learning and understanding the numerous and often complex characteristics of the Forgotten Realms world.
Don't forget to download Tales of the Luremaster and be transported to a desert (!) setting for a few more encounters (puzzles and hacking and slashing) and some pretty nice treasure!
Strongly recommended along with the Baldur's Gate series and Planescape: Torment.

Short, but adds to replayability of IWD.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: April 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I'm going to have to agree with everyone here who said the expansion was far too short (Interplay said it would take 20 hours to beat: it actually takes around 8). However, if you want to replay the entire series, HoW does add a lot of replayability to the whole series. You get new spells and abilities, better graphics and a MUCH higher x.p. cap although, as others have mentioned, you'll probably have to play through the entire game in the 'Heart of Fury' mode (and do the 'save and import your PC' routine a few times) to reach it. It's probably the best out there right now and, similar to it's parent game, will tide me over until a truly awesome game (in this case the BGII expansion Throne of Bhaal) comes out. Wait for it to come down in price a bit and it'll be well worth the money.

Good game, but yes, a little too short.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: March 08, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is a great add-on to a great game, but way too short. One good thing though, is that if you set the difficulty to insane, monsters do double damage and give double experience. However, even with this feature, it is hard to reach level 30, as they SAY you can. I played through the entire game, including the expansion and then most of the original game again, all on insane mode, but still my highest character is level 25. Still, the new additions are incredible. The new abilities are cool (I play a paladin) and the monsters are cool too. Some of the old monsters got new looks, and then there are some new ones. Yes there is a dragon, and it is really cool. There are a lot more side quests in the expansion too, even better ones than the original game. There is one really neat feature of the original game that is really handy if you have the expansion. Since you create all the characters in your party, you can export chracters and then import them into other games. This helps for getting experience. Example: I import my level 19 paladin into an old saved game. There he meets an evil snake goddess, and kills her and her snake minions for a total of 108800 experience or so. Poof, he levels up. Repeat 20 times. With this feature you can essentially play through the game as many times as you want. All in all, a great game for any RPG fan, especially if you liked Baldur's Gate. THIS GAME IS MUCH BETTER THAN DIABLO 2. Get this game. -CoWgOd

Nice visual enhancements, but really buggy.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 27, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I really like what has been done with the overall graphics. The textures and monsters are much improved. The increased detail to the characters is spetacular. All of this is without a 3D card. Using a 3D card enhances the graphics even further making the textures even richer and adding to shadows as well. The main problem with HoW....bugs. HoW is really touchy, especially when trying to play multiplayer. You may have trouble getting it to run smoothly on your machine, but just mess with the settings a little and you can fix that. For example: I turned off ambient sounds and mine runs great. For multiplayer problems you might try turning off all your feedback options and you will want to check to make sure all the people you are playing with have the same version of directX installed.

I hope this helps. I know there are probably a lot of you out there having these problems.

Not bad at all...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: October 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Icewind Dale is a fun game, and I like the expansion quite a bit. True, it is a hack & slash game without a lot of opportunity for roleplaying, and I would not put it on the same level as any of the Baldur's Gate games, but the storyline is interesting, the items that you can acquire are neat, and just because a game is not real complex doesn't mean it is no good. If you find a good price on this game (probably under 25 dollars), by all means check it out.

What Level Am I?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 26, 2001
Author: Amazon User

All I can say is the game is really(2x) great its interesting and very, very exciting. But I guess the game is too short for the players to reach their maximum level of 30, you could finish the game without even getting close to it. Please try to work on this...Thanks.

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