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Sadly Mediocre

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 19
Date: December 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game mostly because of the great reviews it got. Sadly, this was for naught. The second I turned on the game it seemed exactly like Icewind Dale I, but without all the extremely fun battles. Firstly, you have to create your entire party. To some this might be fun, but to me it isn't. This is mainly becuase the game takes away any party interaction. You have to move through the game with the same six boring characters, that to me seem more like zombies that people. In Baldurs Gate and Torment your characters talked to each other and had emotions. In the case of IWII, this is taken away. Your characters never talk and simply walk around slaughtering enemies. That's it for the characters. Secondly, the storyline is weak and extremely linear. The voice acting is badly done and at times the dialogue sounds like something out of a bad kung-fu movie. You are continously given menial taks like fetching items or something. When you are told to do something important it sounds like this, "I am afraid so go ahead and kill everyone while I am hiding away in my fortress." Moreover, the enemies are just not realsitic. They never seem really evil, like Irenicus from BGII. They just walk around developing plans for revenge and then become so powerful you have to reload a million times before you can kill them. The enemies altogether are just not placed at the right level. I eventually had to export and reimport all my characters and start a new game so I could move forward. At times, the game lacks logic. You have to pull levers in a special order to get a key. It osunds like those Indiana Jones or Tomb Raiders, rather than RPGs. AT times, the enemies are too powerfl or there are too many. The 3rd Edition rules are the worst part. You only have so little points and your characters are either too weak or too powerful. The dual-classing option is now available to everyone, and so no one plays the ever so powerful half-elf. Also, the paladins and monks are now too weak and no one plays them anymore either. The sotryline is also as I said linear. You have to move forward and there is nothing to do rather than Kill, Kill, KILL. There is nothing worse to do in the world. I would at least have expected better graphics. They are the same as in BGII, but those graphics suited real RPGs. If they fixed the graphics, it would at least fill the game better. To finish, I wouldn't recommend this game. The only reason I gave this game 2 stars is because I at least had an hour or so of fun. Then it just got awful and I just stopped playing.

Fatally Bugged

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 19
Date: November 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I had a lot of fun with this game until close to the end. At the end of Chapter 5, the game forced me to enter a dungeon, and denied me the ability to exit until all monsters had been killed. Problem is, once I killed all the monsters, the door would not unlock. I spent hours of real time looking for the last monster, only to find myself hopelessly trapped in a deserted dungeon. I even tried putting my whole party on aggressive scripts in hopes they would see something I did not. I posted this issue to the official Interplay forums, only to have the problem all but ignored. The only response I got was from another user, who suggested I "keep looking" for the last monster. I replayed the scenario a good 6-8 times, with the same results each time. I am not the only player who has experienced this show-stopping bug, either. I expected more from Black Isle, given the high quality of their earlier games. This one has been deleted and will not be replayed.

If you liked the first one, you'll love this one

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: August 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

To be honest, it's the same rehash as before, but with 3rd edition rules minus attacks of opportunity and other little quibbles. i haven't played through the whole game yet, but it's a lot of fun thus far, and fans of the first will greatly enjoy another romp through the frozen north. Highly recommended for D&D fans.

Black Isle is the best for RPG games

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: September 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Neverwinter nights was a deception but this game is just exceeding all my expectations. This game is way better than neverwinter and is a reference for RPG gamers. The environments are very sharp and detailed. Things like fireplaces in homes are very well done and nicely animated, and the monster animatoins are very fluid and nice. Also, the magic effects are colorful and well-done.

Graphics aside, the gameplay is great. The feats and skills are well done, and the ability to freely multiclass just like 3rd edition D&D is great. I just can't say enough good stuff about this game. As a regular pencil and paper gamer, this is one of the best CRPGs I've ever played.

It's worth your 50$

Could be a lot funner.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: July 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Playing Icewind Dale II reminds me of all of those novels written by American authors in the late 19th century. Though many of the novels were very well written, they never seemed to suck me in and continue reading the book. Icewind Dale II is like that. It looks nice, it supposedly improves gameplay, and it gives the player more character creation options, but I just don't really want to play it. Why? Well, at the end of the day, it seems as if Icewind Dale II is hurt by a extremely corny story; it is bogged down in numerous irrelevent puzzles involving you running around constantly; it is just not as fun as its predescessor.

I bought this game for one reason and that reason was that I was addicted to Baldur's Gate II and needed to expand my party based rpg addiction to another realm. Icewind Dale II seemed to be the logical option. I was wrong. I was immediately confronted with a story so corny that it is almost embarassing to take part in. I was confronted with gameplay that caused me to run back and forth from one place to another constantly. I was confronted with battles so easy that I was soon bored.

I tried to play it again, but again I was plagued with the same problems. I installed a bunch of unofficial patches, but those did not solve the problems with the terrible puzzles and whatever else.

The overload of puzzles and corniness would be ok if you could diverge from the one path as you could in Baldur's Gate II, where you could accomplish quests at the order that you wanted to. Here you had to accomplish everything in a linear order and could never diverge from the path. Furthermore, the story seemed to be a retread of the story from the original Icewind Dale. In fact, the design of the game seemed to paralell it completely.

The final problem with this game concerns the fact that it is difficult to play if you have no knowledge of dungeons and dragons rules. If you do not know how to use rogues or are unfamiliar with feats and the like, this game will pose a very high learning curve that you may not want to climb. I was mostly familiar with the rules, but it was easy to see that someone who did not know them as well could easily make mistakes or be unfamiliar with the use of certain classes (even though the rule book was pretty exhaustive).

All in all, I do not think that this is a good game. I would just go with Baldur's Gate II or Icewind Dale I instead of this game.

Fun but a bit annoying

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: March 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have played every game in the Baldur's Gate engine and enjoyed them all. However this one (and IWD part one) was the least fun. It had the same spells and classes, sometimes even more, but there weren't very many NPCs (people you can walk up and talk to), and it's really hard to multiclass later in the game if you screw up building your party since they added an experience penalty to characters that are dual-class but more than 1 level apart (like 10th level fighter/5th level mage would be penalized 20% exp until the mage part got up to level 9).

The thing that I disliked the most was quite simply the running around trying to figure out stupid [stuff.] And by stupid [stuff] I mean stuff that didn't really advance the plot very much, if at all, and in some cases took a really long time. For example in the Dragon's Eye portion of the game there are 4 levels. I ran back and forth about 100 times between the first 3 before reading a cheat guide and figuring out how to open the...door to the 4th level. At that point I simply wanted to punch the monitor.

I would not recommend this game to someone unless they needed one more fix of Bioware's old D&D engine before moving on to Neverwinter Nights or something else. That's why I got this (also to kill time until I could afford a new video card) but I would have been better off replaying Baldur's Gate II, which had more character interaction and a much more engrossing storyline, not to mention a much less linear and restrictive pattern.

A great sequel of a sequel!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: August 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Icewind Dale II is in essence a sequel of a sequel. I held off on getting this thinking it'd be overkill on a genre I love - but once we got it, we were hooked!

Graphics are really good, in the Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale style. The stone and mosaic templates around the screen, the character portraits, the books on the shelves, the trees in the snow.

You're playing with the 3rd Edition of the D&D rules now, so you get skills, feats, and other great enhancements. You also get some new character types, including half orcs and dark elves (Drizzt!!). There are pre-made parties or you can create your own with up to 6 characters.

Playing the other games helps get you settled in this world, but it isn't necessary. ID2 is 30 years after the original Icewind Dale, when a demon has come to wreak havoc on the land. You run into various characters from the first game, which is great fun.

AI is great, and the quests are challenging and fun. You really get a sense that you're progressing through the world, meeting real, thinking opponents and having to struggle to overcome them. This isn't just a hack-and-slash, it's a game that involves you fully.

Highly recommended!

A great disappointment

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 11
Date: June 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Firstly, I have been a big fan of the aurora engine for PC based RPG games. I loved BG 1 and 2 plus the first IWD but the sequal to which I found, to be honest, awful. I was raised with the 2nd edition rule set and I have never played the 3rd (with the exception of NWN) but the fact that this game is based on the newer set of rules didn't bother me much. It's a computer game after all, the exact mechanics of the system I dont have to understand. The thing that did bother me about this game is the fact that it was one big battle after another. Your commanders send you on endless suicide runs. It got to the point where I could simply leave my game runing for an hour or two while my chacters could hack and slash their way through the tide of randomly spawned criters.

It got boring really fast. Not too mention difficult as well. The really sad part was, when I read the general plot outline, I was enthusiastic. I have always wanted to see what would happen if the Orc races banned together in an army and attempted to invade. But, when you and your 5 companions are the only ones on the front lines against an army... this is the point where (in pen and paper RPG's) that I tell the fellow who is hiring me to shove it!

a masterpiece.....with a few minor flaws...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: November 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is beutiful. it is extremely challenging(perhaps to a fault... nah), but very fun to play. tons of short cuts so you dont have to go clicking 500 different buttons to cast magic missle. semi-humorous levels of gore (its all the same. no matter what. i shot a goblin with an arrow and he exploded...). the only part i found annoying is the thing where you gain experiance far too slowly... after level 2. it took maybe 45 minutes to get from level 1 to level 2. then it took another 5-some hours to get to level 3.
bottom line: GET THIS GAME

Solid Return of Icewind Dale 2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: September 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

From the gameplay so far, I must admit i'm hooked (aka addicted) to this game. It reminds me much more of BG 2, then the original ID.

The storyline appears to be pretty tight and there isn't any senseless hack and slash like Neverwinter Nights. I'm only using three characters and it makes for some tough battle scenes... which is good.

I loved the character generation. I must have spent over an hour before starting the game just picking and choosing races and classes with their skills. The game has taken the best of BG 2 and N.N. character attributes and combined them in here. One thing, you gotta love the Monk.

I do have two kirks about the game, but nothing to take away from 5 stars. First is the toggle action with the quick keys on the keyboard. Say for example, I want to see the map. I press "M" and the map comes up. I should be able to press "M" again for it to disappear, but it doesn't. I have to use the cursor to select the map graphic on the scene. Second, as someone else pointed out is the pathfinding. I haven't experienced much trouble with this, but I did notice my chacters taking some strange routes (though this was due on occasion to an event not being fulfilled).

All in all, the game for me is a success. I wish I had more time to play it, but i'm already looking forward to finishing it off and starting over in the Heart of Fury mode (very cool).

Hope this helps!

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