morolf: Icewind Dale 1 was quite good as a pure combat game. Its sequel however really disappointed me, started out interesting (the prologue and first act were great with their war setting and locations like the Orc fortress), but later on the design became progressively worse, the story was stupid and there were many irritating elements (like those incredibly frustrating challenges in the monastery).
timppu: Awww... I was looking forward to playing IWD2 as I liked IWD. The only reason I haven't properly played IWD2 was that I got confused with the new AD&D system in it, trying to figure out what kind of party to create (far more options than in the first IWD party creation).
The reason I liked IWD combat better than Baldur's Gate 2 combat... my memory may be hazy, but i recall BG2 had some irritating enemy types that could either kill you with one shot or cause some kind of permanent damage (e.g. some high level liches?) and was it also BG2 had quite many enemy types that were completely resistant to some types of damage (e.g. some would take only magic damage, some only physical damage, some would get only certain type of elemental magic damage... meaning you had to keep juggling with different kinds of weapons or even keep some basic non-magical weapons with you).
I recall less such irritation from IWD, especially one-hit kills. There it was more about fighting hordes of monsters, and god damn it felt good lauching a couple of area damage spells at your unsuspecting enemies with your wizards and druids. IWD combat was just quite satisfying for me.
Icewind Dale 2 is still worth a playthrough, the prologue and 1st act are quite strong in my opinion and have a cool scenario (war against a force of orcs, goblins etc.) that none of the other Infinity engine games tried. It just gets quite tedious later on imo, with some badly designed locations that are full of repetitive and annoying combats. They also tried to diversify the gameplay somewhat and added speech skills, puzzles etc. which mostly don't work that well imo.
It's also quite a bit harder than Icewind Dale 1, and character creation is more difficult because of the new rules.
I'd still recommend it to you if you like that type of game though.
Yes, IWD combat was more about mob control, different approach from BG2. The latter could indeed by annoying with those instant death spells like "Finger of death", you had to pre-buff your characters and metagame for some fights.
