Its still the same old crap. There's new classes but the game still has a bunch of issues that never got addressed-

-The game plays slow. You will find that it takes number of time to kill enemies in melee combat. When I play turnbased games the enemy is dead in round 2 or 3. In this game it is clunky beyond imagining and you have know idea what round is what.

-In Baldurs Gate they added the abilities which can be accessed early on if you level up the quests. They make the game go much faster and they SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN EVERY FUCKING INFINITY ENGINE GAME.

-The story doesnt exist, in fact I think some action games have better stories.

-They place traps all around 2 levels of every dungeon after the 2nd. That wouldnt be bad but get this-the traps dont go away and will get you again if you dont disarm them. Talk about tedious.

-On top of that, the characters in your party are useless and the aligment is bugged. There were villagers hostile towards me attacking me in dragon eye. I killed them to defend myself and then my paladin turned on me. The alignment system is there yet it means nothing. I dont get alignment credits to my party for doing quests yet enemies can cause my characters to turn?

Do yourself a favor and buy baldurs gate 2 enhanced edition. Its the ONLY infinity engine game that is fun and the only one worth your money.

The developers are in reality the real thieves adding a few things to an already broken game and on top of that they have the nerve to charge $20 for a game that is already $10 on here.

Even if you think that is it, it isnt. Baldurs Gate 2 is great but there are still at least 5-10 better rpgs out there that offer much more.

These developers are Lvl 35 Thieves who should be in jail just so they hold onto their money like the greedy individuals that they are.

The enhanced edition is faithful to the original game, which is very different from bg1&2. The game is much more linear and put a big emphasis on combat. Personally I enjoy both games a lot. Iwd2 being my favorite because of the better game system (d&d 3 which works better in a computer game imo).

If you didn't like the old one why bothering with the enhanced edition ?

Concerning the price tag, look at the number of persons involved in the game, the time they put into it, and the potential number of customers. 20$ seems quite fair.

OK, i won't comment the quality-ies of the game because i'm not going to try to change your mind about it (and don't want to), tastes are different for each player. But, while I respect your opinion for the game, I can't see the point in accusing some people in a development team as ''thieves''. And if the purpose of this thread is to start a conversation about the game, it is done the wrong way and don't expect to be taken seriously. (Look ''Lvl 35 thieves'', ''jail'', ''greedy'.)

I don't know exactly what changes were made in the EE version of IWD but honestly, how much do you expect them to change? EE should simply be an update of the existing game, not a total overhaul making it into a new game entirely. If you thought the original IWD was crap, why did you bother with the EE version? You're not one of those idiots that expects every IE game to play like BG2 are you? Considering your shameless promoting of BG2, I won't be surprised if this is the case. I have no idea what you are trying to say here. Because every IE game should be like BG right? The story of the original IWD was to "save the spine of the world from some demon", you are right, there's no substance there, such stories are standard fare for DnD and it's just an excuse to wrap up the action in. Funny how you don't hold this same standard to BG. In BG1, you "save the sword coast from some wacko" and in BG2, you "save your half sister from some other wacko and then save your soul from the same wacko". Talk about double standards. The tediousness of the traps can be dealt with. A triple class f/t/m could handle them with ease but yeah, finding them first can be a pain. Ever think of the tedious parts of BG by any chance? Things like crappy dialog, awkward romances, random encounters, paper thin villians, rock paper scissors combat? These were more annoying than IWDs overuse of traps. I can only assume with is a bug with the EE version, I never had this bug with the original. Also, you create your characters. If they are useless it's because you made them that way or you are using them wrong. Totally subjective. I felt IWD was way more fun than BG2. IWD classic is not a broken game. If the EE version is broken then it is only broken there. Depends on how you define an RPG. I don't consider BG a roleplaying game to begin with because the only RP elements it has are character XP and equipment progression. A world to explore, involving story, important decisions, dialog choices, interesting characters, different ways to deal with a problem? BG2 falls short on nearly all of these.

Isn't Icewind Dale the game about that guy from the webcomic? The Archdruid? He starts out with trying to foil some adventurers plans to stop him and in turn gets turned into a woman with very large breasts.
The character Castor asks if he can squeeze the boobs but gets turned down. The elf Elendil still makes fat jokes about the archdruid.

I thought that that game was awesome on so many levels.

Pretty much what IwubCheeze said. If you don't know how to create a party, you have to learn before playing IWD... or, change the party members in the middle of the game which you can do (and if XP lost is a problem, you could use the console I supposed...).

Saying Icewind Dale should be like a Baldur's Gate is like saying Half-Life should be like Quake because they use the same engine (and I'm talking Quake I here, so no gun to the right of the screen but right in the middle).

I believe Icewind Dale is actually superior to Baldur's Gate. Yes, Baldur's Gate has an incredible story and an open world, but because of the open world the story suffers... there are so many sidequest that the main story gets lost and even though the story is amazing, the telling sucks. Icewind Dale has a "meh" story, but the telling is amazing, and the twist at the end regarding the narrator was the cherry on top of the ice-cream :P If you compare gameplay mechanics, Icewind Dale beats Baldur's Gate. Everything BG has for it is regarding interaction with party members and sidequest. I prefer a more linear story, with less sidequests (and good ones in fact) and no party interaction (I'm playing a game, not watching a soup opera). Also, NPCs are way better in IWD. They may not be joinable NPCs, but they are better than ANY NPC (joinable or not) than in Baldur's Gate (except maybe Minsc... which actually got on my nerves eventually). Kresellac, Poquelin, Yxunomei... All of them have complex background stories. In BG you have the "cookie cutter" bad guy Sarevok, and "disposable minions". One NPC in BG2 I thought was great: Bodhi. And that's it. Irenicus was ok, but still, two NPCs vs pretty much everyone in Icewind Dale: Nym (the merchant which is actually a plot character and not because he "tells you" about it), Larrel (which tried to help the elves and eventually destroyed the Severed Hand...), even the Archdruid Arundel has more personality.

Icewind Dale is more difficult because you don't get joinable NPCs "pre-made" to go through the world, and you have more combat. You have to know about character creation and different classes in order to make a good character, and you have to know how to use them in combat. And the rules and spells are more similar to PnP than in BG. The only thing they shared in common is the engine and the fact that they are DnD games. That's it. Not even the developers are the same (Black Isle only published BG). So I'm still trying to understand why "infinity engine games" should all be the same. Yeah, let's dumbdown Planescape Torment to be more like BG ._. (which, developed in the same engine and by the same people behind Icewind Dale, has nothing to do regarding gameplay and story).

So what the Parrot is trying to say is that you read all the manuals on the game and after 2 hours pass in time, you get to play the game? Jeez leweez. If I got to go through that amount of time preparation just to play a game, that game isn't worth it.

Give me diablo and adranis any day of the week.

Well, to be honest I read the manual while the game was installing. Is not that long (unless you want to start looking through the xp charts and that stuff, but the basic of every class and how they work, no more than 5 minutes). This is not a game to "pick up and play", but to commit to. If that's not your cup of tea, then no, you should not pick this game and stick to more friendly games like Diablo (which is good in gameplay but bored me to tears...).

It's not like properly planning your character in Diablo is much quicker than setting up a party in IWD - eh, quite on the contrary - unless you're fine with simply playing "Normal" difficulty and then leave it at that.

I hear IWD EE has a difficulty level called STORY MODE for exactly that purpose, so gimp up some party and enjoy the ride being unable to actually die. Which is a tad silly, considering that combat is actually one of the games stronger suits and taking that away will certainly *lessen* the experience. By much.

It's a shame you feel that way. Some of the best games I played have a learning curve, especially flight simulators. Not just flight simulators but SM: Alpha Centauri, Master of Orion and Lords of the Realm all had learning curves but once you got past them, you're in for a lot of fun. Don't even get me started on how many BG2 restarts I had before I had a character I liked. Even in Diablo 2 (before the 1.12 patch i think) where you didn't get a chance to respec your character if you screwed up, you still needed to plan where you were going to put your points. Once you get past that learning curve though, they are fun games.

Compare that to mobile games where there's hundred of games where you have a character that just runs forward collecting gold coins and the only thing you need to do is jump. I have nothing against casual games but ultimately, they aren't as satisfying as the games I mentioned above that have learning curves.

There is a concept in rhetoric called the principle of charity. I learned about it as it applied to reading controversial political and/or philosophical essays, since it generally means that one should assume the best possible interpretation of arguments given.

I think some version of 'reading charitably' applies to video games, too. Old games often have weird elements that don't mesh with what we expect from games. In hindsight, design choices that were novel at the time seem dated or bizarre now. For the Infinity Engine D&D games, that meant learning a bit about the rules of 2nd Ed AD&D. The player doesn't NEED to do it to play the game, but character creation and certain gameplay factors (like THAC0) would be tricky without some of that knowledge.

I don't think the rules are too hard to pick up and there are some good guides available. I'll link to Dan Simpson's AD&D rules FAQ below. However, if someone doesn't want to do it, I think that's okay. This may not be the game for that person! However, I don't think its fair to say that the game isn't good because of it. I think we have to 'play charitably'!

http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/75251-baldurs-gate/faqs/8566

louise. jeez louise.