It was alright. Kind of ludicrous actually. I mean, if I was a player and the game was the DM, I would have probably left the group early because the story is ridiculous, absolutely generic fantasy tropes everywhere, and INSANELY monster populated areas that are ridiculous in their variety -- which you COULD argue about a certain spoiler near the end having to "explain why all these creatures are all together" but I find it extremely lazy in storytelling and kind of artificial in difficulty. The expansions are worse with this, ESPECIALLY ToL, with it's ridiculous amounts of enemies for no explainable reason.

My favorite/most hated part of the game is when you talk to someone and the game gives you SEVERAL options for non-combat avenues and then immediately goes LOL NOPE JUST KIDDING YOU'RE FIGHTING MY ARMY NOW. It's like, why even bother? Why even bother having dialogue at all? It just feels like the developers were like, "Let's try to fit as much of the Monster Manual into a game as we POSSIBLY can, and then call it Icewind Dale because that's a popular book series and we'll make loads of cash!"

Don't get me wrong, I loved the Severed Hand; everything about that place and it's characters was really striking and interesting. And the puzzles were interesting and I have actually written a few of them down as ideas for my own personal tabletop campaigns. But this game ended up becoming a challenge of patience at the end instead of just a challenge, and that's coming from someone who raged hardcore near the end of Baldur's Gate 1 in that spiral maze with the Kobolds who shot fire arrows. That part sucked but it was still pretty neat. It's just BG1 wasn't trying really hard to have Dynasty-Warriors-like enemy combat strategy.

Your issue is that you seem to be playing the game expecting it to have a good story line, but what you actually got was a game focused primarily on combat. To be a fun game, the story does not have to make sense. The reason for the enemy variety is, of course, to provide combat without it becoming too repetitive.

If you are looking for good gameplay (and enjoy Infinity Engine combat), then this game is good. If you are looking for a good story with non-combat solutions to problems, you've picked the wrong game; go play Planescape: Torment instead.

The story of this game is a lot more reasonable than most other fantasy games, including Baldur's Gate. IWD has believable characters, they have understandable motivations. The story of IWD is generic, but the writing is very good. For a dungeon crawler, the story of the game is satisfactory.

So, know any DnD games where standard DnD tropes aren't thrown around everywhere? IWD is a Forgotten Realms game and your gripe about DnD tropes is standard fare for Forgotten Realms.

IWD is a combat oriented game. What's a combat oriented game without monsters to kick the shit out of? Probably like a game of tic tac toe where both players put X's on the board I would imagine. The answer is simple here. flair. It's like comparing a cake with icing and a cake without icing. The icing isn't necessary but it's much better with it. Also, in IWD some of the dialog options can get you more XP

Also, did you miss the part about IWD being a combat game? Why are you surprised you had to fight that army? BG1 is a low level campaign, IWD isn't. BG1 has focus on story, IWD has focus on combat. You obviously still haven't figured it out you can't compare the two yet.

You say that like it's a bad thing... ;)

Yes, IWD1 gives you the "heroic adventurers mowing through hordes of monsters to defeat teh big evil" Forgotten Realms experience, and it does it well.
Even a straight-forward story can be engaging if the mood is set properly, and IWD excels at creating a cool atmosphere using its hand-crafted graphics, epic music, and grounded characters.

And if you read all the books and notes you find in the game, the story does actually gain a little complexity and nuance. It helps set the atmosphere for the following battle, which is what it's all about (see above).

Yup, that's IWD in a nutshell. It's by far the most combat-oriented of the D&D games, and really does embrace the monster manual trope from D&D.

To be honest, there's only one trope that really bothers me in D&D, and that's its subtle undertones of genocide. D&D encourages gameplay that involves the more human-like races exterminating the less human-like races (literally dehumanizing them with "monstrous" features). It's more than a little disturbing that they get away with it so easily. Icewind Dale 2 at least had the guts to acknowledge this trope, actually bringing up the swath of carnage and violence your group has caused throughout the game. There are also several bits of dialog that portray the ten-towns in a very negative light and give credence to the Legion of the Chimaera having legitimate grievances against them. It's certainly not a deep or thorough investigation of the trope, but it's an acknowledgement that's lacking in other games. Certainly worlds better than Neverwinter Nights 2, which is completely tone-deaf to the issue (looking at you, Old Owl Well)

more like I just expected a true rpg experience, and instead just got a videogame :P

The Dark Sun games allow you to create characters of the thri-kreen race which are definitely *not* humanoid. I believe they can equip weapons, but they can't equip armor or accessories. They do get natural armor and natural weapons, which you don't typically get in those games. There's also half-giants, which are playable humanoids but are quite a bit bigger than typical. (Also, what other AD&D game lets you *start* with 24 Strength or even *get* 22 Constitution?)

The Dark Sun campaign setting has an interesting history, and one part of it is the extermination of some races, such as gnomes (which are not a playable race for that reason). It's also very different from other AD&D campaign settings.

You know, it sounds funny, but I always hated text in RPGs. I kind of love the genre because of its gameplay. Grinding, leveling up, getting stronger, exploring exciting dungeons and other mysterious places. But I always hated towns, so much walls of text to read, running around for hours with no action.

I never played Baldur's Gate (I think 2?) past the first town because there was just too much text to endure. Every time I reach a town in any RPG I always have to fight with myself not to quit playing it.

Then someone told me "Go play Icewind Dale!", and I was like "Are you out of your mind? I played a game of that company called Baldur's Gate, I think that's exactly the opposite kind of game I want to play!" but he was like "No trust me, just play it".

And so I played Icewind Dale and it was wonderful. It removed most of the annoying town parts and concentrated on combat and the excitement of exploration. It was perfect for me.

The problem is that people throw Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate and Torment together into one category while they are inheritely different games and have completely different target groups.

(I guess they are just not getting advertised very well for what they are. Not to mention that when they go on sale, you always have to buy all of them at once to get the full discount.)

I used to be like you when I was younger (maybe until I was 25) but as I've gotten older Story has become more important to me. The story is what keeps me engaged and pushes me to endure all the fighting in order to discover more of the plot, setting and characters.
I'm playing through Baldurs Gate right now but Icewind Dale is coming up on my list.

I think the problem is that the stories in RPGs are just not interesting enough to keep me engaged. Also I want to note that a lot of text does not equal good story. I prefer good stories that are told with only very few lines of text.

These Forgotten Realms games can be told with very few lines of text...

"help a really bad guy is killing everyone!"
"im really bad! im going to kill you!"
"ahhhh i died, you win, the world is saved!"


Big fan of the Infinity Engine game play though and IWD is great. I'd be more interested in playing other D&D worlds if they had games closer to the BG1/2 style of game play.

All of the Infinity games set in Faerun have generic fantasy stories, which is ok -- there's a lot to like about cheesy fantasy. The BG series is just as guilty of it as IWD, and I've found that the plotlines I thought were so awesome in high school don't hold up that well 12 years later. And that's why, even though I expected Icewind Dale to be a weaker game than BG, I find I'm enjoying it a lot more. The story may be uninspiring, but it's very much faded into the background and doesn't take any mental energy away from the things the game is focused on. On the other hand, the tactical combat is excellent, and that's the other main thing I look for in RPG video games besides a good, detailed story -- so for me, IWD works a little better overall than BG.

Well it's a whole lot more fun to me than the generic snooze-fest I rushed out to buy called Dragon Age Origins. That game had too much talking for my tastes, and way more boring cliché characters. Can't even make a full custom party :/ The unique dog class is the only feature I found enjoyable. That combat system just made me want to play God of War.

I want to play Baldur's Gate as I never have. Though I'm a bit worried it will have too much story and not enough combat gameplay for my tastes. I also very much prefer making my own custom party, and I know that doing so in Baldur's will distance the player from NPC quests.

*When you talk to enemies that inevitably lead to battles, sometimes you can get a good chunk of EXP from them by using a certain class/party leader with proper stats to speak with.

Sometimes thinking of Icewind Dale makes me think of playing Diablo 2, but with 6 characters under my control. IMO this is an excellent feature :)

What newer games do the create your own full party thing? That seems to have gone out of style... anything since toee and nwn2? I liked the dragon age origins game play. That engine would have been nice for a IWD type spin off with more fighting and less talking. But, DA:O had a good deal of fighting with variety of tactics I thought. Well rounded game so I don't know wtf happened to the rest of that series.