Rating: 
Summary: Single-player RPG at its best
Review: In a world populated with excellent RPG games, IWD2 stands out for its solid foundation of compelling story line, great game play, and high replayability. It's hard to please all RPG fans who desire different mixes of action, quest, and character development. IWD2 strikes a nice balance between quest-laden Baldur's Gate and Diablo's mindless click-fest. There are plenty of hack and slash, including all-out melees with a multitude of foes and harrowing battles against powerful monsters. While many quests are of the "go there and fetch this" variety, some are quite lengthy and challenging. But the most compelling raison d'etre for IWD2 must be its implementation of the vastly improved AD&D 3rd Edition rule set. The 3rd Edition offers not only new races and sub-races, but also new rules, classes, skills, feats, and weapons. Coupled with multi-classing, the changes make possible a mind-boggling number of party combinations. Even better, the special Heart of Fury mode with insanely challenging combat and vastly upgraded weapons is almost another game within a game. Throw in an intuitive user interface and beautifully rendered graphics and there's little doubt IWD2 is a winner in the crowded RPG arena.IWD2 is set 30 years after the events in the original Icewind Dale, when a band of adventurers issued from Easthaven to thwart the plan of a demon to turn region into his private playground. Many characters from the original Icewind Dale make cameo appearances. It's not necessary to have played Icewind Dale, but if you have, you'll certainly appreciate the connections. IWD2 is a revisit to that famous region of the fabled Forgotten Realms. The story begins when goblin hordes invaded the Ten-Towns, one of which had already been overrun. Bands of mercenaries, of which you are a part, were summoned to the defense of Targos, the goblins' next target. As soon as you arrive, you would have to fend off goblin attacks. Soon it becomes apparent that greater evils are behind the goblin threat and you find yourself thrust to the forefront of the conflict, for gold or for glory. Your adventure takes you through many exotic locales, including the great oak of Kuldahar, the warrens of Dragon's Eye, the steaming jungles of Chult, and the ruined elven fortress Severed Hand. The plot is fairly linear; you won't be going back and forth between locales to accomplish quests. Nevertheless, the game is surprisingly replayable, thanks to the reasons below. The new rules are vast improvements for several reasons. Gone are the cryptic THAC0, the counter-intuitive negative armor rating, and the rather complicated types of saving throws. Now, armor bonuses are additive; however wearing armor increases arcane spell failures and hinders certain abilities such as Hide and Move Silently. Saving throws are reduced to 3 types: Fortitude, Reflex, and Will, which are directly affected by your ability ratings, racial bonuses and magical enhancements. You allocate points among a bevy of new skills, such as Bluff and Diplomacy, and feats, such as Ambidexterity and Two-weapon fighting. This gives unprecedented control over the attributes of your characters. New races include half-orcs, Aasimar, Tiefling, Duergar, Drow, and Deep-Gnomes. Each race comes with its own bonuses and disadvantages; some are more powerful than others, but advance in levels more slowly. New classes include monks, barbarians, and sorcerers. Experience level now caps at 30, allowing the creation of even more powerful multi-classed characters. In fact, experimenting with different party combinations is half of the fun, and playing the game again with a new party is almost as fun as playing a new game! The battles in IWD2 are intense and furious. For some reason, the designers tend to favor the "attack as soon as party moves to a new area" approach. This wouldn't be so bad except that after a long journey most of your defensive spells will have worn off. The result is often a frantic scramble to escape damage, cast defensive spells, summon supports, and finally counter-attack. Combat almost certainly requires a tactical approach, as enemy parties are always well-balanced, complete with both tankers and magic users. The AI is excellent. Enemies will often go for the weakest member of my party, much to my chagrin. When attacked, enemies will cast the appropriate defensive spells. In short, you can't rush in hacking and slashing and expect to last; the enemies are just too powerful for a single-minded approach. This also necessitates making up a balanced party. The Heart of Fury mode deserves special mention. This mode can only be accessed from the configuration screen, and a dialog box pops up to warn you of the implications. You shouldn't even play in this mode with characters lower than level 15. Heart of Fury, in short, stands for insane difficulty. Not only are monsters more numerous, they also are immensely powerful and have astronomical attack and damage ratings. Your rewards are proportionately powerful magical items, including a +10 magic sword when everything else maxes out at +5, and more experience points. You probably won't get the most out of IWD2 until you play through the game in this mode. Much ado has been made about the venerable but dated Bioware Infinity Engine. What it lacks in 3-D camera angles it makes up for in polish and ease of use. Despite its popularity, I just find Neverwinter Nights' interface clunky, and the constant need to pan and zoom tiring. IWD2's interface is intuitive and does a great job of organizing the wealth of information required to effectively manage an RPG party. The fixed background is gorgeous, and the sprites and spell effects animations are beautifully rendered. The soundtrack is superb and the voiceover is competent, if sometimes overwrought. There are no famous names from Hollywood, but I recognize minor actors from "Armageddon" and "Speed". Thanks to its implementation of new AD&D rules and its excellent game play and interface, IWD2 deserves to be a standout in the crowd.
Rating:
Summary: Return to the Dale
Review: I have played both Baldur's Gate games, Planescape: Torment, and the Icewind Dale series extensively. While these games all share the Infinity engine, I was never truly absorbed by Torment or the Baldur's Gate games the way I have been with Icewind Dale 1 and 2. All were splendid games, but Icewind Dale offers a feature that sets it victoriously apart from its kin - it allows you to create a PARTY of adventurers, not just a single hero. I joyously spend hours crafting my party before leaping headlong into the game itself, where the fun only continues. Icewind Dale is everything that Diablo is NOT, despite both games' reliance on open battle. Where Diablo is a clickfest to see who drops first, Icewind Dale requires tactics and strategy amidst the chaos (and gives you a pause feature to simulate a kind of turn-based, thought-provoking play style). Despite the action, very little about Icewind Dale II (or Icewind Dale) can be called "dumbed down," save perhaps for the linear nature of the campaign - which I, for one, embrace, as I loathe errand boy quests that seem unimportant to the storytelling. Icewind Dale II is pure gaming goodness in a tasty D&D shell, and anyone who likes the sound of that should not hesitate to play this game... not even for a second.
Rating:
Summary: Difficult, but well worth it
Review: Icewind Dale 2 is a computer RPG, and the last one to use the Infinity Engine popularized by the Baldur's Gate series. Icewind Dale 2 is a much more linear game, which is often for the best. There's no wandering around for 4 hours trying to figure out what you should do next. The combat system should be familiar to anyone who's played Baldur's Gate or Knights of the Old Republic on XBox. It's basically turn-based real-time. The 3rd edition D&D rules it uses allow for a lot of customization for your party, and it's never too overwhelming. The plot is a little weak, but well-written, and the puzzles and battles are challenging but not impossible. This is probably one of the best RPG's available today.
Rating: 
Summary: More enjoyable than the first thanks partly to 3E D&D rules.
Review: I was somewhat pleased with Icewind Dale; due to a few issues I had with the game, I thought myself through with Black Isle Studios, but upon hearing about the release of their sequel Icewind Dale 2, and their implementing 3rd Edition D&D rules I decided to give it another shot. BIS has modified the Infinity Engine to accomodate the 3E rules, including the Half-Orc and the special new playable races, like Drow, Aasimar and the new Forgotten Realms races, like the Gold Dwarf and the Strongheart Halfling. All standard races and classes are also available including the new Barbarian and Sorcerer, with the return of the Monk (from 1st Edition). Multiclassing is now a BIG breath of fresh air, easier to handle and much more enjoyable, but you are limited in some ways, depending on which class you pick. Among the best is a Rogue/Monk (Monk of the Broken Order) multiclass; this limits your alignment choice, but offers powerful combinations in combat like the Monk's stunning attack and the Rogue's sneak attack, not to mention the additional AC bonus from a positive wisdom modifier. The interface is similar to the original game, but has been streamlined and reorganized. Veterans to previous Infinity Engine games will be at home with the familiar controls. All eleven classes are available, and character creation is faster due to the point buy method for generating ability scores; this seems to be the method of choice in 3E CRPGs for gamers who want to create their parties quickly, but I miss the dice roll method. Dice rolling is most likely less popular and tedious, hence the switch to point buy; I'd like to see a choice of methods in creating ability scores in the next one! It has a great in-game help system with info for everything from the new races and classes to the exciting new feats, skills and their prerequisites. Great for reference and new players. The character record is wonderful, your list of skills/feats, your attack modifiers, and other info at the touch of a button. A few new portraits are available, but more could have been included, and all the original character voices were included from the original IWD and Heart of Winter (plus a few new ones). Gameplay is essentially the same, especially the real-time combat; I prefer turn-based combat, but the pause function makes fighting more manageable and is an interesting change. This helps when you need to cast spells or use one of the new skills or feats from the special abilities button. Moving around seems more tricky; sometimes a character will go a different way than the party or will be stuck somewhere, but the pathfinding can be adjusted through the configuration menu in Windows. When you're not in combat, you'll be spending most of your time talking to others for quests, running errands and using your skills to gain special rewards. A bit more role-playing and strategy is involved here and the combination of all these elements is what makes IW2 fun to play. Graphics are the same as in the first IWD, pleasing to fans of the game, but some might be disappointed in the lack of more 3D and graphic improvements. Spell selection is excellent, along with an impressive bestiary. I love the ambient sounds heard in the background; it makes the world seem more alive and realistic, and the music is the best. If you were fortunate enough to get the Adventure Pack or the Collector's edition, you'll get bonus items in both standard and Heart of Fury mode, including the game's beautiful soundtrack. The rulebook is very small, unfortunately, reading these small words makes it hard on the eyes if not read in bright light. Right-clicking on the map when you click the Area Map allows you to add area notes, but this was not documented in the rulebook. The hide bonus has been excluded from the small races except the Deep Gnome. These are just minor grievances, though.
Despite its slightly dated engine and minimal problems, Icewind Dale 2 is an engaging and enjoyable romp through a living, breathing world, sure to ruin your social life and guarantee bags under your eyes from lack of sleep, and is one of the best utilizations of the 3E rules I've seen in a D&D computer role-playing game.
Rating:
Summary: One heck of a game
Review: Okay, I looked at this game for quite a while (over the period of several weeks) trying to decide whether to buy it or not. Finally, I needed something new to play (waiting for NWN:HotU to come out) and caved in. Why not? I enjoyed the freedom to totally and completely create my characters. From selecting genders and races to deciding on stats to balance my class choices (keeping in mind the multi-classing that I was going to be doing), the creation process took me about 45 minutes. I was finally ready to begin. And boy, is this game hard!!! All the enemies seemed to target my extremely low hit point druid (even though he was in the back), so I had to revive him a few times (financially a burden). Then, at the higher chapters, everyone, even my whoop-butt barbarian, was dying. Had to reload quite often to change my strategy. The only real problem I had with this game (difficulty issues aside) was that your spellcasters affect both your own party members and the bad guys with their spells. So, a fireball blasts not only the frost salamander, but the three fighters up there meleeing with it. Bummer. No wonder the barbarian kept dying! Watch out for the bugs. See the official website for a listing; they can be pretty nasty, especially when you haven't saved for a while and the game crashes to the desktop (only happened once for me). Advice: SAVE OFTEN. I recommend this game to anyone with the time to play it. Be warned, it will eat up your free time (not to mention your sleep time--it's how late? And I'm not done yet?). Buy it and have fun!
Rating:
Summary: Computer Roleplay Gaming at its best
Review: This is definitely the game I have been waiting for. After the rather mediocre and highly disappointing Neverwinter Nights and the hadware-intense Morrowind, Icewind Dale 2 is classic CRPGaming at its best. Beautiful 2D graphics (that easily surpass 3D-graphics in terms of detail and richness), a great story, tons of monsters, dungeons, loot and magical items, a lot of puzzles and riddles, a very decent implementation of the 3rd edition D&D rules, great music and an overall great atmosphere - what would a CRPG-fan want more? This game is very well designed and balanced and plain fun to play and ranks in my Top-Five-CRPG list of all times (and I have been playing CRPG's for 20 years). Icewind Dale 2 is highly recommendable for any true RPG-fan and IMO definitely the best CRPG this year. Go and buy it - you won't regret it.
Rating: 
Summary: Marred by incessant cheese and stupid puzzles
Review: On the surface, this game is basically similar to Baldur's Gate, BG II, Icewind Dale, and Planescape Torment: a Dungeons & Dragons game focusing on a six-member party of adventurers. Unlike its predecessors, it incorporates the 3rd edition D&D rules, which simplify gameplay and add some options for customizing your characters' abilities as they go up in level. The 3rd edition rules work well here, and are an improvement over the previous games. Unfortunately, very much is wrong. The first Icewind Dale was a simple, combat-oriented game--you just hacked your way from one obvious location to another. This sequel has that element also, but has two glaring flaws. First, the game is cheesy. By this, I mean that monsters teleport to attack you from behind and the game prevents you from saving at numerous critical points--there are several multi-part battles where you can't save, and a misstep means you start the battle over from scratch. The second flaw is the focus on puzzle dungeons. By this, I mean areas where you can't kill a monster unless you pull a series of levers in the right order and maps where going east puts you northwest of your previous location, and you can flail about endlessly unless one of your characters has an otherwise useless ability (Wilderness Lore). Chapter 5 of the game (out of 6 chapters) is one big puzzle--and grotesquely annoying--dungeon, where you have to perform each step in a specific sequence--a sequence that is never revealed to you by the game. (Even then, the problem is not that the puzzles are hard--they aren't--it's that they are so numerous and so ridiculous. What kind of a ... villain would build all these puzzles in the first place?) There are parts of this game that play more like Tomb Raider than D&D and, while I like Tomb Raider in its own genre, puzzle dungeons are more annoying than anything in a D&D game. A lesser flaw is the weakness of the story--the two enemies are simple bogeymen. There is a part of the story which is, I guess, supposed to make you feel sorry for them, but the shades of morality here are far from grey. The enemies simply have no personality, just lots (and lots) of spell effects they can summon instantly (bringing us back to the cheese problem). I consider myself a fairly hard-core player of D&D games on the PC. I can't recommend this game to even players like me; for anyone just starting out in this type of game, stay far, far away. Pick up Baldur's Gate or Baldur's Gate II if you want a pleasant introduction to D&D on the computer.
Rating:
Summary: The Adventure Begins... Again (PC Version)
Review: IceWind Dale II (IWD2), by Black Ilse Studios, is a worthy sequel to one of the best RPG games in recent memory. But while the original is a solid five stars plus, IWD2 pulls up a little short. Although for people with an imagination, it is still a very fun game -- and that's what RPG games are all about: IMAGINATION and FUN! Importantly, like the original IWD, IWD2 will enable you to effectively disconnect from the tedium and minutiae that can sometimes attend the work-a-day world, and allow you to find a place where Caesur-like, you can create a small band of mercenaries that can either 1) set right all that is wrong with the world or, 2) allow you to make your world more interesting through chaos and pandemonium. The choice is yours. Unlike the original though, the path to serious life on the razor's edge, laugh in the face of death battle, for good, neutral or evil characters, is lengthy -- realistically, almost two hours of real-time game-play. This is because IWD2 requires that you complete (sometimes onerous) tasks to level up to where you can actually be able to inflict some serious damage on the ne'er do wells within the game space. Once you get past these -- seriously unecessary -- tasks, the game takes off and the battles rage. Then again, that's why god created cheat codes -- use these effectively and this is not an issue. Net/net:
1) Serious escape value
2) Awesome ability to define character attributes and abilities
3) Programer's too prescriptive in designing the path to success
4) Highly imiginative spells, weapons and monsters/opponents
5) Give it a whirl and have some serious fun
Rating:
Summary: a masterpiece.....with a few minor flaws...
Review: 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
Rating: 
Summary: Fatally Bugged
Review: 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.
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