Baldur's Gate minus the charm

User Rating: 6 | Icewind Dale (DVD) PC
By the_hunger | Review Date:
As a fan of the Baldur's Gate series, I decided to give Icewind Dale (IWD) a try. Unfortunately, Black Isles did not strike gold twice. While Icewind Dale is a carbon copy of their excellent Baldur's Gate games in many ways, it lacks the personality that make the BG series great. IWD actually has a number of things in its favor. The character creation system is very rich, allowing you to customize your party of six in true D&D fashion. Also, there is a long list of abilities, spells, and equipment that you'll run across, as well as visually appealing environments, solid voice acting, and compelling music. Some of the dungeons can be genuinely creepy, and there's a sense of accomplishment once you clear one out.

Unfortunately, the game is deeply flawed. IWD is a bit too hard, even for a person who has some experience with RPG dungeon-crawling. Even worse, it's an artificial toughness designed to lengthen the game by requiring you to repeatly reload saved games. Your characters will die countless times, and this simply can't be avoided. And since your cleric will not be able to resurrect dead party members until late in the game (Raise Dead scrolls are expensive too), you will not be able to continue the game with dead characters. It's really a shame that the developer did not pace the game better, since it's going to turn off a lot of people from the very beginning.

If you can get beyond the tedium and frustration of having to save the game every 2 minutes (and reload it almost as often), the gaming experience is still rather uninspired. The story is lackluster and cliche. There is none of the banter between party members that made Baldur's Gate so fun. All of this together becomes mind-numbing after a while, since the game profoundly lacks a sense of purpose or narrative power. It's all really unfortunate since some effort obviously went into creating the game. Ultimately, if you haven't played Baldur's Gate, by all means play it (both BG1 & BG2). If you've already tasted the glory of the Baldur's Gate series, then IWD will probably be a disappointment.

Pros:
+rich D&D character creation
+good voice acting and music
+wide range of spells, items, etc.

Cons:
-unnecessarily tedious and difficult
-lackluster story
-Baldur's Gate clone without the personality

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