Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition

tl;dr: The closest comparison is obviously Black Isle's Baldur's Gate games. It uses the same AD&D 2E ruleset, the same Infinity Engine and is set in the same Forgotten Realms universe. The biggest difference is that, whereas the Bhaalspawn Saga focuses on story, companions and Forgotten Realms lore, Icewind Dale is a combat focused dungeon crawler built around a custom party. If you enjoyed the combat in Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II, and wanted to experiment with very different party builds with plot largely out the way, you'll probably have a great time with Icewind Dale. If you found Baldur's Gate's combat tedious and only put up with it for the story, this probably isn't the game for you. Player Context: I first played Icewind Dale in the mid 2000s, not long after Baldur's Gate II, which was my introduction to CRPGs. I remembered very little of the plot and wasn't even sure whether I'd finished it. This year I've been working through my backlog, and because I only had vague memories of the game and had never played the Heart of Winter expansion, it still felt fresh. The Enhanced Edition adds a few useful quality of life improvements, such as widescreen and mode…

If you ever want to experience the old painful magics this is a great place to start. #THAC0

A classic. Requires some time to comprehend, but has both a good story and a deep combat system.

Takes a good and relatively simple linear story, great voice actors, solid soundtrack, and the classic style of Baldurs Gate enhanced tweaks and creates an enjoyable D&D game that you can come back to even if you played the original all those years ago. I wish they would have added more eye candy, particularly effects that might benefit from ray tracing garnish. Given that high FPS aren't necessary with this style of game the performance loss wouldn't mean much.

Okay. I need to make a proper short-hand review for this game. It's old. It's going to filter out most players within the first 30 minutes due to the controls, visuals, and lack of voice overs. It's severely lacking QoL - spamming rest and spamming identify spells is one example. The story is really bad and poorly written; not just the main story but everything in general. The gameplay is an absolute slog and at times painful, you will fight through over a hundred enemies and it will take you multiple hours to clear a dungeon. The pathfinding is atrocious, familiars are always getting stuck. Balancing is just as atrocious, bring at least three mages with you wherever you go. You will need to quick-save and quick-load dozens of times each time you sit down and play. It's horrible. It really is an absolutely horrible game. But I still recommend that you at least try it because the art, music, and atmosphere is extremely good. It plays more like Diablo 1 than Baldur's Gate or other DND titles. Don't buy it at full price though, most people will absolutely drop the game and statistically speaking you - the person reading this - probably will.

Everyone knows what this game is about. more combat, railroady. Still fun tho