Kostas
Dormant Watcher
Icewind Dale + Heart of Winter/Trial of the Luremaster
Some of the IWD discussions have spilled over into other threads but since those were always on limited facets of the game thought I'd be worth it doing a broader posting in this thread.
My main worry when I first started playing IWD was that I would miss the conveniences that the Enhanced Editions of BG1 and 2 had. Luckily it took only a couple of hours until I had completely forgotten all the UI and handy practical improvements (i.e. quickloot) and was knee-deep in the actual game. Unfortunately that was only to find out how underwhelming it was.
The two main conclusions I reached after playing through Icewind Dale are that dungeon crawlers are not my kind of genre and that it is simply criminal to compare IWD to, the not just solid, but in many ways exceptional, other Infinity Engine games, namely Baldur's Gate (2) and Planescape: Torment. I normally have no problems with games whose chief focus is combat and/or contain huge amounts of fighting in the game, but if a game offers extremely little aside from combat through linear dungeons it can at best be a short, albeit entertaining, time sink.
Icewind Dale is a game that asks "Did you really like IE combat? Here's MORE (in immense quantities)" and delivers exactly that. Unfortunately while my feelings towards IE combat was far from actual dislike, it hardly blew me away and "merely" served perfectly as challenging gameplay that supported the actual strengths of each game. Strengths that IWD just doesn't bother having. The result , unless one is content with that spartan offering, is an experience that is burdened by a lot of the negatives and few, if any of the positives that made the rest of the IE games what they were.
The attempt to challenge Diablo through AD&D seemed like a bad idea from get-go and the implementation did little to counter that. The game still features the same hectic, clunky, chaotic and messy fights alongside the usual IE tedium (looting, inventory/resource management, pathfinding etc) only this time with significantly more challenging but unfortunately much more repetitive fights. As with all IE fights the occasional challenge could be dealt with by standard precautions and standard IE cheese. The player will spend the vast majority of his time hacking and slashing hordes of slightly varying enemies with the trash fights reinforcing the sense of lazy design and going through extreme filler in contrast to the content of the more rounded IE games.
What little time is not spent traveling from one critter filled dungeon after another is spent having short chatty encounters with the dungeon boss and short restocking/resting trips to the game's painfully lone and extremely bare excuse for a "hub", Kuldahar. The extreme linearity and repetitiveness is not mitigated by any sort of social or exploratory elements but is actually reinforced by the, frankly, pitiful number of sidequests (~a dozen(?) all but 1 tiny) and the hub offering practically nothing more than drawn out traveling distances between the various merchants and services.
The secondary aspects of the game actually paint a much better picture and indicate that there was potential for a much better product.
The story, while never reaching any noteworthy highs or ultimately escaping the random adventurers save the world cliché , is appropriately written and adequately performed with sense of mystery consistently being prevalent. Most of the voice acting is also quite good. If it fails for any other reason apart from being secondary and ultimately providing minimal motivation is that there is an awful lot of "Sorry adventurers your evil is not in this dungeon" which gets old as quickly as the trash fights. The game does actually open up a bit in the later chapters but that means you mostly get to pick the order in which you'll do the various parts of a dungeon before getting to the boss or the next dungeon. Unfortunately the end game boss and subsequently the ending cinematic were simply terrible.
The scarce social interactivity does feature occasional skillchecks but they don't alter enough to be even noteworthy. I had a small gripe with the tedious and artificial need to change which soulless character I was using to apply the odd skillcheck but that's a result of the entirely player-created party.
IWD's major highlight, namely the art direction and assets, are generally exceptional. The music is rightfully mentioned in most best video-game soundtrack discussions and I'll store many of the tracks, the 2d maps are gorgeous, probably on the level of PST, and alongside the best character portaits featured in an IE game and the equally good ambient sounds manage to create a strong atmosphere. That said pretty audiovisual design can't do to much to alleviate weak content and the same applies to IWD.
Heart of Winter
Expansion-wise, HoW is completely unconnected to the main game and somewhat short. Nevertheless I found the content to be a significant improvement over vanilla IWD. The new area features a much more alive town with a few side quests and non-utilitarian NPCs, even better artwork, beautiful tracks and an all-around better story. The dialogs and characters are decidedly more fleshed out with some fairly typical Chris Avellone- style NPCs and even a welcome reference to PST's Ravel. HoW was generally a much more well-rounded experience that I found much more enjoyable.
Trials of the Luremaster
Unlike HoW TotL was garbage that was so atrocious - even by DLC standards - that I'm surprised it passed Black Isle's QA. It consists of hordes of level-scaled trashmobs that at some points respawn and at others spawn out of thin air supported by a non-attempt to even provide some reason for being there. The final battle probably takes the cherry as the constantly respawning ghost party that supports the main target creates a result that is somewhere between absurd and weirdly interesting. An all-around tedious affair that served only to test my patience, while IWD would simply not get my recommendation, TotL was something I'd actively advice to avoid.
At the end of the day, if you take the combat away from IWD, there's practically nothing left. Since the game is targeted at someone who strongly enjoys the fighting or character development aspects (can you spend 2 hours just trying out parties?) of the Infinity Engine and I don't, the game appears to be limited and flawed to the point where I would be inclined to pick ANY game that is more well rounded over it, including the very poor ones. Regarding the sequel, knowing that it's largely the same affair and being aware of the development troubles it had, wild horses couldn't drag me to play it.
Some of the IWD discussions have spilled over into other threads but since those were always on limited facets of the game thought I'd be worth it doing a broader posting in this thread.
My main worry when I first started playing IWD was that I would miss the conveniences that the Enhanced Editions of BG1 and 2 had. Luckily it took only a couple of hours until I had completely forgotten all the UI and handy practical improvements (i.e. quickloot) and was knee-deep in the actual game. Unfortunately that was only to find out how underwhelming it was.
The two main conclusions I reached after playing through Icewind Dale are that dungeon crawlers are not my kind of genre and that it is simply criminal to compare IWD to, the not just solid, but in many ways exceptional, other Infinity Engine games, namely Baldur's Gate (2) and Planescape: Torment. I normally have no problems with games whose chief focus is combat and/or contain huge amounts of fighting in the game, but if a game offers extremely little aside from combat through linear dungeons it can at best be a short, albeit entertaining, time sink.
Icewind Dale is a game that asks "Did you really like IE combat? Here's MORE (in immense quantities)" and delivers exactly that. Unfortunately while my feelings towards IE combat was far from actual dislike, it hardly blew me away and "merely" served perfectly as challenging gameplay that supported the actual strengths of each game. Strengths that IWD just doesn't bother having. The result , unless one is content with that spartan offering, is an experience that is burdened by a lot of the negatives and few, if any of the positives that made the rest of the IE games what they were.
The attempt to challenge Diablo through AD&D seemed like a bad idea from get-go and the implementation did little to counter that. The game still features the same hectic, clunky, chaotic and messy fights alongside the usual IE tedium (looting, inventory/resource management, pathfinding etc) only this time with significantly more challenging but unfortunately much more repetitive fights. As with all IE fights the occasional challenge could be dealt with by standard precautions and standard IE cheese. The player will spend the vast majority of his time hacking and slashing hordes of slightly varying enemies with the trash fights reinforcing the sense of lazy design and going through extreme filler in contrast to the content of the more rounded IE games.
What little time is not spent traveling from one critter filled dungeon after another is spent having short chatty encounters with the dungeon boss and short restocking/resting trips to the game's painfully lone and extremely bare excuse for a "hub", Kuldahar. The extreme linearity and repetitiveness is not mitigated by any sort of social or exploratory elements but is actually reinforced by the, frankly, pitiful number of sidequests (~a dozen(?) all but 1 tiny) and the hub offering practically nothing more than drawn out traveling distances between the various merchants and services.
The secondary aspects of the game actually paint a much better picture and indicate that there was potential for a much better product.
The story, while never reaching any noteworthy highs or ultimately escaping the random adventurers save the world cliché , is appropriately written and adequately performed with sense of mystery consistently being prevalent. Most of the voice acting is also quite good. If it fails for any other reason apart from being secondary and ultimately providing minimal motivation is that there is an awful lot of "Sorry adventurers your evil is not in this dungeon" which gets old as quickly as the trash fights. The game does actually open up a bit in the later chapters but that means you mostly get to pick the order in which you'll do the various parts of a dungeon before getting to the boss or the next dungeon. Unfortunately the end game boss and subsequently the ending cinematic were simply terrible.
The scarce social interactivity does feature occasional skillchecks but they don't alter enough to be even noteworthy. I had a small gripe with the tedious and artificial need to change which soulless character I was using to apply the odd skillcheck but that's a result of the entirely player-created party.
IWD's major highlight, namely the art direction and assets, are generally exceptional. The music is rightfully mentioned in most best video-game soundtrack discussions and I'll store many of the tracks, the 2d maps are gorgeous, probably on the level of PST, and alongside the best character portaits featured in an IE game and the equally good ambient sounds manage to create a strong atmosphere. That said pretty audiovisual design can't do to much to alleviate weak content and the same applies to IWD.
Heart of Winter
Expansion-wise, HoW is completely unconnected to the main game and somewhat short. Nevertheless I found the content to be a significant improvement over vanilla IWD. The new area features a much more alive town with a few side quests and non-utilitarian NPCs, even better artwork, beautiful tracks and an all-around better story. The dialogs and characters are decidedly more fleshed out with some fairly typical Chris Avellone- style NPCs and even a welcome reference to PST's Ravel. HoW was generally a much more well-rounded experience that I found much more enjoyable.
Trials of the Luremaster
Unlike HoW TotL was garbage that was so atrocious - even by DLC standards - that I'm surprised it passed Black Isle's QA. It consists of hordes of level-scaled trashmobs that at some points respawn and at others spawn out of thin air supported by a non-attempt to even provide some reason for being there. The final battle probably takes the cherry as the constantly respawning ghost party that supports the main target creates a result that is somewhere between absurd and weirdly interesting. An all-around tedious affair that served only to test my patience, while IWD would simply not get my recommendation, TotL was something I'd actively advice to avoid.
At the end of the day, if you take the combat away from IWD, there's practically nothing left. Since the game is targeted at someone who strongly enjoys the fighting or character development aspects (can you spend 2 hours just trying out parties?) of the Infinity Engine and I don't, the game appears to be limited and flawed to the point where I would be inclined to pick ANY game that is more well rounded over it, including the very poor ones. Regarding the sequel, knowing that it's largely the same affair and being aware of the development troubles it had, wild horses couldn't drag me to play it.
