Dosen't kind of suck that when you have summons, you can't just have them go into a zone where you know ennemies are, as you need on of your characters to actually visualise the ennemy before the summons engage in battle?
It's kind of ridiculous, especially considering that in BG2 this problem didn't exist

Also, what sucks is that if you send a thief to backstab a creature at the other side of the map, and then the thief hides, then the creatures will just go DIRECTLY to where the rest of your part is. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of having a thief, it's a shame really.

IWD2 is the game that could have been great, but it seems as if minimal effort was put into its development...

Anyway I'm still going to beat this game, it just really sucks that these (and other) blatant flaws exist.

[ September 27, 2007, 22:10: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

The first thing don't bother me much since I don't use summons much.

The problem with the thief is worse. Rogue is the weakest class in this game already so every bug that makes them worse is really bad.

Still, IWD2 is one of the best games ever made! I've tried most party-based-RPG-games on PC and consoles and chrono trigger and Shining Force 1 and 2 are the only games that can match this.

Mudde,

Have you tried the BG series?
There is no way IWD2 surpasses BG2.

IWD2 is fun because the D&D edition of rules used allows for some pretty cool builds, and I personally prefer then to the ones used in BG.

Aside from the evident above stated flaws, other weaknesses are:
- very linear: go from A to B. Even the areas themselves are linear since you must often follow a specific path to get to the end of the zone.
- very combat oriented: IWD2 is primarily a combat game, almost everything is solved by a fight.
- very weak storyline

=> combine these 3 weaknesses and the main strength I just cited, and you end up with a game that is fun for a while (because of all the cool builds and feats and stuff), but then you fall into some monotony of a endless succession of meaningless battles. It's probably why I never managed to beat the game - I just get too bored after a while - although this time through I will finish it.

It all ends up to personal preference in the end: if you like powergaming and battles, then IWD2 is the game for you. If you prefer deep plots, NPC stroylines, great subquests, exploration, etc... then a game like Baldur's Gate is the way to go.

Both are not flaws, they are improvements.
Just 2 changes which make cheap and cheesy tactics less tempting.
Those are intended. IWD2 has a different philosophy.
It focusses on fair and balanced combat, many methods for using cheese were removed and unfair encounters omitted. You can try to roleplay through the game without saving every few minutes in fear of an unfair encounter like in BG2 where using cheese is more encouraged and unfair encounters were added on purpose to lengthen the total playing time with required reloads.
If you can't live with the two forms of cheese you mentioned just don't play IWD2, play BG2 where enemies are slaughtered like lambs by your almighty cheese if they don't use cheese themselves.

I am one to roleplay as well.
But how do you roleplay a thief if you can't scout or hit and run?
If sending summons to an area with ennemies is cheese, then what is the point of summons?
Regarding BG2, of course there are a lot of cheesy tactics (as in IWD2 or any game), but if you play without reloading if a battle gets too tough, without prebuffing in view of a battle which should have been a surprise, etc.. then it is balanced as well.
It's up to each and everyone to decide if they want to use cheese, or not. That dosen't take away from the fact that what I pointed out makes the game more unrealistic, thus less RPG ultimately.

I've player both BG1 and 2. Both are good games but I think IWD2 is much better.
I like the stories and some of the PCs you get in BG but the 2e D&D had too many flaws. I hated the dual-class system and the fact that human was the only race that could do it. I also didn't like that dual and multiclasses was über-powerful while for example pure clerics was quite bad. All the race-specific classes also annoyed me a lot.
In 3e most issues have been solved.

The battles are also much better and funnier in IWD2 where in BG1-2 they were almost always just something you had to go through to get xp with a few that was a little more fun.

The linear gameplay of IWD has some advantages: for example you can't get any really good weapons early on, they get better all the time (BS is maybe an exception but that's soo much work so you're worth the weapon you get). That time you get excited when you find new better weapons all the time! In BG2 that was not the case.

Also the multiclassings make everything in IWD2 seem much more linear than it is.

I love creating parties in RPG-games.
I quite often start a new party and after a short time decides to change some things and start over. Mostly I start over quite fast.

I've started a new BG1 game maybe 3 times and only played through the game 1 time. It was fun but nothing I'll play again since there are better games.

I've started BG2 maybe 10 times and played through 2 times and the expansion 1 time. Quite a fun game, especially when I found out that you could make more characters (I found out creating 2-3 and take 3-4 PCs was an ideal combination).

I've started IWD2 with at least 50 different parties and played through the game about 10 times and played through HOF maybe 4-5 times. I just can't totally give up this game. I love creating new parties and trying new strategies.

I agree with you Mudde that the big fun aspect of IWD2 is the 3e edition rules.

But as far as linearity, I've always felt a bit coerced in IWD2 whereas in BG2 (in the beginning, since it gets quite linear afterwards, and TOB is ultra linear and annoying I felt), I really enjoyed the fact there were random side quests with no specific order.

All personal taste in the end, I guess.

I'm not saying I don't enjoy IWD2, on the contrary - or else I wouldn't waste my time playing it at all!, I'm just saying that it is regrettable that not too much effort was put into its development. It really feels, at times, like a game that could have been great but falls real short.

I doubt that it's very realistic how you can wipe out whole armies with a thief without danger by backstabbing, running around the corner and hiding again. The IE engine just made this too powerfulit had to be weakened for balancing reasons.
Just imagine what a real DM would react if you tried to wipe out a whole army with hit and run tactics.

As for summons:
Enemies hear a wizard voice casting a spell in the distance followed by strange monsters appearing.
A BG2 lich would cast his high level spells at the appearance of a single goblin who can't even scratch him until the spellbook was empty, I'm happy that IWD2 enemies aren't that stupid.
Summons can still be very useful in IWD2.

BG2 isn't balanced, most battles are very easy while others require to use preknowledge or cheese.

I'd say IWD2 is more realistic than BG2 with its unbelieveable illogical child of the god of murder plot.

kmonster:

regarding the thief:
again, it's all about how you decide to play, if you decide to abuse the system or not. But the fact that you cant hit and run at all without the enemies going directly to your party accross the screen just makes thieves even more useless, considering anyone can pick locks and such under 3e.

summons:
same as above. It's all about if you decide to use the feature to cheese or not. But then you just have summons sitting amongst ennemies that don't react? It's kind of ridiculous. If they wanted to find a compromise then they should have set a rule that a summon can't leave the summoner's sight or he would lose control of it or something.

In the end, as in every game, it's up to the players to play in the manner they like - if they want to use cheese let them after all, just don't do it yourself. But by disallowing these features completely it just takes away whole aspects of the game.

I agree with kmonster on this. I would like to refute many of the disparaging remarks made in this thread about IWD2.

The backstab exploit from the previous IE games needed to be fixed. Edmond, your assertion that the rogue is rendered useless by not being able to hit-and-run is not true. 3E rules allow the sneak attack to occur whenever a thief is flanking a target, hidden or not. This allows the thief to continue to score some good hits even in the thick of battle without having to drink a potion of invisibility or flee the battle and hide in shadows and come back in order to backstab again. Having to do THAT made thieves worthless and I’m glad the rules were changed in 3E.

To say that your enemies going directly to your party is a problem is also not true. Before, after backstabbing, a thief was left to fend for themselves in a crowd of enemies and it was difficult to get away w/o being slaughtered. If your enemies forsake the thief to go after the rest of the party, so much the better. Your thief lives after the backstab. Scouting/backstabbing missions are no longer suicide! This is a good thing. And having recently played IWD2, I can say with a certainty that this enemies tracking to the rest of your party "problem" does not always happen.

Also, your statement that “disallowing features takes away whole aspects of the game” is rather odd. The backstab exploit was never supposed to exist, so taking it away is really not cheating your game experience. It’s not like they changed some standard rules of D&D or something. They fixed a broken rule that was making the game dumb. Having the rest of your party sit back while your lone thief slaughters an entire tribe of Orcs was fun but unrealistic. The idiocy of being able to hide in the shadows in broad daylight just because you’re out of some artificial field of vision was totally game-breaking and just as unrealistic as the bad guys being able to go straight to your party.

The arguments that IWD and IWD2 are just hack and slash and have no/poor story are untrue. Just because your main character is not at the center of the story like <Charname> is in BG does not make the IWD games have a worse or no story. I thought the background story of the demon twins and your party’s efforts to stop them to be very cool and much more compelling than the child of the god of murder story. Replaying the IWD games is much more fun to me that BG games.

All the IE games have a lot of combat and that makes them a whole lot of fun. I’m not denying that. However, I think you need to replay the IWD games if you think that you have no choice but to fight. You can avoid a lot of fighting if you and your characters are smart enough. You just have to choose the right dialogue options and have them available to you. All the IE games are very linear as well. That is the worst argument that I hear over and over again about any CRPG. Your DM is a computer not a living, thinking person! Wake up and THINK about it people! What do you expect from it? Of course there is going to be some point A to point B going on! That’s what developers have to do to make the adventures work because that is what they have to work with. Yeah, I know a game is “not linear” if you can take a long-arse pit stop along the way on your urgent quest to save the word for impending doom to go and do 50 different side quests. Yeah, that makes sense.

Using BG2 as the gold-standard to compare other games against weakens your argument because that game is so FULL of the cheese and exploits. I soloed that game as a mage-thief and the backstabbing exploit made the game too easy. That and the abundance of magical items. A party should not get filthy rich from selling a glut of magical items. If that is the case, then you’ve written a poor adventure and you are a bad DM.

IWD2 does not force you to powergame. That is your own decision. Please explain the difference between “meaningless battle” and its opposite “meaningful battle” and further explain how developers can make every battle into a meaningful one. There are other aspects of the thief besides hit and run. Summoning can augment your forces in a battle, not be a substitute for them. We are all talking about a game here with elves, gnomes, magic, and dragons. Will making the game-mechanics less realistic really rob the RPG experience? I don’t think so. You are also simply substituting one version of unrealism for another all in a very unrealistic fantasy setting. What qualifies as verisimilitude is something that you can’t exactly argue with a straight face here.

Ok fine IWD2 is the perfect game, flawless in every way...

IWD2 has some potential, check this thread at the G3: http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?showforum=116

Sometimes I wish that the conversion of BG2 to the IWD2 system, the elusive Icewind Gate had worked out. The BG2 story with the IWD2 system, that would have been really nice.

Exactly what I feel Caradhras:

IWD2 is the game that could have been real good, but which is plagued by a number of flaws (including the ones I pointed out, and others, like flat story, linearity, oh and the fact you're invisible and people still talk to you, etc...) and shortcomings that frustrate you as a player since you know that with a little more time and effort, this game would truely be grandiose. The game just lacks personality.

It's a good game that I enjoy to play, fun in many ways, but its potential and therefore players' expectations (considering it's a Black Isle game) were very high, so it falls quite short of the standard they had used us to.

But apparently as soon as I criticize any aspect of IWD2, I get bashed, so I'll just leave it at my final comment, which I am sure most people would agree with, except those die hard IWD2 fans that find a legitimate justification to all the flaws of the game, seeing them as actual strong points when in fact they are due to hasted game development.

To be fair IWD2 wasn't meant to be BG2, nor was IWD meant to be BG either.

Try the NPC mod for IWD2 if you want party banters and nice NPCs to change your gaming experience.

What is really amusing about it is the fact that IWD2 was released after NWN, go figure, it's still a great game despite its linearity and the age of the engine (which started to show back then).

Edmond, I’m sorry that you came here looking for complete agreement when you first posted your comment and that didn’t happen. You talk about the game as if these so-called flaws are huge, glaring, ruinous mistakes that everyone MUST agree with. From the feedback you’ve gotten, I’d day that they are minor or inconsequential at best. Your arguments are the things that I see here with the major flaws.

Quote: “except those die hard IWD2 fans that find a legitimate justification to all the flaws of the game, seeing them as actual strong points when in fact they are due to hasted game development.”

You ascribe most everything to rushed development or lack of foresight on the programmer’s part and yet you have no proof that this was the case. Do you realize that by IWD2, BIS had developed or aided in the development of 9 games and expansions based on AD&D rules using the Infinity Engine? So, they were actually quite good at making these games by this time. In fact, the staff had received numerous awards based on their work to that point. It sounds to me like you are just mad that they got wise and nerfed a lot of the ways that people cheated based on the limitations of the game engine. There are still plenty of ways to cheat in this game, there’s really no reason to rail against the developers and make the same cliché accusations of mediocrity that everyone makes when they don’t like a game. In the future, when you want to make such accusations (when they are actually warranted), keep in mind that it’s generally not the fault of the developers but the publishing company. This was the case with TOEE. Troika didn’t screw the game up- Atari did. They made them rush it out the door. I’ve read nothing that indicates this was the case for IWD2. If you can find anything that backs up your claims, I’ll be happy to read them.

When the game was released, it received mostly positive reviews from most critics (the people who tend to actually know what they’re talking about when they critique a game). You’ll see lots of 8’s and 9’s on this list here: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/icewinddale2/review.html?mode=web

You don’t have to agree with me, or them, or anybody else. I just ask that you be fair and thoughtful in your critique.

Gilles,

I'm not asking for consensus. I’m just giving my opinion.
I’m not saying IWD2 is a bad game; it is quite good, actually.
The engine, as you said, is quite well implemented, expect for what I felt were some annoying mistakes, which force you to play in a certain manner.
You may not agree, as anyone else here. But it is an undeniable fact that compared to their other games, IWD2 is much more linear and battle oriented. There is very little, if any roaming around, little sense of wide open areas, etc...
Also, considering the experience of BIS when IWD2 was released (and the ease they have now of implementing the ifinity engine), it does comfort the fact this game was a bit rushed out into the public, as to say "let’s get one last Infinity Engine game out there while it’s still hot"- therefore compromising on numerous aspects, especially the depth of the storyline and compensating it all a certain linearity overcharged with battles.

A good game, but sadly not the grandiose exit of the Infinity Engine I had hoped for.

The only thing that bothers me about this game is the bug with 3D acceleration...has anybody ever got past that one?

What bug? I thought you couldn't enable 3D acceleration anyway in IWD2. I don't remember ever getting the option to do that.

Well, it's something in the iwd2.ini, but it doesn't work at all; it's always reset to 2D mode when you run the game even if you set the iwd2.ini to read-only mode.

"You may not agree, as anyone else here. But it is an undeniable fact that compared to their other games, IWD2 is much more linear and battle oriented. There is very little, if any roaming around, little sense of wide open areas, etc..." -Edmond Dantes

Would just like to point out that they intended the game to be more of a Hack & Slash game, there was never any intention of making the Icewind Dale games into annother Planescape Torment, or annother Baldurs Gate 2. So to be honest, this is a mute point.

Raptor,

More hack and slash is fine if that's what they intented.
My point is the game feels rushed because of the linearity.
I'm just saying with the experience the developers had of this type of game, that the whole game feels as if they had to compromise on lots of stuff, you know?
Battles are fun ; linear areas, linear subquests are a little less fun.
What's odd it that the game is actually much more varied in terms of quest handling in the opening chapter (more use of dialogue skills, many suquests, etc...) than the rest of the game.
It is a good game however, I would rate it 8/10.
With just a little more polishing, it would have been a grandiose game.

Linearity is actually seen as a good thing in certain ways/players, especially the dreaded mainstream, I recal reading somewhere that the developers of Icewind dale 1 was aiming IWD more toward the "diablo fans" persons than the heavy RPG fans. Think of it as an alternative game/style/type.

Also it is quite common for games that are more linear buildt to have more developed "rpg" aspect at the start of the game, than at the end (Just look at Temple of Elemental Evil for example, heck even Baldurs Gate 2 gets alot less "rpg" once you start going for the story line).

I think the problem here is that if they did "polish" up, I don't think you would have noticed any difference on the areas you mentioned. Becose the game was more or less intended as "it is" in that regard.

Not disagreeing though, I would have absolutelly *loved* annother game in Baldurs Gate 1 style with lots of exploration, and just running around experiencing the world etc. And I do think the story in IWD2 is a bit dull, especially compared to IWD1 (That I feel had better story than even the BG games at times). But if they spendt more time on the game, I doubt it would be the story they fixed, probablly they would have tweaked the combats even more.