Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition Review

Welcome to my review of Beamdog's Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition. I just finished replaying the original Icewind Dale by Black Isle Studios (2000) followed up by this IWD:EE. So yeah, I played them back to back.

Straight up, I can tell you that the original is much harder than the EE. There are several reasons for that, which I'll endeavor to enumerate here.

More features does NOT equal better game
Less is More

So what happens when you shove Black Isle's IWD into BioWare's BG2 engine, which was "Enhanced" by Beamdog? Well, you get a bloated monstrosity that does not maintain original game balance as envisioned by Black Isle.

I'm not saying the original IWD was a perfectly balanced game, but it WAS the original IWD. This isn't. It's Baldur's Dale 2 or Icewind Gate 2: an abomination.

In BG1 vs. BG2, I argued that most of the following BG2 additions shouldn't have even been in BG2, let alone an unrelated game such as IWD. Most of them are just rubbish. What BG2 additions do to IWD is trivialize its itemization, combat encounter design and emphasis on buffing and warding, which is the main strength of IWD.

Let us now enumerate the changes:

High Strength is Too Easy to Get in IWD:EE

• One new Race.

Half-orc allows us to begin the game with a Strength score of 19. The original IWD did not have Half-orcs. Therefore, we couldn't begin the game with a Strength score of 19. There were only two ways to get a Strength score of 19 in the original IWD:

• Girdle of Stromnos. This girdle grants a Strength score of 19 when worn. It is found in Lower Dorn's Deep (Part XIII).
• Potion of Life Transference (USPOT4B: +1 Str, -1 Con). This potion is a random drop in Wyrm's Tooth Glacier (Part XI). But it only bumps our Str up to 19 if we had 18/00 already and we only had a 1% chance to roll 18/00 in chargen. 

Therefore, most people are going to just settle with 18/91-99. I mean, it can take a fair bit of rerolling just to hit that (10% chance).

The difference between 18/91-99 and 19 is +1 to-hit & +3 dmg, which is notable because there are 1426 enemies before Stromnos.

The common way to get >18/00 Str was through Cleric self-buffs like DUHM & Righteous Magic, which take time to receive from our god, and further time to scale with our level.

BG2 Classes & Abilities are Too Powerful in Icewind Dale

• Three new Classes: Sorcerer, Barbarian & Monk. 

Barbarians can activate the Rage special ability that gives that Half-orc 23 Str & 23 Con at first level (+5 to-hit & +11 dmg at first level) -- and that with blanket immunities! First level warriors in the original IWD could only have +3 and +6 dmg (a 1% chance to roll 18/00 in chargen). They have NO immunities whatsoever.

Barbarians also get innate damage reduction that stacks with the many powerful +DR items found already in the campaign. But original IWD warriors have to find them.

Sorcerers gain access to certain I WIN spells long before traditional IWD mages, who instead are forced to rely on the strictly-itemized spell scrolls.

• One new Specialist Mage: Wild Mage. A stupid specialist that becomes godly at high levels.

• 21 Baldur's Gate Kits (aka Prestige Classes) aka BG2 BLOAT.

• Fighter: Berserker, Wizard Slayer & Kensai. Enrage grants Berserkers blanket immunities and Kai grants Kensai maximized weapon rolls which makes for optimal backstabbing.
• Ranger: Archer, Stalker & Beast Master. Archers are sort of like ranged Kensai.
• Paladin: Cavalier, Inquisitor & Undead Hunter. Newbie classes that are more powerful than stock Paladins.
• Cleric: Priest of Talos, of Helm & of Lathander. Again, more powerful than stock Clerics.
• Druid: Totemic Druid, Shapeshifter & Avenger. As above.
• Thief: Assassin, Bounty Hunter & Swashbuckler. Powerful kits that you can do all sorts of cheesy stuff with.
• Bard: Blade, Jester & Skald. As above.

• On top of that, Beamdog EE BLOAT:

• Fighter: Dwarven Defender: It's like the best of Barb & Berserker. Yawn.
• Paladin: Blackguard: Straightforward anti-pally kit.
• Thief: Shadowdancer: Stealth time-stop. Is effective in both backstab or Sneak Attack modes.
• Sorcerer: Dragon Disciple: Fire-based breath weapon that scales with level. Lots of fire resistance. I don't like this kit outside of Neverwinter Nights.
• Monk: Dark Moon & Sun Soul. Isn't the base Monk class unique enough? Aren't normal MONKS unique enough?
• Cleric: Priest of Tyr & Priest of Tempus. Again, do we really need access to a fourth and fifth Cleric kit in BG2, let alone IWD?
• Shaman: Added in v2.5 BG:EE, this kit is from Siege of Dragonspear. See M'Khiin.

So there you go: So many class options from BioWare and Beamdog have been shoved into our Black Isle game: most of them are rubbish, and none of them belong.

The Game-imbalancing EE Content Cannot be Avoided

Note that none of the additions enumerated above or below can be ignored by new players or veterans with fuzzy memories. How can they know or remember what is original and what is EE content? Not to mention that IWD has been shoved into the BG2 ENGINE. It's sort of hard to avoid the UNDERLYING ENGINE that the game is BUILT ON when you're playing, isn't it? Don't kid yourself. You can't get the original IWD experience in IWD:EE.

In addition:

Increased Spell Range From BG2

How about access to +90 arcane Baldur's Gate spells and +30 divine spells? In addition, sequencers made it in, as did Find Familiar for all your arcane spellcasters, including Bards. Every BG2 spell is in because IWD has been shoved into the BG2 engine.

Dual-wielding IWD:EE

The original IWD had fake dual-wielding and it was just for the Ranger class. All that did was give you an extra attack if your ranger had no shield equipped in their off-hand, but you could see how powerful it was already. Well, IWD:EE employs the BG2 weapon proficiency table, meaning you have access to Two Weapon Style, not just for Rangers, but for many other classes, too. Also, two-handed weapon style grants more crit-chance. Think that doesn't impact game balance?

Detect Illusions IWD:EE

(Non-Bounty Hunter) This is a powerful round by round utility ability that thieves now have access to. It's even OP in SCS Ascension.

Lack of party arbitration goes against the spirit of IWD

Aside from the obvious game balance issues, this is my biggest criticism of the EE. To my dismay, Beamdog didn't add a Character Arbitration button to the left sidepanel! So now, just like in the original BG and BG2 (which, unlike IWD, weren't designed around the concept of full party creation), the player is forced to employ a clumsy workaround: 

They must create an Mpsave folder in their ..\Documents\Icewind Dale - Enhanced Edition folder, copy their current single-player savegame into it (from the normal Save folder), load that savegame as a multiplayer game in order to display the Party Formation menu that allows them to recompose their party (del/add char); then, save the game, copy the modified savegame back into their Save folder, and finally load it to play with the recomposed party! Such rigmarole just to add a Bard or something!

Below: This is the Party Formation menu in the original IWD, which is accessible in-game from the Character Arbitration button. It allows you to recompose your party, on-the-fly, at any time during the campaign. Want to add a Bard? Go for it! Want to del that gimped Mage? You can! It is of great convenience in a campaign that is built for full party creation. This menu also appears each time you load a savegame. But in the EE this menu only appears in multiplayer games! I really missed this KEY feature while playing the EE.

Performance & Stability

I saw nothing in the 2.4 changelogs to suggest that any of the following has been fixed.

IWD:EE framerate worse than Original IWD

Well, the EE has slightly quicker loadtimes on my PC than the original: they are instant instead of taking half a sec. Alt-tabbing is slightly quicker, too. Big deal. But when there are lots of mobs on the screen and the game is getting busy, the original had better performance! No, I am not kidding you. It also seemed to have a more consistent framerate across the board, something I quite value in gaming. Maybe this is due to the extra scripting overhead that comes from IWD running in the BG2 engine or something; I don't know and don't care.

IWD:EE characters don't export properly like Original IWD characters do

At the end of the base campaign my characters were auto-exported and I could start the Heart of Winter expansion without any issues. But at the end of EE my characters did not export properly. All of my dual-classes had dozens of their HPs missing. In addition, my Kensai/Mage's THAC0 was majorly nerfed and many of her scribed spells were deleted from her spellbook. She was just completely messed up. 

Then, when I reloaded to do further tests, suddenly my party members no longer exported after killing Belhifet! They weren't in the Character folder, they were nowhere. This meant I had to manually export/import each party member, one by one, which is basically manual labor. The EE even forced me to select every single cleric spell on my priest scroll, one by one, during the import process! Duh fuq? Why? On the other hand, the original exported my party perfectly and they were all intact and ready to roll.

IWD:EE CTDs more often than Original IWD

I had one CTD while playing through the original. I had over a dozen while playing through the EE, mainly on the menu screens. The CTDs for EE were more annoying because they locked up my PC for several secs and I couldn't do anything but wait for it to resolve itself, allow me to accept the crash message, and finally reload the game. Grr..

Some IWD:EE bosses don't die when they're supposed to

EE Yxunomei sometimes just wouldn't die. She should have died in a few rounds, the amount of damage I was inflicting on her. Other times, she dropped like a sack of potatoes like she should. It was just inconsistent. 

Likewise, EE Pomab glitched out for me and wouldn't drop until I reloaded. I was on the last Pomab and inflicted over 2,000 damage and he still just stood there, jittering like an idiot instead of getting chunked in one hit. This never happened in the original, which I have played countless times.

Direct UI Comparison

A picture says a thousand words. Click the top image to enter Light Box mode, and mouse-wheel down and back up to compare.

Note the blackspace. This is because 2D UIs don't scale to modern resolutions, which is why I've always played IWD in its native resolution, in full screen, with display driver hardware scaling. But we can't play IWD:EE in 640*480.

What those pics won't tell you is that the EE user interface is far more responsive than the original. Clicking to call up menus and modes is just smoother and quicker. Dialogue can be clicked through much quicker, though not as quickly as in Siege of Dragonspear. But the spacebar cannot be used as a short-cut to clicking the continue button (another convenience of the Siege of Dragonspear UI), meaning you have to physically move your mouse-cursor down from the dialogue section to click the button (and then back up again to choose your next response).

Conclusion

So basically, you can see that my biggest issues with IWD:EE stem from IWD1 being shoved into the BG2 engine with little thought given to game balance and preserving in-game party recomposition, things that made IWD a great campaign to play through and fun to experiment with. And no, I'm not saying original IWD was perfectly balanced on golden scales, but there were some checks in place to keep things on a more even keel.

IWD:EE Features

Beamdog have restored content, fixed some bugs (and injected others that weren't in the original to begin with), and made the game more accessible to the masses of mega-casuals by including in-game "How to Play" tutorial movies and increasing compatibility on current gen PCs. They also included documentation for the newbies. Here is a summary of key features:

• 60 new items (many of which accommodate the BG2 weapon proficiency table; f.e, katanas)
• More than 400 spells & abilities
• Hundreds of combinations of classes, races & kits
• Five restored quests (3 hours of extra content)
• Five restored music tracks
• New Story Mode difficulty setting
• Improved Journal interface
• No more loading screens
• Modernized game-play features like quick-loot, adjustable fonts, high-res artwork, map notes & playing field zoom function.
• Fully functional cross-platform multiplayer (Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android) 
• Steam Achievements (v.2.5)

I prefer to stick with the original CD or GoG version. Afterall, it runs just fine on my PC, there are fewer bugs, better performance, and I value game balance and in-built party recomposition more than Beamdog's BG2 additions (which I never even liked in BioWare's original BG2).

See also: IWD1 Review.

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