Gameplay

Takin' your licks

Well, what can we say? Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter is just... more Icewind Dale. There are a few new toys for your characters to fight with, and a few new monsters. The combat can be quite interesting but somehow it lacks the depth of Baldur's Gate II. Perhaps the focus on melee and lack of wizard duels has hurt the variety. Then again, wizard duels could get quite tedious in BG2. Overall, we've found that it's not as necessary to micromanage during combat as it was in Baldur's Gate. Not that this is bad, it could just get stale if we had to do it too often...

But the first wave of many

That's why he's called Duke Nukem

Which we were never given the situation to. You see, Heart of Winter is unbearably short - it's possible to finish the game in 10 hours if you're in a rush. While the experience point cap is around 3 million now, the game won't take you there - not the first time through, at any rate. You'll have to restart in 'Heart of Fury' mode to get that experience, which is just Heart of Winter with much tougher monsters (a la Diablo II or Nightmare or Hell difficulty.)

Bwargh, bring it!

Will he get there in time?

All this adds up to some serious disappointment. Just as you're getting the good spells, the weapons and the armor, the fun ends. Sure, you can play through on the harder difficulty level, but it's just not the same. Heck, HoW even lacks the randomness than made Diablo and Diablo II fun.

Mo' badder

There are several lesser problems as well. We've already mentioned the lack of two-weapon style for melee classes. However, Heart of Winter also fails to include most of the updates that Baldur's Gate II received. There are no kits for the various classes, no new races and no classes to choose from either.

What Heart of Winter does offer however, is a fair bit of action. If your idea of fun is wading through hordes of undead in the first hour alone, then you're in your element. All that the first chapter is missing is a Vincent Price cameo, and we have a classic undead sequence. After the undead? You move onto bigger and better things. Progressively bigger, better, and badder.

It's a 'tactical flanking maneuver', not a retreat

Stocking up on the good stuff

Baddest

The worst part of Heart of Winter is that you have to use your original characters. If you don't have them, you're basically out of luck - character creation doesn't create appropriate-level characters for Heart of Winter. Going in as level 1 when level 9 is recommended - bad idea, and bad implementation by Black Isle. Black Isle has included several pre-made characters, but they're just not the same as making your own. This must be the first game I've ever had to use a character editor to start reviewing...

There is a major bright spot on the whole gameplay front though - Heart of Winter, like Icewind Dale, lends itself to multiplayer much better than the Baldur's Gate games. The relative lack of forced-viewing plot events make playing with friends much more palpable, and the heavy combat keeps the boredom down to a minimum.