Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter Review

It is hard to determine for sure how successful or popular a game was. Results of various surveys and statistical analysis of the profit the game made are being published in computer magazines and are often guidelines as to what consumers should buy and what they should avoid. However, these results seldom have anything to do with the real quality of the game. Developers and publishers often give tweaked-up data, and even if they do not, the results truly depend on the group of people being surveyed (residents of ome mental asylum would surely elect Extreme Paintbrawl for the best game ever, and Pong would undoubtedly get most votes in some geriatric hospital).

Knock, knock... Anybody home?

Welcome to the icy world.

And, even though it seems that no one can be trusted on this subject, there is an easy way to conclude how well a game sold: If the developers decide to create an expansion pack for their game, you can be sure as hell that the original game sold well. Interplay and Black Isle Studios admitted that they only decided to create an expansion pack for Icewind Dale when they calculated all the profits they made on it. Making expansion packs is a shorter and easier job than creating an entirely new game from the scratch.

Icewind Dale appeared at rather an inconvenient time for the genre, as many of the less intelligent and masochistic RPG players, already developed severe cramps from left-clicking frantically on anything that moves in Diablo II, and the rest of the RPG audience already collected their money and waited for Baldur's Gate II to appear on market. Still, the plot based on popular novels, nice graphics and a great balance between action and adventure made Icewind Dale do well on the market in spite of its competition. We waited for Heart Of Winter for almost half a year. It brought several changes that would make gameplay more enjoyable and a new chapter of the story about the Spine Of The World.

You have three ways to start the Heart Of The Winter. If you finished the original game you can start playing with your old coterie, you can create a new coterie, or you can choose to start all over, and during a quest in Kuldahar you will meet a shaman which will request your assistance, and if you accept you will instantly be transported to Loonely Wood the north most of the Ten Towns. Ten Towns are threatened by a war with the united barbarian tribes. Hjollder the shaman will ask you to speak to the barbarian King Wylfden and try to talk him out of unnecessary bloodshed. Things will, of course get complicated as it turns out that the wretched king had been possessed by an evil and vengeful female spirit.

The missions in the expansion pack are far more difficult than in the original, and I wouldn't suggest playing the new missions unless all your characters are at least level nine. However, the new enemies will also bring you more XPs. In this expansion pack, your character will be able to reach level thirty. In case you finished both the original game and the expansion pack, and still want more, the authors provided you with the so called Heart Of Fury mod which is practically impossible to finish, but if you do - your characters will receive enough XPs to make them practically semi-deities.

Nothing major has been changed concerning gameplay and controls. The combat is still in real-time with a possibility to pause at any moment and issue command. The text panel has been somewhat improved, so that you can now see what type of damage your fighters induce and with what efficiency. This will make the choice of weapons and tactics against different enemies easier. The interface will also let you remove all of it from the screen and thus broadening your field of vision, just like in Baldur's Gate II).