The fact that I can make my own party and not be stuck with prepackaged ones made me so happy.

A very admiral game. It gives the true DnD experience like Baldurs gate. The new NPC's deffinately add to the game play. Also like that you make your entire party at the beginning. Add The Heart Of Winter expansion and you have a game that you can really sink your teeth into..

well, it's like an AD&D version of diablo, since you mostly fight, but there's some kind of atmosphere in it, like an adventuring fantasy novel, you travelacross the freezing winter of icewind dale on your quest to do something that i don't remember right now, and there's a kind of novelist atmosphere to it. definetly an interesting experience.

So you're looking at the fancy box art for this new game called Icewind Dale when the feeling strikes you... "Hey, this box is familiar!" Flipping it over brings on an overwhelming sense of deja vu as you see the screenshots to what appears to be the bestselling Baldur's Gate PC Role playing game. Oh, it must be an expansion pack, you think. But its not. Within this box is is very good Baldur's Gate engine game, and an excellent game in its own right. While the interface and graphics, interface, and gameplay have remained virtually untouched, this game has a whole new story to tell, with a few twists on the original. Remember those tense minutes you spent navigating through a conversation in Baldur's Gate, hoping against hope the character would provide valuable information instead of slaughtering you on the spot? Those days are over. Icewind Dale is a pure dungeon-crawl, closer in pace to the lesser Diablo than to BG. It does have a decent plot, but the plot is not central. Combat is. You start out the game by crafting a party of one to six characters from scratch, or importing a set of premade ones, as opposed to Baldur's Gate's system of making a solitary character who drafts various non-player characters into his band. I thought this was one of the best changes from BG. You are not stuck to any mold when forming your characters. In BG you had a background story that was already set, vut in ID, your background is known only to yourself. You can right this background in your biograpy section. Instead of a set Bio, like BG had, you get to write your own! From there, you travel to the icy heights of Ten-Towns, a collection of villages on the verge of war. You must figure out what's going on and stop the threat before it destroys all of the North. Typical RPG plot. On the way you'll encounter nasty and vicious foes, most new to the BG engine, all very cool looking. Okay, so Icewind Dale isn't the most innovative thing to ever exist, but it is a fun diversion from all the diplomacy-or-die tension of BG. It should be enough to keep you busy until you get your hands on Baldur's Gate 2 (or the excellent Planescape: Torment, if you can still find it.) My complaints: There's no new stuff. The plot and pacing is very linear. Combat can be repetitive. My compliments: More Baldur's Gate! A couple engine tweaks. Cool monsters.