Eh, nothing personal, but I think you didnt sufficiently explore the dialogue/options if you didnt like the story at all. There are some very well done dialogues, and the villains are pretty sympathetic.
Its not like BG where you are beaten over the head with the plot/story, you need to dig a bit for it. Ymmv of course.
I plan on buying IWD when released (not pre-buying as there's no discount) I prebought BG1 and bought BG2. I would buy IWD2 both to support Trent & Co. and for the modern OS support.
I have all the original install CDs (bought games when they first came out) and also bought on GOG on sale (easier install). I would love to see PST:EE I never got around to playing it even though I bought it way back then.
Ultimately I want to see them produce a new game (either located in BG or IWD with new cast of characters OR all new everything) using the same mechanics of top-down view, 6char party and such. The 3D, first person shooter RPG is overdone. Yes it is pretty, but eye candy is not everything. Dragon Age was a good game and was thought to restart the epic RPG movement and then they left the standard to appeal to the larger FPS & eyecandy market. Same thing happened with Mass Effect. First one was in the model of epic RPG and then they altered to appeal to the FPS juggernaut crowd.
The IWD2 engine is really interesting. I wish it'd been the base for all the EEs. Customizable toolbars and switchable weapon sets and 3E rules etc. It feels more advanced.
I liked the 3rd edition rules implementation in IWD2, but I didn't like the game once I got into the ice palace. That's because I hate, hate, *hate* puzzle dungeons, and IWD2 is full of them.
Go here, push this switch, go all the way to the other end of the dungeon, experiment to get the right order and/or combination of these four levers pulled and not pulled, study your hint letters that dropped and hope you found them all, go back and forth to the opposite ends of the dungeon to get all the switches pulled, find the secret door here and rotate the statue on the altar, go all the way there and find another secret door, then step on the six plates in the right order, on and on, AUGH!
No thanks, I can't stand that kind of game.
I did enjoy the tactical combat and the epic, huge battles leading up to that first puzzle dungeon, though.
I might buy IWD2:EE just to support Beamdog, depending on the pricing, but I don't think I'd play it very much.
Puzzle elements in games are always problematic because they target the player rather than the characters. Since most players will have at least one genius level character it would make a lot more sense if those characters could have the chance to solve it.
In IWD2 they could have even added a puzzle solving skill. Perhaps the player could push the puzzle solving ability button and the character would then generate a list of notes in their inventory with either hints or a detailed solution, depending on their puzzle solving skill. That way, those who did want to fiddle with puzzles could, while others could have a quick way to bypass them.
And, given the game is at its core about smashing bad guys it would have made sense if the designers had added at least one "brute force" solution to various puzzles. "Grog not search for secret door! Grog smash hole in wall!!!"
They should have had an observational skill similar to wilderness lore but for puzzles and stuff. Basically, it would give you hints about the puzzles but still have enough environmental clues to be able to complete it without the necessary skill.
The situation in that Forest was quite pathetic, however, with the only real clue being Wilderness Lore. Having certain classes also assisted at certain points in the game but this was mostly for flavour which was quite awesome and something that the Baldur's Gate series lacked.
I preferred IWD2 over the first. Largely because it was one of the first computer D&D games to use the 3rd edition rules.
I'd buy an EE edition in a heartbeat but only if they worked off that ruleset and didn't try to redo it with IWD1/Baldur mechanics. With improvements of course.
For me, the bad points of IWD2 were Battle Square (too fiddly to get it to work), the Fell Wood, and the first part of the game up until the end of the horde fortress.
I like the combat and the story in the Fell Wood, what I don't like is that it is a maze. But simply clicking wilderness lore over and over again while the game is paused helps! Battle Square is an interesting idea but too cumbersome. They should have done it with a dialog with the golem instead.
The first part of the game is slow because you have no spellpower, which makes the fights much harder. When you reach 3rd level spells, the game starts to get faster and more enjoyable.
The locations, portraits and combat are all excellent. What I also love is the sheer variety of characters you can make, using all of the combinations of races, classes, multi classing and feats.
I liked the 3rd edition rules implementation in IWD2, but I didn't like the game once I got into the ice palace. That's because I hate, hate, *hate* puzzle dungeons, and IWD2 is full of them.
Honestly it depends how they are implemented. I don't mind them in the case of some RPG's (like Mass Effect or KOTOR) where you need to move group of levers around in the right order to unlock something. But if its just you running around, hitting this lever, going somewhere else and hitting that lever then yea I generally am not big on them either. There also has to be some kind of reasonable purpose behind them for me and in the case of the Ice Palace it is just a pain.
I think many of us would probably be more behind IWD2:EE with a few caveats:
-Fix the really painfully tedious puzzles of the Glacier and the Forest. These are game screwingly harsh on newbies. I quit several runs at the Glacier puzzle hell, and I did play some Sierra puzzle adventure games. Still didnt find them intuitive. Easy solutions include high intelligence characters giving tips, or just handwave the whole lightning thing. It was a cool idea, but seems hard to implement in a way that isnt sanity damaging. For the Forest, make Wilderness Lore even simpler to use for it... just say which direction maybe? I liked that the game rewards having a balanced party, perhaps make Wilderness Lore give some other mechanical bonus to survival, ie safer resting outdoors? More effective outdoor resting? As it is, this is the only reason to use Wilderness Lore, and a newbie caught without it will probably consider rage quitting.
-Make rolling stats optional. Obviously just porting the BG rolling system would make 3rd edition a bit absurd, so probably don't allow fine-tunning, which no DM I have heard of would be okay with. Make it 'Random or Point Buy' maybe? I prefer the point buy, but random 4d6 is good for 3rd too. BG finetuning and high total will be overpowered though. 3rd makes a 15 a solid score to start with, in 2nd this was a crapy score for a critical ability.
-Include even more dialogues, especially more that are class/race specific, but also include more 'hard to miss' ones. If you don't talk to a certain ghost, the game is much less enjoyable, and the story less powerful BY FAR.
-Add in some non-linear quests, nothing big, just some 'optional' areas to explore, maybe the Vale? The repopulated ruins of the Temple of the Forgotten God? Just ideas. Easy ones. A harder option would be an expansion quest after the conclusion. Harder to do!
-update to 3.5 maybe, Bard, Ranger, Monk and Barbarian are greatly improved, and gnome bard encouragement is cool. Skill names are improved in a few cases.
-fix Improved Initiative? And the feat bugs. Actually, just squash any bugs.
-offer to Prestige classes? Ideally just use core rules ones, but feel free to not include hard to implement or inappropriate ones. Some others might be fine too, but no need for a huge heap of them.
This would be big though, and risky due to IWD2 not having the profile/reputation even IWD had, so it would require leaning on an established EE brand, rather than pure nostalgia.
I think many of us would probably be more behind IWD2:EE with a few caveats:
-Fix the really painfully tedious puzzles of the Glacier and the Forest. These are game screwingly harsh on newbies. I quit several runs at the Glacier puzzle hell, and I did play some Sierra puzzle adventure games. Still didnt find them intuitive. Easy solutions include high intelligence characters giving tips, or just handwave the whole lightning thing. It was a cool idea, but seems hard to implement in a way that isnt sanity damaging. For the Forest, make Wilderness Lore even simpler to use for it... just say which direction maybe? I liked that the game rewards having a balanced party, perhaps make Wilderness Lore give some other mechanical bonus to survival, ie safer resting outdoors? More effective outdoor resting? As it is, this is the only reason to use Wilderness Lore, and a newbie caught without it will probably consider rage quitting.
-Make rolling stats optional. Obviously just porting the BG rolling system would make 3rd edition a bit absurd, so probably don't allow fine-tunning, which no DM I have heard of would be okay with. Make it 'Random or Point Buy' maybe? I prefer the point buy, but random 4d6 is good for 3rd too. BG finetuning and high total will be overpowered though. 3rd makes a 15 a solid score to start with, in 2nd this was a crapy score for a critical ability.
-Include even more dialogues, especially more that are class/race specific, but also include more 'hard to miss' ones. If you don't talk to a certain ghost, the game is much less enjoyable, and the story less powerful BY FAR.
-Add in some non-linear quests, nothing big, just some 'optional' areas to explore, maybe the Vale? The repopulated ruins of the Temple of the Forgotten God? Just ideas. Easy ones. A harder option would be an expansion quest after the conclusion. Harder to do!
-update to 3.5 maybe, Bard, Ranger, Monk and Barbarian are greatly improved, and gnome bard encouragement is cool. Skill names are improved in a few cases.
-fix Improved Initiative? And the feat bugs. Actually, just squash any bugs.
-offer to Prestige classes? Ideally just use core rules ones, but feel free to not include hard to implement or inappropriate ones. Some others might be fine too, but no need for a huge heap of them.
This would be big though, and risky due to IWD2 not having the profile/reputation even IWD had, so it would require leaning on an established EE brand, rather than pure nostalgia.
I think if they did this, they would end up with a very solid game. I think most of us are aware that IWD2 was a little rushed out the door, so perhaps they could use this chance to make IWD2 the game it should have been?
I would love a mini expansion for the game like IWD1 got.
Regarding stats, I sort of want the current system to stay as it is because it is easy to powergame!
The thing is, if IWD1 goes down well, it could reinvigorate the brand and raise awareness of IWD2.
Given that IWD2 has skills, I would like the option to use them to avoid the tedious battles.
You mean like
using cadavers to intimidate a certain barghest welp?
There are all sorts of things. For example, using Wilderness Lore to mountaineer around a heavily guarded pass.
Basically, a pass over the whole game, looking for a way to use brain rather than brawn to overcome obstacles.
For me, a lot of the fights are set up in such a way as to force the player to be constantly micromanaging their party. Which I suppose is fine if you like X-Com style tactics, but I found it made the pace of plot development terribly slow.
Hmm, I’m just not convinced there’s enough to ‘enhance’ compared to the BG series & IWD1, and playing around with the ruleset would just cause a marmite effect between the playerbase.
I’d like to see what they could come up with before I cast my vote.
The problem with allowing your characters to use their in game intelligence to bypass some of the puzzles is where do you draw the line?
You want some benefit out of the points you invest in intelligence, but the game has to test the player, not the characters. If they made it so that smart characters could bypass the puzzles, then people would accuse it of what they accused Dungeon Siege of - that the game plays itself.
That being said, it isn't unprecedented to allow characters with certain stats be able to have certain dialog options and ways to resolve quests. An example is helping the Duergar finish his crossbow, which requires high intelligence. That isn't really a puzzle though.
However, if applied to puzzles, it would mean all of the them would have to become trivial, because almost everyone brings a wizard along for IWD2, which means almost everyone has at least one high intelligence character.
Hmm, I’m just not convinced there’s enough to ‘enhance’ compared to the BG series & IWD1, and playing around with the ruleset would just cause a marmite effect between the playerbase.
I’d like to see what they could come up with before I cast my vote.
Some good ideas have been mentioned above, but yes, perhaps you could argue that as the latest of the IE games, it needs the least work. It has the most modern ruleset and a decent selection of spells and gear.
Nonetheless, I would like an EE for primarily two reasons. The first is that the game is old, and getting it to run nicely on modern Windows is difficult. An EE would presumably run on modern Windows without issue, as well as running on other OS's, such as OSX, iOS and Android.
The second reason is that everyone knows it was rushed out the door, and even though it ended up very good, there is more that they could add to it. It looks like they had to cut some of the 3E rule implementations due to time pressure, so it would be nice to see the game as it was originally intended to be. Plus, I'm sure there is unfinished content they could restore, as well as new items and spells that they could add. Ninth level spells were always a bit lacking.
Comments
Worst of all the IE games, rushed, poor gameplay, clichéd and contrived story, none of the spirit of the original. Never did like 3E implementation.
first pass for me of a Beamdog game if they did it.
Much rather buy PST:EE
Its not like BG where you are beaten over the head with the plot/story, you need to dig a bit for it. Ymmv of course.
I have all the original install CDs (bought games when they first came out) and also bought on GOG on sale (easier install). I would love to see PST:EE I never got around to playing it even though I bought it way back then.
Ultimately I want to see them produce a new game (either located in BG or IWD with new cast of characters OR all new everything) using the same mechanics of top-down view, 6char party and such. The 3D, first person shooter RPG is overdone. Yes it is pretty, but eye candy is not everything. Dragon Age was a good game and was thought to restart the epic RPG movement and then they left the standard to appeal to the larger FPS & eyecandy market. Same thing happened with Mass Effect. First one was in the model of epic RPG and then they altered to appeal to the FPS juggernaut crowd.
Go here, push this switch, go all the way to the other end of the dungeon, experiment to get the right order and/or combination of these four levers pulled and not pulled, study your hint letters that dropped and hope you found them all, go back and forth to the opposite ends of the dungeon to get all the switches pulled, find the secret door here and rotate the statue on the altar, go all the way there and find another secret door, then step on the six plates in the right order, on and on, AUGH!
No thanks, I can't stand that kind of game.
I did enjoy the tactical combat and the epic, huge battles leading up to that first puzzle dungeon, though.
I might buy IWD2:EE just to support Beamdog, depending on the pricing, but I don't think I'd play it very much.
In IWD2 they could have even added a puzzle solving skill. Perhaps the player could push the puzzle solving ability button and the character would then generate a list of notes in their inventory with either hints or a detailed solution, depending on their puzzle solving skill. That way, those who did want to fiddle with puzzles could, while others could have a quick way to bypass them.
And, given the game is at its core about smashing bad guys it would have made sense if the designers had added at least one "brute force" solution to various puzzles. "Grog not search for secret door! Grog smash hole in wall!!!"
The situation in that Forest was quite pathetic, however, with the only real clue being Wilderness Lore. Having certain classes also assisted at certain points in the game but this was mostly for flavour which was quite awesome and something that the Baldur's Gate series lacked.
I'd buy an EE edition in a heartbeat but only if they worked off that ruleset and didn't try to redo it with IWD1/Baldur mechanics. With improvements of course.
Add to that beautiful locations, portraits and music. A chance to make your own party. To get acquainted with a different (from BG and IWD1) ruleset.
All this with new items/spells/even quests maybe. Even better graphics.
So, I raise my hand.
I like the combat and the story in the Fell Wood, what I don't like is that it is a maze. But simply clicking wilderness lore over and over again while the game is paused helps! Battle Square is an interesting idea but too cumbersome. They should have done it with a dialog with the golem instead.
The first part of the game is slow because you have no spellpower, which makes the fights much harder. When you reach 3rd level spells, the game starts to get faster and more enjoyable.
The locations, portraits and combat are all excellent. What I also love is the sheer variety of characters you can make, using all of the combinations of races, classes, multi classing and feats.
It had some problems (reaaaallly boring start, and I wasn't a fan of the point buy) but it was better than most of the crap out there. I'd buy it.
I'd prefer a new game with the infinity engine though, and one more like IWD rather than BG2
-Fix the really painfully tedious puzzles of the Glacier and the Forest. These are game screwingly harsh on newbies. I quit several runs at the Glacier puzzle hell, and I did play some Sierra puzzle adventure games. Still didnt find them intuitive. Easy solutions include high intelligence characters giving tips, or just handwave the whole lightning thing. It was a cool idea, but seems hard to implement in a way that isnt sanity damaging. For the Forest, make Wilderness Lore even simpler to use for it... just say which direction maybe? I liked that the game rewards having a balanced party, perhaps make Wilderness Lore give some other mechanical bonus to survival, ie safer resting outdoors? More effective outdoor resting? As it is, this is the only reason to use Wilderness Lore, and a newbie caught without it will probably consider rage quitting.
-Make rolling stats optional. Obviously just porting the BG rolling system would make 3rd edition a bit absurd, so probably don't allow fine-tunning, which no DM I have heard of would be okay with. Make it 'Random or Point Buy' maybe? I prefer the point buy, but random 4d6 is good for 3rd too. BG finetuning and high total will be overpowered though. 3rd makes a 15 a solid score to start with, in 2nd this was a crapy score for a critical ability.
-Include even more dialogues, especially more that are class/race specific, but also include more 'hard to miss' ones. If you don't talk to a certain ghost, the game is much less enjoyable, and the story less powerful BY FAR.
-Add in some non-linear quests, nothing big, just some 'optional' areas to explore, maybe the Vale? The repopulated ruins of the Temple of the Forgotten God? Just ideas. Easy ones.
-update to 3.5 maybe, Bard, Ranger, Monk and Barbarian are greatly improved, and gnome bard encouragement is cool. Skill names are improved in a few cases.
-fix Improved Initiative? And the feat bugs. Actually, just squash any bugs.
-offer to Prestige classes? Ideally just use core rules ones, but feel free to not include hard to implement or inappropriate ones. Some others might be fine too, but no need for a huge heap of them.
This would be big though, and risky due to IWD2 not having the profile/reputation even IWD had, so it would require leaning on an established EE brand, rather than pure nostalgia.
I think if they did this, they would end up with a very solid game. I think most of us are aware that IWD2 was a little rushed out the door, so perhaps they could use this chance to make IWD2 the game it should have been?
I would love a mini expansion for the game like IWD1 got.
Regarding stats, I sort of want the current system to stay as it is because it is easy to powergame!
The thing is, if IWD1 goes down well, it could reinvigorate the brand and raise awareness of IWD2.
Basically, a pass over the whole game, looking for a way to use brain rather than brawn to overcome obstacles.
For me, a lot of the fights are set up in such a way as to force the player to be constantly micromanaging their party. Which I suppose is fine if you like X-Com style tactics, but I found it made the pace of plot development terribly slow.
I’d like to see what they could come up with before I cast my vote.
You want some benefit out of the points you invest in intelligence, but the game has to test the player, not the characters. If they made it so that smart characters could bypass the puzzles, then people would accuse it of what they accused Dungeon Siege of - that the game plays itself.
That being said, it isn't unprecedented to allow characters with certain stats be able to have certain dialog options and ways to resolve quests. An example is helping the Duergar finish his crossbow, which requires high intelligence. That isn't really a puzzle though.
However, if applied to puzzles, it would mean all of the them would have to become trivial, because almost everyone brings a wizard along for IWD2, which means almost everyone has at least one high intelligence character. Some good ideas have been mentioned above, but yes, perhaps you could argue that as the latest of the IE games, it needs the least work. It has the most modern ruleset and a decent selection of spells and gear.
Nonetheless, I would like an EE for primarily two reasons. The first is that the game is old, and getting it to run nicely on modern Windows is difficult. An EE would presumably run on modern Windows without issue, as well as running on other OS's, such as OSX, iOS and Android.
The second reason is that everyone knows it was rushed out the door, and even though it ended up very good, there is more that they could add to it. It looks like they had to cut some of the 3E rule implementations due to time pressure, so it would be nice to see the game as it was originally intended to be. Plus, I'm sure there is unfinished content they could restore, as well as new items and spells that they could add. Ninth level spells were always a bit lacking.