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Tab Hunter
In addition to the shitty pathfinding, helpfully compounded by overly
narrow passageways and seemingly random pointless interface changes, plenty more in IWD2
makes me think BIS forgot some of the things they did in BG2 to make these games better.
There’s still the toggle for Max HP Per Level in the Options menu, praise Jeebus, but
healing spells have random effect. As such, your first level priest can attempt to heal
someone and only heal one hit point. 4d8 means 4 – 32 hit points possible, and how
often do I barely break 10? Too often. Great, another reason to save/reload endlessly so
my healing spells actually work decently. Also, there’s that stupid percent failure
chance for writing spells into your spell book. Oh fuck, who fucking cares about chances
to fail and random healing? Didn’t we get over this shit back in IWD1? Don’t
tell me it’s the 3E rules, they had these rules in the first fucking edition, but BIS
was (at one time) smart enough to realize players would just save/reload to circumvent it,
so why bother? Along those lines, potions of healing provide random effects, but in a
narrower range (so the minimum isn’t so pathetically low), so what’s the fucking
difference? Aren’t these fucking games hard enough to make without re-inventing the
wheel every goddamn time? Regardless of the 3E rules, why did they remove the Tab
key’s function of highlighting loot and searchable containers? Especially in this
game, where enemy bodies pile up in the cramped quarters, and 95% of all potentially
searchable background shit isn’t. This leaves you wiggling your mouse over every pile
of bodies, and you can only pray you find the stuff that drops behind a wall. I don’t
know how many times I backtracked over a site of an old battle, after the bodies had
disappeared, to see a pile of shit that I couldn’t find at the time. If you want that
option, you have to use a cheat. Why?
A weird "feature" of IWD2 is barrel characteristics. Since
barrels are the crate of D&D RPGs, I think it’s a nice homage to their ubiquity
to give them so much more prominence in a game. Not only are there the usual barrels that
you can loot (or my favorite – the ones you can’t, the ones that just take up
space as non-interactive scenery, an IWD staple), there’re ones that you can smash to
get what’s inside, and ones that blow up if shot with a fire arrow (not that you
get fire arrows in the beginning of the game, though). It’s about time they expanded
the classes for barrels.
There are other gameplay events that give me cramps. Monster spawners,
anyone? At least they’re destroyable. The gag of suddenly appearing enemies
surrounding you is still alive, as well as random assholes jumping out of nowhere to speak
to your lead party member. But, of course, your highest charisma character with all the
diplomacy skills is a sorceror and is in the back. Will you guys just let me choose
who I want to talk to and when, with whom I choose? Is that so hard? BIS’ solution is
provided in one of their little load/save hints: give several characters diplomacy skills.
Get the fuck out of here.
As usual, the game caters to good alignments, although more allowance
to the other alignments is made, affecting your dialogue options. For this reason, as the
game suggests, have your town mouthpiece be neutral (and not a paladin or monk), so he can
get the dialogue options to weasel gold out of everyone after doing quests for them.
Naturally, you get lectured like a 10-year-old for your selfish mercenary ways, but fuck
these clowns. They keep sending my six 3rd levels nobodies against invading
armies, HOW’S ABOUT YOU KICK DOWN, PAL?
Those really cool high-level mage battles aren’t present in IWD2
as they were in BG2. I don’t know why, I guess that’s not hack ‘n’
slash enough, or something. Mirror Image and Protection From Fire, that’s about it.
Tough mage battles in IWD2 ain’t so tough; you Mirror Image your mages and waltz up
to the monster, and start winging Fireballs at them until they die. You know, just like in
IWD1. There are a ton of new spells, but most of them are stupid and redundant. How many
different spells do you need to shoot a bolt of energy/fire/ice/whosists to do whatever
amount of damage? Not any more than there were in earlier BIS RPGs, I believe.
Idiot Savant Dale
This is a problem endemic to most of BIS’ RPGs, but it really
takes prominence in IWD2, thanks to the 3E rules, I guess. Here are your characters, your
mages and sorcerors, distributing their skill points and feats and shit judiciously, to
help create solid, well-rounded magic-users capable of tackling a variety of in-game
tasks. Then, here come the game’s enemy wizards: single-functionality jerkoffs who
summon a monster and so on, and are very adept at not getting disrupted, since all they
have to do is hang out in the periphery and cast spells until they die. You’re
pumping bolts and arrows into these fuckers, and they just cast away. I imagine schools of
magic churning out dudes who specialize in nothing but Casting Summon Monster/Color Spray
Without Getting Disrupted. I can’t count how many times a mage got off a Sleep or
Hold Person spell just before he died, or how many priests I fought who just kept healing
themselves. Meanwhile, your sorcerors fail to cast with annoying frequency (there is a 10%
chance for failure when wearing light armor, I’ll tell you my casting failure
percentage was closer to 30%), for any reason under the cold gray sun. Monsters hit with
far greater accuracy than they ought to, while your guys whiff away as usual. Then when
you finally kill them, these axe-swinging, tough-to-hit beasts, and they leave about 10
gold and nothing else; no weapons, nothing. I guess BIS finally realized that missile
weapons were too overpowered in IWD1; missile weapons rarely hit in IWD2. Your first
volley against an attacking foe will often yield six misses. Also, firing rates are
severely reduced; that first volley will be all you get before an attacking monster
engages your front fighters. You’re better off engaging in melee right away, anyway.
It’s hard to complain about that; it’s certainly more realistic. Be prepared to
get hit a whole fucking lot too, exhausting your priests’ healing spell complement
quickly (forget buying healing potions, they’re too expensive, and it takes awhile to
scrounge up a decent supply). You know, those healing spells that might only heal 4
fucking hit points, when you’ve only got a handful of them and your fighters are each
down to 20 or 30 hit points.
Groo the Wanderer
This wouldn’t be an iteration of IWD if it didn’t have
multi-level dungeons. But, do most them have to be (in name, anyway) the same
dungeons and areas from IWD1? Not to spoil with the exact ones, but one of them is a
quaint little town from IWD1 that makes my balls spin in rage around the base of my penis
like a trick bowtie when I think of it. Fuck you, BIS. And fuck you some more, for your
stupid adventure game gay quests like finding ingredients and solving mazes. Meet
interesting and colorful individuals with obligatory stupid fantasy monikers (like
Nickademus, the spelling of which is the fantasy equivalent of naming your kid Antwan).
Pronounce Iyachtu Xvim, I fucking dare you. At least they went easy on the apostrophes
(Rule#2 TMUFS: Randomly-placed apostrophes can help achieve Rule#1) this time. At some
point in this game, you’re going to find yourself sighing as some character with a
tortuously-spelled (and thus utterly forgettable) name sets you up for another long trudge
through a four or five level shithole, perhaps one you already played through in the
first fucking game. What is this, a graphics-enhanced 3E implemented mod of IWD1? Get
some fucking imagination, you assholes.
Guess-What-The-End-Boss-Is Blahblahfuckingblah.
Who cares? Here’s another Big Bad Evil that requires you to a)
buff like crazy, get real lucky with your spells and hits, and fight off all the flunkies
simultaneously, or b) use a ridiculously simple exploit that anyone who played BG2 will
know. Annoyingly difficult or boringly easy? Those are two choices I want in my RPG
finale. Faggots. Anti-climactic, to say the least. Look, if you’re a big BIS RPG
whore like I am, you’ll probably dig IWD2, to be honest. If you want more or less of
the same shit you got in IWD1 with better character development, if you’re long used
to the IE’s annoyances and ticks, if you don’t mind putting up with stupid,
seemingly random design changes, and you like big, tough battles, this game is fine. I
suggest downloading Weimar’s Ease of Use mod (a link is available at
planetbaldursgate.com), which is fully customizable for alleviating some of IWD2’s
annoying tics. If you’ve never really played the BIS games and are looking to find
the better ones out of the series, go play Planescape, BG2, and IWD1 in that order.
Fuck this game.
 Bill Dungsroman
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