Every old soldier deserves a sendoff this good.

Bioware’s Infinity Engine has been the backbone of so many great games, from the first Baldur’s Gate to Planescape: Torment to the spectacular expansion for Baldur’s Gate II. Considered by many to be the single greatest game engine ever, it’s being given a heroic sendoff by Black Isle in the fun and well-built Icewind Dale II.

The game takes place a generation after the events in Icewind Dale, and therefore the player is not allowed to import a party from the first game. You’ll soon get over that, though, because creating an entire party of six with the juicy new 3rd Edition D&D Rules is just so much fun.

About those 3rd Edition Rules

I know, I know, not all purists love this new ruleset. But to them, I say, fine – go play Baldur’s Gate again, then. The 3rd Edition rules are so much more fun than 2nd edition that they pretty much fix the only thing that I considered wrong with the earlier Bioware and Black Isle D&D games: The fact that the stern 2nd Edition rules imposed many limitations on character creation, and (even worse) gave the player little to decide and do when a character leveled up.

3rd Edition cracks the whole character issue wide open. First, it gives you lots of yummy sub-races to try: Half-Orcs (strong and stupid, duh), Aasimar and Tiefling Humans; Shield, Gold and Grey Dwarves; Lightfoot, Stoutheart and Ghostwise Halflings; Moon, Wild and Drow (YES DROW!) Elves; and Rock and Deep Gnomes. Each race and sub-race has its own bonuses and penalties (the range of bonuses and penalties being significantly more severe for the more exotic sub-races).

Next, you have lots of fun classes to pick from: Bard, Rogue, Fighter, Ranger, Wizard, Sorcerer, Druid, Monk, Cleric, Barbarian, and Paladin.

Unlike the simulated die rolls of earlier rulesets, 3rd Edition really lets you fine-tune your characters base abilities of Strength, Wisdom, Constitution, Agility, Intelligence and Charisma. Also, the Skills and Feats rosters are full of entertaining choices.

All this freedom can inspire the player to create some oddball, yet successful characters. My party included a Grey Dwarf Ranger and a Half-Orc Monk, and they both did fine.

Chewy, Crunchy CRPG Gaming Goodness

Aside from a slightly refined interface, the gameplay in Icewind Dale II is handled mechanically very much like its Infinity Engine forebears. The format is isometric third-person, just like the earlier games. And while the frozen wastes of The Spine of the World don’t inspire the greatest graphics this engine has ever seen (that honor would have to go to Baldur’s Gate II), the visual presentation is still varied and attractive.

Combat is still in real-time, with the ability to pause the action at any time with a flick of the spacebar. While paused, you can give instructions to multiple party members. This keeps the combat from getting out of hand and allows the player to experiment extensively with various strategies.

Like the first Icewind Dale, the game is a pretty linear affair compared to the Baldur’s Gate games. But even with its emphasis on combat and dungeon crawling, the characters and conversations are rich and rewarding, with the intrigues and double-crosses crpg players have come to expect from life in the Forgotten Realms. Conversational skills such as Bluff and Intimidate factor into conversational tree options in a robust enough way that it can sometimes really make a difference who in your party does the talking. Even though most of the dialog is text-only, there is a decent amount of voicework in the game and it is superb throughout.

Inon Zur created the musical score for the game, and while it’s not in the same league as the scores of Jeremy Soule (who scored the first game), it’s still suitably epic and grand.

You Must Gather Your Party Before Venturing Forth

All is not perfect in the Spine of the World, however. Though one of the nagging irritations of past Infinity Engine games has been fixed (the warning about gathering your party is now text-only), some issues from earlier games return.

First, the pathfinding, once again, is just plain weak. This can become very annoying with a group of six characters. When trudging cross-country, I always seemed to end up with one or two characters stumbling around to some remote and irrelevant corner of the map. There has been a lot of time to fix this problem, and it’s a shame no one ever got around to it.

Second, even through many different AI scripts are available, they do not work reliably. And while this issue isn’t as terrible as it was in Baldur’s Gate II (in which they just plain didn’t work at all), they still should be much tighter than they are.

There’s also a woefully-needed command from the interface. While you can quickly switch from ranged to melee weapons for a single character with some ease, there is absolutely no provision in the interface to issue this command for your entire party. Now, that’s just dumb. I had to download a special third-party keyboard mapping program in order to create this command. This is the kind of problem that always amazes me when I think about the playtesting process: didn’t someone complain about this missing command early on?

In addition to the single-player campaign, there’s a multiplayer cooperative mode that can accommodate up to six players. There’s also the return of Heart of Fury mode, an extremely challenging run through the game in which battle difficulty and experience rewards are ramped up.

The game is of medium length, despite Bioware’s claim that it is longer than Icewind Dale and its two expansions put together (it’s not). But it’s still a solid, well-built, attractive, and fun adventure that benefits from the double blessing of the venerable Infinity engine and the nimble 3rd Edition D&D rules. Bioware has sternly insisted that this is it – there are no expansion packs planned for the game. So suit up, adventurers, and enjoy this high-quality last hurrah of one of the greatest game engines ever.

Final Grade: A