It is a bit of a slay and I really really like how they handled some bg1 chars with Skie and Safana as standouts. The maps are pretty varied and fun to explore and the devotion to making this feel relatively faithful to bg1's personality is commendable. I find the scale of it a little bit silly, it makes the grander parts of bg2 feel slightly trivialized. It also feels sort of awkward that bg2's events never call back to siege of dragonspear despite its scale (how could it?)

Also the amount of tone-ruining sarcasm in PC and NPC dialogue in beamdog's writing throughout this and the enhanced editions is sooooooooo crazy insufferable i could die.

First playthrough of this after having completed the enhanced edition years ago and I gotta say...... Prefer this to the enhanced edition by a little bit! While a lot of the fights are admittedly pretty tank n' spank in the original, enhanced edition kits and other stuff totally trivialize a lot of them. The redone UI also kind of interferes with the atmosphere and visual composition of the game.

It was overall a really great experience with dungeons that I largely found to be fun and visually interesting with a loooot of fighting. I mentioned before that its usually pretty tank n' spank but I actually didn't mind this too much. The tiny nuances in character positioning and spell usage sort of make up for it, at least for me.

I think its missing some of the heart that the sequel has. 2 has a lot of fantastic voice acting sprinkled throughout with the interludes from Maralie setting the atmosphere wonderfully, I was missing Maralie's monologuing between chapters so much after working backwards from the 2nd game. Heart of Winter definitely steps it up in that department with a plot that is very personal and sentimental feeling. I felt very attached to my party all the way through and they will be missed...

Very sprawling levels that are very barren, it is as if you are trapped in an endless empty liminal space. Fighting and casting magic and navigating the world just doesn't have much to it.

Worst of all for me, there's no real sense of progression in a narrative, mechanical, or exploratory sense. Leveling up hardly changes the way you play, not much happens plot-wise, the areas feel lacking in things to actually do besides wander corridors and left click stuff to death. The aesthetics and feel weren't enough to carry me through to the end. Eventually I just sorta realized "I am getting absolutely nothing out of this"

Shook at how many stupid ass notes n disruptive cutscenes u gotta read and watch. They were so excited to cook up that boring ass story that they forgot to make it an actual game. Fuck. I'm not against reading n notes n cutscenes in stuff but video game narratives can be so strong bc of how you personally interact with them thru the gameplay. Get OVER urself

EDIT: I def was coping rly hard at this game, I feel I was a lil too harsh. Definitely not my cup of tea but might be someone else's if they want super story focused horror.

Finally finished this up. What a fucking game, I had a fabulous time. I should note I played with the fan-made enhanced edition mod, mostly for the quality of life tweaks.

Icewind Dale 1 and 2 generally aren't liked as much as their Baldur's Gate counterparts and for understandable reason... grand overarching narrative and fleshed out characters aren't a focus of the games. Funnily enough, I actually find Icewind Dale's conveyance of its setting, mood, aesthetics, etc to hit me a bit harder than Baldur's Gate does in the moment to moment. I'm not really trying to take digs at Baldur's Gate cuz I totally love 1 and 2 but I can't really help but compare.

The visuals are SOOOOO gorgeous... Every single environment, even the dungeons that are just empty rooms, feel like they were given such attention bottom to top. It comes across like a painting where every detail is inevitably intentional, rather than being able to notice concessions that tend to come with 3D environments in games at the time. The awesome lighting is definitely a huge part of it. There's just so much detail aside from a few exceptions.

While the visuals look great on their own, the sound completes them. The fantastic soundtrack is used very sparingly, often playing during key battles or as an introduction to a new area without looping. The subsequent ambience does an amazing job at maintaining the atmosphere. Being met only by the sound of freezing wind or the deep hum of cold caves or temples between the constant difficult fights adds to the setting being so crazy hostile feeling. It's a really interesting vibe to me that the game balances very well, being in a beautiful winter wonderland while also surviving how relentlessly vicious the setting is. This makes the brief moments of peace feel so special... I particularly remember wandering into a potion making lady's tent in the wilderness and being so surprised by how playful and fun the music is.

The writing is a gag too. It might not be trying to reach Baldur's Gate's narrative heights, but dialogue and descriptions are written so beautifully. Its generally very straightforward yet with a slight poetic bend? Iunno if poetic is quite the word but I can't think of anything better. I'm sure its in part due to how fleeting most NPCs are, but a lot of the writing feels like it characterizes and is an expression of the setting itself... direct and fierce but playful and endearing. Characters like Lysara and Oswald are emblematic of these things to me. A loooot of NPCs, such as Lysara and Oswald, also have specific speaking quirks. Many people you meet leave a pretty lasting impression because of it, nobody really quite melds together for me. Also the voice acting goes CRAZY....It's just great. As for the actual story of the game, its like... whatever. I find the plot somewhat uncomfortable as it has themes of marginalization but handles them about as poorly as you would expect from the forgotten realms. I just uhhhh try not to think abt it lol.

The 3E mechanics work great. I find myself making more interesting micro-decisions in battle compared to the 2E infinity engine games, particularly around positioning. Once your squishy back-liners get caught, they'll just eat attacks of opportunity and get obliterated real quickly. This type of thing, on top of enemy-specific quirks, makes battles feel very rewarding to plan for and execute fabulously. Character building with the addition of feats and skills is much more fun too, though it feels like theres an abundance of worthless feats that I suspect will dull my enjoyment of character building on subsequent playthroughs.

Icewind Dale 2 pretty much solidified my love for the setting. It's just such a vibe.

Played a little over half of wailing death. Had to drop it cuz that shit was hella boring!! It definitely felt like more of a test run for the system as the game itself is more of a frame in which to make adventures rather than being an individual realized experience.

I'm really glad I decided to keep going with shadows of undrentide and hordes of the underdark, both of those were pretty great! I definitely lean more toward shadows of undrentide bc I more appreciate that mid level scope of tabletop play where you're a small part of the world while still having enough nuance and strength to your character to make interesting choices. That being said, hordes of the underdark is still pretty fantastic for a high to epic level campaign. I didn't feel terribly overwhelmed or bloated throughout and its sometimes pretty exhilarating to travel around all of the crazy ass high level locations you'll only find in those types of games. The final act of hordes though was pretty sloggy and I was just antsy to see how it'd end.

Its a rly common old criticism but the primitive early 3D did give the world kind of an empty rudimentary feeling. There is a great flatness to everywhere you go, just a simple plane with some props sticking out of it. Sure theres some slopes on some maps but its not enough to fully abate this bizarre sense of unease from the environs, it feels like wandering around the backrooms.

I'll probably continue playing some other modules here and there. Definitely plan on getting to darkness over daggerford

Its just really boring. You're more or less at the mercy of whatever is thrown at you while you pray that the most helpful character/items/skills/etc are coincidentally on hand. Even when you do try to stock up on shit, very little is actually demanded from you in terms of engagement. There's some mechanically meaningful decisions to be made here and there but none of them are actually interesting to make.

The actual horror of the game comes nowhere near landing. Its a series of eyeroll tier "You see a spooky ghost!" level stuff that repeats over and over regardless of what mystery you're on, its rare for them to have meaningful relevance to the mystery at hand and even when they do its just a nothingburger event, nothing interesting happens. You investigate whatever location you're at a few times, encounter some boring irrelevant spooks, then the mystery moves itself forward.

I'm really not amused at how the game seems more interested in referencing junji ito plots and aesthetics than it is in conveying its own vision of horror. It doesn't have anything to say besides "Junji Ito is so cool!!"