Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter

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$14.99 SamGoody.com

The expansion story line happens independently of the main story line of Icewind Dale and is self-contained within it. Your party gains access to the new sections by reaching level nine and either finishing the original story line, by going through a previously locked entrance in the town of Kuldahar, or by using the pre-made, ready for Heart of Winter characters. And so the expansion begins. Your group of adventurers has been summoned by a Barbarian Shaman who disobeys his chief and asks for your help to stop the supposed reincarnation of a fallen Barbarian hero. Your group of seasoned adventurers heads to the northernmost town in Faerun: Lonelywood. There you discover that a huge barbarian army is waiting nearby ready to destroy all of the Ten Towns. But before you can deal with this rather large problem, you must help some of the locals with family and pest problems. Such is the life of a group of adventurers.

"So What do you get?"
The expansion not only gives adventurers 20 to 30 more hours of play time, new portraits, and new sound sets, it also improves upon many features within the original game. A lot of these improvements are based on things done in Baldur's Gate 2 (BG2), released in 2001 with the new version of the Infinity Graphics Engine and also using the AD&D 2nd edition rule set, with a couple of modifications from 3rd edition thrown in for good measure. One of the main additions is the 800x600 supported resolution as well as higher unsupported resolutions. Your characters are about a third of their size in the original game, but you can see about twice the map area, which gives a strategic advantage in battles and also gives better detail to the graphics in general. The higher resolutions may be useful in some circumstances in the world view, but they also make viewing the inventory, character, and spell information difficult as the those displays do not use the higher resolution and just have huge borders to fill in the screen. Taking a cue from BG2, all the interfaces in the worldview are drop away to give a full screen view of all the death and mayhem. I had difficulties with the drop away menus as the two side ones did not want to reappear but reacted to the mouse like they were still there. There is also a nifty hot key that highlights all the normal doors and items on the ground, thus ending the great mouse sweep hunt for things you might have missed. Gem and potion bags and scroll cases have also been added to help store some of these new found items.
Of course, with new areas also come more enemies, such as wailing virgins, Barbarians, animal spirits and polar worms. To defeat these newfound combatants, the expansion adds at least 60 new spells and over 80 new magic items to your arsenal, with some old ones being refined as well. Also there have been more special abilities added to some of the weaker classes such as paladins, rangers, thieves, bards and druids. For instance, the druids now get to shape shift into different animal types that are unlocked as the druid gains levels. The experience limit has been hiked to 8 million points or 30th level (whichever comes first), and a new "Heart of Fury" difficulty mode has been added. This is in addition to the standard difficulty settings to keep you trekking throughout the Dale, once again in fear for your life and with suitable experience rewards for your heroic deeds.

"Worth the price of admission?"
When IWD was released, there was a lot of comparisons made with the rpg/action hybrid Diablo II (D2) that came out at about the same time. They were the hottest titles at the time and the preference for role-playing gamers came down to personal tastes, although I am sure that most gamers went out and eventually got both games. The comparison continues with the expansion packs as IWD:HoW was just released and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction is currently in multi player beta.

In my opinion, IWD is a more in-depth, play a couple of times through, type of game. It takes a fair amount of time to get through once and the entertainment value is in the exploring of new areas as well as the differing experiences with different adventuring parties. Heart of Winter is adding to this path, giving new areas to explore plus adding more party combinations by improving the functionality of several classes. D2 is more about the multi-player experience, replayability, and variety of gaming experience every time you go through an act. Sure you can destroy Diablo on the normal setting with your 25th level barbarian and not touch the game again, but I doubt that very many people did leave it at that point. So it comes down to personal preference again, but anyone who enjoyed Icewind Dale and went through it completely, will enjoy the expansion and might even replay the original version once more with the new features that HoW provides. It should also be noted that some of the team that developed IWD and its expansion are also working on a free for download dungeon set for Heart of Winter. This promises to have more dungeons, a few new monsters, new magical items and an adventure in a castle far from the Dale.

However, it should be noted that the reported 20 to 30 hours of game play for the expansion is dependent heavily on party level and makeup as well as the player's ability. So a decent gamer who is not planning on replaying the original game, will find this expansion to be overpriced. Personally the "Heart of Fury" mode and the experience cap increase add to the replayability similar to the Normal, Nightmare and Hell levels of Diablo II.

"The envelope please"
Icewind Dale is a hack and slash linear dungeon crawl. The expansion is no different and gives you more of the same, which is a good thing. However, it also fixes a few problems in the original, adds a higher experience cap, and a higher difficulty setting. All these things change the original game enough to make a fan want to experience the whole thing again and I think this alone is exceptional. The idea that the expansion area is available to anyone with characters over a certain level and the expansion-ready characters come with the game gives many choices to the player. It should also be noted that pure RPG expansion sets are relatively infrequent and are quite different in focus from other genre expansions.

Like I said before, this game is a hack and slash role playing game with controls very familiar to those that played any of the games based on the Infinity Engine. With the ability to change difficulty settings, to script characters and allow for automatic pause on any number of events, the player gets to decide the level of micro-management and complexity they are comfortable with. This approach is almost necessary with the variance in abilities and preferences in the gaming community.

The original game and expansion are both very well done graphically and the spell effects are breathtaking. The expansion itself allows for larger resolutions that improve the gaming experience and allow for better views of the surrounding areas. I found that the choice of resolutions higher than the supported one of 800x600 were almost not useable, as the non-world screens did not size up properly with the higher resolution.

The aural environment is just as well done as in the original and the new voice sets add even more variance to an already rich selection. The sound of the wailing virgin sent chills through my spine in the Barrows and the constant howling of the winter winds made me rethink putting away my parka. Basically, the sound brings the graphical world to life.

The only major problem that I did find with the game, was that the side menus did not reappear properly on screen. Otherwise there are no real complaints with the technical aspects of the expansion pack.

Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter does what an expansion set should do in my book: it increases the playability of a very good game and adds enough new things to make it almost an entirely new experience. For anyone who enjoyed the original game, this is a definite must have.