Icewind Dale

The warriors are assembled in a classic pyramid formation as the party walks up the draw and into an Orc attack. But wait! What is the mage doing on the front line, trying to fend off piercing, slashing weapons with a dagger? He’s dying, of course. And the blame is not his – it belongs to the game player who did not pay attention when forming the party of warriors.

Icewind Dale, from Black Isle Studios and TSR, is a gobbler of megabyte space, but a tremendously rendered role-playing fantasy game based on the Dungeon and Dragon model. This program is from the Forgotten Realms series, and is in the Baldur’s Gate family. In fact, if you have played Baldur’s Gate, you will be able to jump handily into this title.

Icewind Dale is a place far to the north; a land plagued by evil and in need of a party of stout and skilled adventurers if the peoples and cities are to survive. Yes, there may be some familiarity to the storyline, but the action is a combination of strategy, reflex and luck. You begin by selecting a party of six adventurers. You can import tried and true characters that come with the game, or create your own from scratch.

Either way you are in for an interesting time. Should your party be comprised of rangers, fighters and paladins? Or perhaps a bard will lighten the mood and spin his own brand of magic. How about a cleric, druid or mage? A thief is always handy to have around. After selecting the type of character, you have to roll for their abilities (the game does feature both female and male characters, and there is no discrimination in ability between the two genders), and then align them. Your character may be good or chaotic, on the side of good or evil.

“Those who turn their back on their own natures harm themselves as well as others – if a ranger or paladin does not uphold their alignment, then they will lose the special abilities of their class.” – Everard.

Once the party is assembled, it’s off to begin the adventure. The first quest seems easy enough. Find a long-overdue caravan and escort it back to town. On the way, you’ll encounter a young peasant who was attacked by goblins and needs a little redemption. No problem. The wolves that attack are little more than a nuisance. Then it’s into the snow-covered draw – the first dungeon of the game – where Orcs await. They are big and mean, and will test your combat strategies quickly.

Part of the trick to success depends on how your characters line up in their formations. If, for example, you pick a mage third in your party creation, he will be third in line, and more than likely will end up on the front line in the battle. That is not good. You can either begin your party by selecting warriors first, or wait until the party is assembled and then move the portraits – which line the right side of the monitor – around until you have the formation the way you want it. Characters can be moved individually, or in a group.

Graphically this program is tremendous. It utilizes the Bioware Infinity engine, which lovingly renders the terrain and characters in a manner that has the game spring to life on the monitor. When magic is used, the effects are spectacular, even if the spell is a little heal incantation conjured by your cleric.

The sound quality is fantastic, and the musical score is incredible.

If there is any fault in this game, it is with the system requirements. The program has two installation settings: one for a computer with a processor below 300 MHz, and one for a computer with a processor above 300 MHz. Forget the lower system requirements. By the time you get the commands entered, your characters are done in. And a player with a Pentium III 450 processor experienced some slowdowns during massive battle scenes. (See bottom of this review for the system that the program was tested on.)

But if the computer you have can handle it, Icewind Dale will offer RPG-enthusiasts an experience they will long remember. Difficult? Yes. Fun? Definitely.

 Icewind Dale is a land where death is as cold and lonely as the wind-swept landscape, and the rewards for a victorious battle is more battle.

This program can be played in single player mode, or in a multiplayer format where the party is made up of other game player-controlled characters.

Install: Medium, mostly due to the machine it was tested on. This program consumes 800 megs of install space in the recommended installation, 625 megs in the minimum and 1.35 gigs in the full install.

Gameplay: 8.5. There is some pausing between map regions, but other than that, the game moves smoothly.

Graphics: 9.5. The characters are wonderfully detailed and the landscapes rich in texture. Special effects – the magical elements, are excellent.

Sound: 8. Though you pick the vocal renditions for your party, about the only time they actually talk is when they are dying or acknowledging orders. Music is performed on a grand scale and the ambient noises are solid.

Difficulty: 9. This program will throw you into the action in a hurry, and though the opposing forces are relatively easy to conquer in the initial stages, you had better devise a combat strategy and quickly implement it or your party won’t last long.

Concept: 8. Based on Dungeons and Dragons style of gaming, this program realizes the scope of that genre in a fantastic world.

Overall: 9.5. There is a lot to be said for playing the game on a computer that is fast enough to provide seamless action. On a slower machine, frustration sets in. But when played on a machine that allows the total scope of this game to shine through, it is a fantastic journey. Tough, you bet – but a lot of fun.

The computer used to review this program was a Pentium III 866 with 256 megs of RAM, and a GeForce graphics accelerator with a 19-inch Trinitron monitor.