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Baldur's Gate IWD 1 or 2?

Riddler

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 5, 2009
Messages
2,353
Bubbles In Memoria
Which is better and why?
 
Unwanted

Bladeract

It's Neckbeard Shitlord. Again.
Dumbfuck
Joined
May 19, 2018
Messages
239
Location
-66.273, 100.984
IWD 1 felt like a real game and did not totally railroad you and have enemies magically pop onto the screen every 4 seconds. IWD 2 was more or less awful.
 

iguana_trader

Novice
Joined
May 3, 2018
Messages
33
IWD vanilla is the best - it has great pacing, best atmosphere and itemization. Also the dungeons are unmatched by any other Infinity Engine game. It is the pure, real Icewind Dale experience before all the "balancing" took place. Also, talking to the locals <NPCs> is more fun than in Baldur's Gate. The NPCs are colorful and offer some roleplaying opportunities, more than in Baldurs Gate.

Heart of Winter - I like it, but wish it would not retroactively change the vanilla game. The expansion addas new spells and these are nice, but here is what I especially do not like: new itemization which removes some items from the base game and new paperdoll graphics (ew). It also adds a sneak attack which I enabled for 5 minutes to check it out - prefer backstabbing by a mile. Aside from that Lonelywood is a great town, the overall mood is great (BARBARIANS!), dungeons are a bit worse, but still great and look nice. The campaign also does not overstay it's welcome, which was considered a minus by reviewers at the time, but I like the length of HoW.
I also prefer to play HoW after finishing the base game, so the story flows better and the sequel implies that order.

Trials of the Luremaster - never played it.

IWD2 - never finished it, played it up to the middle of the game (I think), it was nice, new ruleset was good and interesting, but the mood and pacing was way worse that the original IWD or its expansion. Music is great but after it cuts out it does not come back - it ain't looped? The combat was better, but encounter design not necessarily - I felt like sometimes there was too much fighting, a feeling I did not get when playing the original game. IWD1 broke fights more often with settlements and/or NPCs. I think it is still better than BG2:ToB which I never finished, even though it is shorter than IWD2.
I am not sure but IWD2 feels to be longer than IWD+HoW, so I would recommend the vanilla game.

IWD:EE: If you play it the Pope himself will damn you and make sure you go to hell. EE rapes the original game by introducing new bugs, old bugs (which Rimhog never fixed as far as I know), introduces new spells and classes from BG2 which unbalances the game immensely - playing as any of the new classes is pretty much cheating.

If you want to play the original game download Microsoft Compatibility Toolkit>Install>Run Compatibility Admin. 32bit>Righ Click New Database>Create New>Application Fix>Point to IWDmain.exe skip compatibility modes (click next) and check the following fix: ForceDirectDrawEmulation. Save and Right Click the database to Install. Now you have the vanilla game running on win7 and saved some bucks for hookers and booze.
 

Riddler

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 5, 2009
Messages
2,353
Bubbles In Memoria
If you want to play the original game download Microsoft Compatibility Toolkit>Install>Run Compatibility Admin. 32bit>Righ Click New Database>Create New>Application Fix>Point to IWDmain.exe skip compatibility modes (click next) and check the following fix: ForceDirectDrawEmulation. Save and Right Click the database to Install. Now you have the vanilla game running on win7 and saved some bucks for hookers and booze.


Do you really need to do all that? Can't you just run it in compability mode?

Thanks in any case!
 

Dux

Arcane
Joined
May 26, 2016
Messages
635
Location
Sweden
I've never really been a fan of the first Icewind Dale but anything's better than that abortion of a sequel. It's like pulling fucking teeth with the mildest sedative, and that's the only compliment I'm going to give it.

Icewind Dale felt like a missed opportunity for me but I can still respect it. However, even if combat is the main focus of an RPG, it still shouldn't feel like you're being pushed from one encounter to the next. Black Isle could and should've done something more with it. I think I've read somewhere that even some of the writers or designers had similar feelings about the finished product. You go through a Yuan-Ti infested stronghold but any impression of it is fleeting, because you're always on the move. There's no real time to stop and really soak up the atmosphere. At least that's my impression.

Oh and if you want to play Icewind Dale with HOW, but like to have the original sprites (with fixed combat stances), you have to download the 1pp animation fixes.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
5,869
The base IWD1 is my favourite IE game and it has really good atmosphere, pacing, a great diversity of enemies and locations, and great itemization with unique and impactful pieces that truly change how the game is played (e.g. Messenger of Sseth).

HoW is a weak expansion. There's one good area (Burial Isle) but the rest is nothing but linear corridors filled with weak enemies. The final boss is kind of cool but your party is horribly overpowered by the time you get to it.

However, it did bring about some bugfixes and some cool new items and spells. It's worth installing for that reason, and you can remedy the (decline) incorporation of BG2-style paperdolls and animations (and broken stances) with the One Pixel Productions (1PP) patch. That gives you the best of both worlds.

http://www.shsforums.net/topic/55047-1ppv410-release-download-discussion/

Icewind Dale 2 is a good game (it certainly offers more interaction and interesting quests), but I couldn't get it to run smoothly on a recent machine, even with multiple alternative ddrawl.dll solutions (the best of which is Aqrit's fix - http://bitpatch.com/ie_ddrawfix.html). It hiccups and slows down a lot (for instance, when a bard song takes effect or when the Lingering Song feat triggers). It happens on larger maps and basically makes it unplayable for me.

This largely happens because IWD2 got rid of OpenGL support somewhere along the way. Maybe someone will figure it out someday. Again, IWD2 is fun and the character development, even if it's not quite 3E and some crucial feats like Improved Initiative don't work at all, is more interesting than 2E and allows for greater flexibility in builds.
 

iguana_trader

Novice
Joined
May 3, 2018
Messages
33
If you want to play the original game download Microsoft Compatibility Toolkit>Install>Run Compatibility Admin. 32bit>Righ Click New Database>Create New>Application Fix>Point to IWDmain.exe skip compatibility modes (click next) and check the following fix: ForceDirectDrawEmulation. Save and Right Click the database to Install. Now you have the vanilla game running on win7 and saved some bucks for hookers and booze.


Do you really need to do all that? Can't you just run it in compability mode?

Thanks in any case!
That way you fix graphical glitches and yes, you do not have to run it in winxp comp. mode. It is even advised not to.
The toolkit is really easy and once you learn to use it it will take 5 minutes to fix any Infinity Game. It is not as scary as it may seem, so I encourage to give it a go!
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
5,869
You don't need to install the MCT to get it to run properly with correctly mirrored fog. All you need is Aqrit's ddraw.dll.
 
Joined
Feb 28, 2011
Messages
4,099
Location
Chicago, IL, Kwa
I would argue that IWD has aged much better than either BG, and offers a more consistent quality of gameplay than PS:T, making it in many respects the best IE game. 2 is a mixed bag. It does a lot right, but it sure shits the bed on a lot of stuff too.
 
Self-Ejected

RNGsus

Self-Ejected
Joined
Apr 29, 2011
Messages
8,106
IWD2 source code was lost. Thus, it can never be sullied by Beamdog or any other third-rate dev.
So on a long enough timeline, IWD2 is actually GOAT? And not just of RPGs.
 

DemonKing

Arcane
Joined
Dec 5, 2003
Messages
5,958
IWD1 (vanilla) is a great game - outstanding music, atmosphere and a surprisingly subtle storyline for a hack n' slash title.

The expansions are ok. Heart of Winter's dungeons are very linear in comparison to some in the vanilla game where you could explore in a very non-sequential manner (eg Severed Hand, Lower Dorn's Deep). Trials of the Luremaster is much more puzzle focused than the base expansion and makes a nice change of pace.

IWD2 is a decent game considering its troublesome and truncated development history. The implementation of 3rd edition is decent. The new focus on puzzles though is unwelcome as they're more annoying than fun and a lot of the environments quite bland compared to the original title. The storyline of half-demon twins getting upset at being rejected by society and raising an army in response didn't really do much for me either but I'd say it's worth playing at least once.
 

Ventidius

Arbiter
Joined
Jul 8, 2017
Messages
552
The base IWD1 is my favourite IE game

I feel the same way. In fact, I'd go as far as saying it is my favorite isometric game, but then again, I am probably biased because I wish all RPGs were dungeon crawlers. Come think of it, the scarcity of isometric dungeon crawlers is truly appalling, so many devs rush to clone Baldur's Gate and make "story-driven" games with throwaway stories and not a single modern RPG dev has thought of making another full-fledged game like IWD that translates the Wizardry formula on isometry. It is particularly poignant when you consider that the inveterate RTwP model's only virtue is that it makes combat faster, which is a huge plus precisely in dungeon crawlers with lots of combat, and the reason it doesn't really ruin IWD.

Anyhow, on topic, I would go for the first IWD, because of the atmosphere and the fact that the dungeon design in it is much, much better, while the combat and character/party building are only slightly worse.
 

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