I would lecture some people on their ability to comprehend basic text but I won't. There's no point going down that shitty road.
Let me explain in detail on what I mean about the combat, though, and I promise I'll then let it go. Imagine, if you will, that your party is wandering into a tomb of some sort. You dodge traps and fight a few skeletons or whatever inside. Then, at the very end of the dungeon you're faced with a mummy. Maybe your party are all around level 3 at this point. You think to yourself that this is going to be a tough fight. The bastard is resistant to magic, spreads disease and absorbs damage. Now remember, there's only one mummy - not ten. Icewind Dale offers this initially and it actually works quite well. In my mind, this has the potential of being a far more memorable fight than having to fight off six mummies, twelve ghasts, eight ghouls, sixteen zombies and twenty skeletons all at once. This is IWD in a nutshell, unfortunately. In Baldur's Gate for example you have the dungeon of Ulcaster. In it you have to fight some wolves, a mustard jelly and last but not least a vampiric wolf. This is a dungeon done right. It's fairly challenging but if this was Icewind Dale, you would have to fight at least fifteen dread wolves, six mustard jellies and perhaps five vampiric wolves. It all depends. Oh, and all at once too. Now, I can handle that. I haven't beaten IWD twice and Heart of Winter once without not knowing how to win battles. So you don't have to worry about that. My problem is that it's tedious. Battles in these games shouldn't be tedious. I love the combat offered in BG and BG2. I live for that shit. IWD never knew when to quit while it was ahead. That's the developers' fault. Simple as that. There never was any need to throw entire armies at you at once just to make it challenging. It just reeks of a lack of creativity from Black Isle. I promise you, you can make epic and challenging fights that does not include 20+ adversaries at every point. The only real time when the game feels that it's balanced and reasonable is at the beginning, like I mentioned. The tombs in the Vale of Shadows was mostly designed well. You fought shadows, a priestess of Auril, skeletons. Sometimes it went overboard, predictably, but it was still within reason. Then - after that - it all goes to hell. You go from one place to another fighting trash mobs. Over and over and over again. Yuan-Ti? Drow? Umber Hulks? Fire Giants? Meh, I'll just carve 'em up with my +4 sword that I found lying somewhere. Again, what if you'd wandered into an exotic and alien locale, encountering a pissed off and eminent Yuan-Ti clergyman who immediately starts fucking you in the ear, because you're level 4 or 5. That's when you have to get creative and find solutions. IWD doesn't do that. It throws ten Yuan-Ti or more at you and hopes for the best.
The game doesn't even have a story to hold it all up, despite Black Isle/Obsidian's apparent literary skills.
I don't know, maybe the ADHD combat is what people really want. Maybe it's just me who appreciates the more toned down encounters. Was I overly harsh on the game? I wouldn't be me if I wasn't. At least it's not Beamdog. Tirades generally demand some elaborations, though, I'll admit to that.
