(Enhanced Edition on PC, 70ish hours to completion).

You can find a billion reviews of Icewind Dale, all of which will echo the same few concepts. It's a computer RPG released in 2000, uses the AD&D ruleset, contains relatively limited NPC interaction (and a ton less dialogue) compared to the other games made in the same engine around the same time. You can look up what "real time with pause" means, and whatever else. But I want to instead describe my party and some of the journey we took. This was the Enhanced Edition with the Heart of Winter expansion added in, played on Core Rules difficulty for 90% of the game (more on that swap later). I built my party for a little bit of role-play. I didn't want the standard "best race for (class)" or "best build" stuff. I was assured by many forum posts that "just a well-rounded party of the staples is good enough." That is…sort of true. I wish I would have min-maxed a little more. Not all the way, but mostly with my wizard. You'll see…

My party leader (there isn't a hard leader, but I treated her as it) was Rurani, a half-elf totemic druid. I still don't know what a totemic druid is, because I never got her special moves to work. I would click the "Summon Spirit Animal" button and nothing happened. Ever. But she had a beefy charisma and a good wisdom, and it made her a good choice to talk to NPCs with. She was useless in the early game, getting slaughtered with her spear in hand and having few useful spells. Eventually, when the fighting was primarily indoors she came to life. I beat the first 3 chapters by casting AOE spells with her and while picking off enemies with my ranged. She'd cast Entangle (to stop their movement), Spike Growth (to deal 1d4 damage each turn), and Cloudburst (to add more damage). Later I also took Spike Stones, which is just a beefier Spike Growth and used them together. This (with reloads for some of the unfortunate enemy saves) get me through a lot of those early chapters. She could also cast Call Woodland Beings to summon a nymph, which can itself cast Mental Domination, which came in handy, especially on Yxomenei (my first real roadblock, more on that later). Eventually I gave her Conjure Animals, which summons 2 extremely tank-y polar bears. That helped a lot. She got Sol's Searing Orb towards the end of the game, which was able to just melt a lot of single targets. Her squishiness never left, though, and her dying was a constant thorn in my side. I should have given her a sling, and while I did, I had no bullets on hand and was too far from a shop to care. It was too little too late. Cast Armor of Faith and pray!

Next is Morgorim, my dwarven defender fighter. He held a big shield and one axe or another for 90% of the game. He did a good job of being unkillable, but unfortunately enemies so often targeted my squishier melee units. I was certainly playing wrong, and instead of plowing my entire party into a pack of enemies I should have sent him in and waited a bit. But I was impatient and didn't care much. I used Defensive Stance maybe…5 times? I forgot about it for most of the game. I love dwarves, they're my favorite generic fantasy race.

Bitzie was my cleric. As a gnome she wasn't the hardiest choice, and I think I forgot that in D&D clerics aren't the back-row healbots that they've become in games. They have a mace and a shield, and can cave in a skeleton's skull with the power of JESUS. Or whoever. Mine was a priest of Lathander, which I forgot about until right now when I checked by game. I never once used Boon of Lathander, which is why I picked her. Just forgot. I also forgot she had Hold Undead until now, which I am KICKING MYSELF for. This game has a crapload of undead. She was OK. She was my emergency healer for a while, she didn't do much damage. She came in handy in Trials of the Luremaster, where Turn Undead saved me from having to reload a previous save. I'll explain later. Her buffs were useful, but she was the most regularly pulverized member. She refused to stop dying. Girl loved to die. She also has Raise Dead, which was crazy useful, especially on harder fights. I learned the hard way that in old D&D, elves can't be brought back that way, so I had a hard rule to reload if my thief, Mizmadra, died. Towards the end of the game I gave her some good gear and she died slightly less often. I did forget to buy her best mace in Heart of Winter, because I didn't realize that you can't go back to those shops after you beat the expansion. Bummer!

Gaerlin was my human ranger, with the archer specialization. He killed the most enemies of anyone in my party (900-something, second highest was Morgorim at 600-something). What a beast. Towards the end of the game (and especially in Heart of Winter where you CAN'T BUY ARROWS FOR A BIG PART OF IT) I was running out of arrows and had to give him 2 swords and have him swing away. He was a competent swordsman, but a magnificent archer. He was great. Easy to manage, total powerhouse.

Mizmadra is named after Myzmadra from the Warhammer 40k Horus Heresy books, an infiltrator for the Alpha Legion. (Only listened to audiobooks, so I didn't know how to spell until right now when I looked it up). She's the only one named after something else. All other characters are my own names (though I probably accidentally stole 1 or 2 from places I can't remember). She was my thief, and carried a bow for most of the game until, like Gaerlin, she ran out of arrows at bad times. She was OK, and the only party member that I "min-maxed". I did this because I know that traps SUCK in these games. And opening locked doors is important. So I looked up what made a good thief and made that. She's unremarkable, as she was just a shortbow arrow-slinger until I needed her to find traps. A couple times I used her to scout areas out in stealth, but rarely. This game really is more of a "plow ahead" type thing.

Finally, we come to Rhysark. My human wizard. A conjurer, and the biggest mistake for the first half of the game, and my best friend for the second half. I like summoning allies. It's my preferred method of spellcasting in any game. Summon some lackeys, have them get pounded while I, like a coward, sling damage from afar. The problem is that A) wizards only learn spells by finding scrolls in the wild (and are given a couple at the beginning of the game), and B) being a conjurer meant that he couldn't learn spells of the Evocation school. Evocation is the school that Fireball is in. Fireball is a real powerhouse, and it hurt not having that or any of the other damage-dealing spells in Evocation. He was full-blown useless for a while. He had so little spell-related damage output, I just gave him darts and he plinked away with those. Really, those darts were mostly to just stop him from running into melee range and getting brained. Eventually, he got a sling and some nice +2 bullets. I gave him Find Familiar in the beginning, and summoned a stupid bunny rabbit. When that stupid bunny rabbit dies, Rhysark loses Constitution points permanently. OK so don't let the stupid bunny rabbit die. Harder than it looks. That thing is a melee fighter that loves to rush headlong in and get curb stomped by an enemy. I began leaving it at the entrance to every room and then, before moving on, having it hop its worthless ass along to meet us. Then I got fed up and googled it and turns out that you can talk to the stupid bunny rabbit and cram the stupid bunny rabbit into your backpack, where it stayed for the rest of the game. I did not feed it. I never took it out again. Rhysark has, more than likely, a stupid, dead bunny rabbit in his backpack. He got the Animate Dead spell at some point, which did some heavy lifting. Those things were great at tanking damage and spells. The AI is too dumb to know that charm spells won't work on them, and they'll blow all those on a heartless skeleton who can't be charmed. I would cast my suite of AOEs with Rurani, and then cast Animate Dead into the middle of that. Sure, they might get stuck in the Entangle, and would take damage every turn from the Spike Growth, but they'd do some good damage. Sometimes those Animate Dead buddies are skeleton archers, so the entangle didn't matter. Eventually, he learned Conjure Fire Elemental, and finally Summon Fiend. Those Fire Elementals really carried the party through Heart of Winter (along with Rurani's polar bears). Summon Fiend is a dangerous spell to use, but it's what I used to kill Pomab. Things were getting desperate, and I summoned it, and it killed one of the final bosses for me. Thankfully, the battle just ends when he dies, so the enemy had no chance to turn on me and attack. He also got Disintegrate at the end there, which I used to trivialize some encounters spectacularly (with some…uh…strategic saving and reloading). Rhysark was, I believe, the typical AD&D wizard experience. Useless for a long time, and then invaluable.

A quick rundown of my playthrough, now that you know my party. All progressed fine, until Yxunomei. She's the first major boss (I think?), and is a roadblock for many. I beat my head against her, trying every trick I could muster and the closest I got was a double-KO. Eventually, I just decided to rest, get into random encounters, and level up that way. It felt cheesy, but thankfully it was the only time I did that (later in the game, monsters don't give enough XP to make this super viable anyway). I got 1 more level on a few of my characters and tried again. It made a world of a difference. Rurani's summoned nymph cast Mental Domination on her casters, my Animate Dead kept the main room busy while I mopped up outside, and the unpronounceable Yxunomei went down easy.

The next major hiccup - and this was a major one - was that I decided to do the expansion, Heart of Winter, at the end of chapter 3. The game won't let you go in unless you're a certain level, and I guess I was just on the edge of that. I stepped in and was getting trounced by enemies. Thankfully, my summoned allies helped a lot, and I leaned on buffing before every battle. Eventually, I gathered enough end-game gear and some levels and was doing better.

Until I entered Trials of the Luremaster too early as well.

See, inside of Heart of Winter is another, smaller expansion called Trials of the Luremaster. This was a free mini expansion that was released after Heart of Winter. This was meant to be end-game content. I had no idea it existed. It looks like just any other quest. The problem is that it teleports you to a hostile area and the only way out is through. I choked through it, gritting my teeth and pulling out all the stops for every single battle. There comes a time where a ton of spectral guards rush you and there doesn't seem to be much you can do. They have a ton of HP and deal a ton of damage. I was hard stuck. You need to kill them, but they are not hostile until attacked. Turns out, that Bitzie's Turn Undead can either turn them (they flee for a while and let you beat on them), or OUTRIGHT EXPLODE THEM. Not kidding, they literally explode. It doesn't aggro them, either. So I saved, had her Turn Undead and just walk around detonating the guards while we stayed safe. There are a couple parts where aggroing a group is unavoidable, but I had Bitzlei kite them around until they exploded. It was cheesy and fun. Cathartic after dying so many times to them. After all that, I got to the final level of the dungeon where you have to enter a series of caves and battle nasty enemies. The problem, here, is that the enemies attack instantly. There is no time to summon allies. And summons do not follow you from zone to zone. You have to re-summon them each time you cross a screen threshold. After much trying, I had to put the game on easy difficulty, beat the rooms, and then put back to core rules. Even with that, one of the rooms (the harpy cave, if you know) was so hard that I STILL had to cheese it on easy. I buffed up, popped in, killed one, left the room. Save. Rebuff. Enter. Kill one more. Over and over, until there were a manageable number of them. Remember, this was supposed to be end game stuff. I ruined the experience for myself by accidentally coming in too early. I was able to beat the boss without being on easy, though. That felt good. Insane that just a couple of stupid caves with "normal" enemies are harder than ANY FIGHT IN THE ENTIRE GAME.

After Trials of the Luremaster, I mopped up Heart of Winter without much trouble. The final boss of that needed some reloads, but nothing crazy. The tried and true "haste and machine gun down before the cast something nasty" worked well. After Heart of Winter, I went back to the normal campaign. I was overlevelled and overgeared at this point, but less so than I expected. I didn't have trouble with anything, until the final, FINAL boss (there are a couple encounters that feel like final bosses, but aren't). That guy really kicked my ass. I don't like my characters dying, and generally just reload if anyone dies. But this time I had a hunch that after the boss went down, none of this mattered. So I threw everything I had at him. Summoned Fiends and all. 4 party members died (oddly enough, not Bitzie??? HOW???), but we took him down and the credits rolled.

Overall it was a fun trip. It would have been better if I entered Heart of Winter (and Trials of the Luremaster) at an appropriate level. Though getting overgeared too early like that has its perks. It feels fun to feel like you're sequence breaking, and "getting one over" on the game.

I can't tell you if Icewind Dale is for you. Each Infinity Engine game takes a while for me to get into. This is the third time I've tried to play this game. The first 2 times I make a party, play for 10 minutes and dump it. This happens with EVERY SINGLE ONE for me. Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, and Icewind Dale. So if it doesn't take at first, put it down and try again later. But if you stick with it, it is rewarding and fun. I absolutely fell into that "one more room…ok NOW one more room…" trap when I should have been going to bed. It's a sign that I actually like a game.