Author: Darwin Yuen
Editor: Howard Ha
Publish Date: Monday, March 26th, 2001
Originally Published on Neoseeker (http://www.neoseeker.com)
Article Link: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Games/Reviews/icewindhow/
Copyright Neo Era Media, Inc. - please do not redistribute or use for commercial purposes.
Brought to you by the good folks at Black Isle Studios, Heart of Winter is the expansion to their successful AD&D based RPG Icewind Dale. Heart of Winter picks up almost immediately from where the original ends. Even with the defeat of Belhifet there is no rest for your hardy band of adventurers. A new threat to the Ten-Towns emerges when the barbarian hordes of the north become united under the banner of a mysterious, charismatic leader who has risen from the dead. Investigating this new threat, your party finds itself in Lonelywood, the youngest of the Ten-Towns and also the northernmost settlement in all of Faerun. From here you will venture forth deeper into the frozen north…
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And so begins Heart of Winter, promising great adventure and challenges for those who hunger for more after Icewind Dale. Black Isle Studios has included a whole slew of new things to play with in this expansion. In addition to more areas to explore, more monsters to fight, and new weapons, items, and spells to use, Black Isle has updated the Icewind Dale engine by incorporating elements from Baldur’s Gate II. Not only is it now possible to play IWD and HoW in 800x600 windowed mode as well as full screen, but BGII’s drop away menus were also incorporated into HoW. There are also new character portraits and sounds as well as a new experience point cap for all character classes, allowing them to reach 30th level. A new gameplay mode called “Heart of Fury” mode that allows for harder monsters and more XP to be gained was also included. Finally there is also improved 3D acceleration support in the form of OpenGL. For the most part however, HoW is more or less fundamentally the same in gameplay as with the original IWD.
Players control a party of 6 customizable characters, either imported straight from IWD or taken from a batch of pre-generated characters that are of appropriate level for HoW. Note that although it is possible to use level 1 characters in this expansion, it is highly recommended that you either import characters that are level 9 or above to play. If you have any doubts as to the minimum level requirement, the first encounter or two should convince you otherwise. Yours truly had unfortunately deleted his original IWD characters a couple of days before they announced this expansion (d’oh!), but thankfully the pre-generated characters were more than adequate as they were already seasoned adventurers at level 11 or above.
Moving about in HoW is achieved in the same way as in IWD: by clicking on the location of where you want your characters to go. Again, like in IWD, your mouse cursor changes depending on the context of the area your mouse is over. Memorizing spells, and manipulating your inventory is also pretty much the same. Finally, moving from area to area is achieved via a large painting-like map with small titled pictures that indicate the destination.
Speaking of “paintings”, the folks at Black Isle have again done a superlative job in the graphics department. The area maps are just absolutely gorgeous and were very appropriately done. Assuming that most of you have played Icewind Dale already (hence the reason why you’re looking at this review of the expansion), the sound and voice acting for this game is on par with Icewind Dale which is a good thing due to its excellence. In other words, HoW definitely maintains the graphical and aural standards of IWD and other Black Isle Studios games.
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Now for the bad news. I have to say that the statement on the box about “five huge new areas that add directly into the original IWD” is somewhat misleading. I was under the impression that those were all areas for our characters to roam around and cause havoc in. Unfortunately two of those areas were basically small towns to visit (being Lonelywood and a barbarian camp to the east). While it is true some fighting does occur in the barbarian camp, it can hardly be called “huge.” The other areas, which I won’t reveal in order to prevent spoiling the game for you, consist of one medium sized area (about two maps) and two “larger” areas to explore (which are a series of smaller linked maps) which were strung together by a story that was at least consistent with the Icewind Dale universe. However, those of you who are looking for more varieties of monsters to kill would be sorely disappointed. I noticed that there were only a few new monsters to encounter, none of them larger than an Ice Golem Sentry. These monsters rush at you in large packs which aren’t really that difficult to kill if you have a mage that can cast Deathfog and Cloudkill. The monsters aren’t very intelligent and head straight for your party and run right through your area of effect spells, sometimes getting killed even before your melee characters get a chance to bloody their weapons. Admittedly however, this is under the “normal” level of difficulty. I assume that the Heart of Fury mode would make the monsters have more HP and this give your melee characters a run for their money due to increased stats. Still, the bottom line is that monsters are somewhat easy to kill, and that there is not really that many of them as most packs are all pre-generated encounters (except for random encounters while you are resting your party). Coupled with the aforementioned lack of areas to roam around in, you have a recipe for a really short expansion. In fact, it is conceivable to finish this game in a couple of evening sittings due to the brevity of this campaign. Multiplayer-wise, it was difficult to get a game going because there weren’t many games listed on Gamespy Arcade to join, and because of server/client issues (I kept getting a message regarding the different frame rates between the server and client).
All in all, if you are an absolute and only absolute diehard Icewind Dale fan and want to hack and slash some more as well as take advantage of the new XP cap (as well as the “Heart of Fury” mode) then by all means get this expansion. However, for the rest of the gamers out there who are looking for something new, you would best be advised to look elsewhere. This expansion does offer some new bells and whistles but combined with the lack of real areas to explore and new monsters to fight it is simply not worth the money despite its high production values.
Final Rating:
For hardcore IWD fans: 72%
All others: 50%
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