Review LoadedINC rates IWD2

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Icewind Dale 2

<A href="http://www.loadedinc.com/">LoadedINC</a> has also taken the time to <a href="http://www.loadedinc.com/review.php?temp_view=review.php&game=IcewindDaleII&id=103">review</a> the recently released <A href="http://icewind2.blackisle.com">IWD2</a>. This review gives it an <b>8/10</b> and calls it a <i>solid dungeon romp</i>. Here's the teaser:
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<blockquote>I found myself using this feature a lot as I actually found ID II quite difficult at times. The box boasts, "Auto-balancing game play balances the conflict to match your skill level". I had a hard time appreciating this feature. I found myself loading the game several times to get past a certain spot as often as I was able to move at a consistent pace through the rest of the levels. I understand needing to fight a "boss" a couple times as you need to figure out their particular strengths or weaknesses but in my opinion just encountering a group of "normal" monsters on a given level shouldn’t create as many speed bumps as I encountered.
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Another problem was the path finding ability of the PC’s. Often after clicking somewhere to the north three characters would turn around and walk south. Even with the path finding nodes set to the maximum my party of adventurers rarely got it right.</blockquote>
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Spotted this over at <a href="http://www.ve3d.com">VE</a> yesterday, but they were playing with their database.

 

[Rosh]

Another problem was the path finding ability of the PC’s. Often after clicking somewhere to the north three characters would turn around and walk south. Even with the path finding nodes set to the maximum my party of adventurers rarely got it right.

Pathfinding? We don' need no stinkin' pathfinding!

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

You know, the pathfinding thing really amazes me. After all these years, and given the importance of pathfinding in real time for tactics, you'd think it would have been important enough for them to actually do it decently in the later Infinity Engine games.

 

[VasikkA]

Weirdly enough, the pathfinding seems to have gotten worse in IE games over the years. Or it's just me.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Exitium said that IWD2 used the pathfinding from the original Baldur's Gate because the pathfinding in the later games wouldn't work well with what BIS wanted to do with IWD2. I've seen reviews that mentioned the pathfinding in IWD2 was worse than the more recently IE games, so that may be the case.

I still think it's funny the crappy pathfinding is one of the big reasons they couldn't add AoOs, which is the big addition to 3E's tactical combat. Yup, the pathfinding is so bad, you can't impliment combat tactical rules based on movement and placement of people - in a game that's largely tactical combat.

Things like that just don't make sense to me.