Icewind Dale (series) - Icewind Dale

The gameplay of Icewind Dale is very similar to that of Baldur's Gate. As with Baldur's Gate, the game is based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition ruleset, and the combat system is a quasi-real-time adaptation of the normally turn-based Dungeons & Dragons combat system used. (Dice rolling and the like are all done automatically, without requiring the player's participation, although it is possible to pause the game at any time to issue orders to the party.)

One of the most noticeable differences compared to Baldur's Gate is the much larger bestiary: ettins, orcs, goblins, and orogs, for example, are all major foes in this game, whereas they were not even present in the original Baldur's Gate. Some other differences include: the heavily raised experience level-cap; much bigger battles, sometimes involving 20 or more foes at once; and far larger spell selection - used by or against the player's party 6th level spells and above make frequent appearances throughout the game.

Also unlike Baldur's Gate, the game makes use of a semi-random item generation system. In Baldur's Gate most items were completely pre-placed - meaning that the same items were in the same places every time the game was played. In Icewind Dale, however, most quest-earned items are randomly picked out of a handful of pre-generated ones, and items taken from the corpses of foes are similar in that regard, although slightly more random.

Icewind Dale was received by mostly positive reviews. Most critics cited the game's musical score and fast pacing as high-points, although others faulted the game for its time-consuming character creation and numerous bugs.