It’s actually become better over time. Even visually. The original max resolution gave such a limited view of each area that the game ended up looking terribly dull, even though a lot of the areas are pretty cool. The resolution patch fixed that. The game also had something of a bug problem, and that’s too has been fixed.
The game still has balance issues. It is very possible to make characters that end up God-like or utterly incapable of anything, so I would suggest giving the manual a good read.
Beyond that, it’s very much worth playing. I want to say that a fair number of quests in Arcanum ate open-ended, but in video game speak that usually means they have each a good, neutral & evil solution with unique rewards. And that’s not how Arcanum works. Instead, the quests are inter-connected, so how you go about doing stuff in the game has a significant impact on the stuff you get to do. This mostly applies to the side quests, so it’s very much like the original Fallout games. Only more so. Which also makes it weird the game isn’t all sorts of mega-famous.
Stupid question (again), but I’m curious whether or not the GoG downloads are pre-patched or are they the disc versions of the games?
They’re pre-patched and often tweaked further to make them workable on modern machines.
razarok
3025
Thanks for the link to the arcanum mods. I bought the game last week but only put around 30 minutes into it since I have no idea what kind of character “works”.
I read up on gamefaqs a bit and a melee/dodge/stun/backstab character seems to work well for a first playthrough?
I’m in the mood for some mindless hack 'n slash this weekend, so despite already owning IWD I just bought it. Don’t think I had one of the two expansions anyways, and this way I shouldn’t have to fiddle with getting it to work under Vista.
WarrenD
3027
Well I tried to resist buying IWD this weekend since I’ve been playing Nehrim non-stop, but after reading all this here and the forums at GOG and the fact that though I’ve played both Baldur’s Gates and loved them but never played either of the IWD’s for some bizarre reason, I snapped…downloading now.
One suggestion. I re-ran the widescreen mod and set the game back to 800x600. Anything approaching my 30"'s native res of 2560x1600 looked like crap, so if you have a large display you might not want to bother with this mod.
Pogo
3029
I didn’t know IWD was so praised among the action RPG crowd. I missed that one back in the day, but now my interest is most certainly piqued.
Rolling a whole party with 2E rules? Yes please!
Damn, I need to try it again then. Last time I tried playing it, I often found myself in those “dead” moments where you keep running around finding something to do. I knew what to do next for the main quest, but while exploring Tarrant I was having trouble finding side quests. I assume the game is much less directed than BG2 or even Oblivion and Fallout 3, where you are free but in each new area you are very easily exposed to new quests and almost always have a thread to follow. I’m not sure if this is a pacing problem of the game, or it just assumes you’ll dig deeper for stuff to do. But I don’t like it much when an RPG is too directed like in Mass Effect (where finding a new quest is mostly about going from one part of your ship to the other), so I think there’s a sweet spot.
But it does look very nice, especially with the resolution mods, like many of the iso era RPGs. My only nitpick with some of these RPGs, Arcanum, Fallout and Fallout 2, is that you sometimes spend to much time walking to and fro in areas you’ve already visited. I don’t know, in BG2 I felt I was doing more interesting things and walking less to do them. I guess the better and more common combat helped the pacing, in that while you were not speaking to NPCs or exploring you spent more time occupied in combat.
I think IWD is one of the best D & D games made, very underrated compared to the Baldur’s Gate games. To me Baldur’s Gate game is still more of a modern gen RPG at it’s core, even today, in terms of mechanics and story. But IWD felt more like a Gold Box game with a fresh engine.
Sure, it wasn’t exactly turn based but being centered around epic battles with no inter-party banter, lots of well designed dungeons, allowing you to build your own party, and having no major side quest distractions but a tight story following a linear path made it feel more like a classic dungeon crawler.
But that’s still not to say it’s Diablo. There’s a lot of strategy involved, lots of options for varied parties (which add to the replay factor) and for someone like me who has the original but never got the 2 expansions, this GOG release is pretty sweet!
Pretty coincidental too that I got out of the hospital from surgery 2 weeks ago and had an itching to reinstall IWD 2 for whenever I get better since I never finished it (decent game with some improvements to the original but overall not as entertaining or “tight”).
(Haven’t been well enough to play it too much but of course had to go and reinstall Planescape:Torment since getting GOGs release email which I will most likely play first :) ).
I honestly think BG2, IWD, Arcanum, Fallout, Planescape, Wizardry 8 and Divine Divinity are STILL more fun to replay than anything out in the last 5 years or so. I think KOTOR 2 was the last RPG I felt compelled to finish… of course, look at how the ending turned out. Still, great RPG up until then. Last “new” RPG I bought was Drakensang and while it wasn’t bad, it was a bit on the dull side so only finished about 25% of it.
So the last couple of years has be back to the Japanese-style console RPG.
Arguably it’s actually more directed than any of those games. The main quest is a larger portion of the game, and the side quests tend to have a significant impact on the world in general and on which side quests you’ll see later (and sometimes, how you can resolve them).
The side quest interdependencies, however, means the number of quest dispensers, relative to the number of side quests, is much lower than in the games you just compared it to. Moreover, Arcanum isn’t anywhere near as content-packed. Which also means you’re right about the endless-seeming slogs, though the worldmap can ease a lot of that.
Foxstab
3033
I don’t think I ever heard a bad word about IWD.
The screen resolution SUUUUUCKS! ;)
Foxstab
3035
I can still play games on 640x480 no problem. Cry babies, I say!
Would you like some cheese with your white whine? ;-)
I loved IWD… even more than BG. Maybe because I kept dying early on in BG, but either way… with mods, IWD kicks ridiculous amounts of ass.
Tom, I too kept dying early on in BG, so I never tried IWD having heard combat was tougher. Did you find IWD combat more forgiving?
Farscry
3039
Yeah, I tried the widescreen mod on IWD a few months ago and was really not happy with a couple aspects of the presentation in high-res (and my monitor’s res only goes up to 16801050). I ended up putting it back down to 800600 and was much happier playing it that way.
Quitch
3040
Frankly, both kick your ass early on. I’d say that the linear nature of IWD makes for a more predictable difficulty curve.
I’ve never managed to finish IWD, I always get bored but I did buy it back in the day simply for the music.
The nature of the D&D system means that early levels are hard. But IWD teaches you how to use your characters as you go along. Plus, it gives you TONS of loot. You’ll be making lots of fun decisions about equipment throughout the game. Some are linked to alignment too, IIRC. So keep that in mind. Some are linked to class, of course (like bard harps and such, just like BG2).
Just a great great game. If I hadn’t just replayed both recently (through that subscription service I used to have…what was it called? The one where you could play games through their website and then they changed it a couple of years ago and it sucked and then I guess went away…)
