Dragon Age Poll: RPG-ness

[TinCow]

IDW2 is the only one out of the entire Infinity Engine catalogue I haven't played. When it came out I didn't bother because I wasn't that enamoured with IWD1 and didn't fancy more. Earlier in the year I picked up the DVD compilation which has both games plus both expansions on it; I thought I might give them another go once I'd finished my planned Baldur's Gate series replay.

IWD2 is just like IWD1... no roleplaying, just lots of killing and looting. If you didn't like that about IWD1, then you probably won't like it about IWD2. They should be thought of as tactical combat games, not RPGs.

I am in complete agreement with you on character creation. IWD2 used a hybrid system... it used a lot of 3E rules, but it was still in the old IE engine which made implementing the entire rule set difficult. In particular, they had difficulty adding in the feats system and had to do it with a run-around version that utilized a heavily modified version of the weapon-specialization mechanism. The end result is a character system that is far better than the other IE games, but not as good as the NWN games. It's still nice to be able to play a pure mage that uses a long-sword in an IE game though.

I haven't played anything with 4E rules, but from what I've heard about them they are another huge leap forward. Hopefully the next D&D licensed game that comes out will utilize them.