HOW...short it is...

Thornhill · #1 (**permalink**) 04-15-2001, 05:38 PM

I have to say first off how pleased I am with Interplay and Associates for their fine contributions to a well rounded game, BG1+2 as well as IWD + HOW are the best RPGs out there in my opinion, and I never dreamed anygame could follow d&d rules so closely. Now that I have padded things up-my complaint is HOW was too darned short, I completed the game with my original party from IWD with no trouble within a week. A week...I really liked the game play, the first parts of the game were very difficult with my group, but after 2 days of playing the difficulty dropped big time. When the game ended I was surprised it was already over. Did anyone else feel this way?

ps- I also have to say that the gameplay itself is improving drastically, HOW's ending is not as abrupt as any of the previous games- allowing you to raise your dead after the final battle(if you need to). It was small things like that that made the game worth getting, spell graphics are much better too.

Fatale · #2 (**permalink**) 04-17-2001, 10:53 PM

You got that right

My IWD party (the 4 survivors from the Belhifet battle) finished the game in 5 days (mostly because they were all multiclassed fighters), and I was like: that's it??

But if you played the game from the start of IWD then pop off into HoW when you reach Kuldahar, it makes IWD real nice to play, cos your characters would be that much stronger after defeating Icasaracht and that would make the tedious hacking in the Vale of Shadows that much easier.

Maybe that was what they meant by "expansion", huh?

Thornhill · #3 (**permalink**) 04-19-2001, 02:49 PM

Definately, I have found this with a few other games...just made the mistake of buying Rainbow6 Covert Operations, for the price of a full game I got three lousy missions, the main game had over 12. Well rather have them fun and short than long and boring!

fable · #4 (**permalink**) 04-19-2001, 03:11 PM

On the other hand, the expansion pack of Majesty (which is a great RPG/sim/strategy hybrid) is just out, and that includes plenty of new scenarios, monsters, spells, buildings, etc.

Thornhill · #5 (**permalink**) 04-19-2001, 08:04 PM

Majesty? was the original any good? I have never heard of it...

Hex92 · #6 (**permalink**) 04-26-2001, 07:09 PM

I just finished the game and I can't beleive I shelled out $30 for that amount of gameplay. I imported my party from IWD and finished the game in THREE sessions!!!

What a waste of $$. I figured that after I killed the dragon that I would go back up to the surface and somehow the game would continue. Then that closing sequence came up.

TOSC added much more gameplay than this to BG. I am going to get on ebay and sell IWD and HOW so I can recoup my losses.

Hex92

Fatale · #7 (**permalink**) 04-26-2001, 11:57 PM

Hex, if you killed the dragon and destroyed the soul gem before killing her little green pests, you get to loot all the corpses and get plenty of good stuff to sell when you're returned to Kuldahar. It really ain't so bad ...

jlnewton@webzone.net · #8 (**permalink**) 06-04-2001, 11:41 AM

Some of the walkthroughs suggest setting the difficulty to HARD or even higher if you have higher level characters when you start HoW (the lowest you can use is level 9). So, if you're at level 15 and wanna do the HoW add-on, set it up to hard or insane or even Heart of Fury. You get 2 bonuses, a CHALLENGE (if you're bitching about it going to fast maybe you should up the difficulty) and you get more EXP (even when you're just getting exp for talking to someone and finishing a quest). So then you can have some buff characters to play IWD + HoW AGAIN in the Heart of Fury mode only

. I started IWD in normal difficulty, but upped it to 'hard' when I moved over to the HoW area. I started the HoW area at about level 13. I hadn't completed the IWD quests, just felt like taking on the HoW stuff before I took out the boss in IWD.