What is IWD like?

[Sularius]

What is Ice Wind dale like? is it worth buying? I've played all the other ones except Dale.

[Lord Nyax]

Which other ones have you player. I recently began playing as well. IWD2 is very much like Baldur's Gate and BG2, with a few key differences. First of all, there is a very free sytle of gaming. Your characters may start in a new class at any time they level up. However, have too many classes or have them at highly different levels can be counterproductive.
There are not many good spells to be found on scrolls, so I would choose a sorcerer in place of a wizard, because you can choose your own spells and the charisma makes the sorcerer an effective speaker-diplomat type character. You will also need many fighters (at least two, maybe three) or people with lots of health (clerics can function as a meat shield so long as they have a high concentration skill).
Rouges are not very useful. The traps in IWD2 are quite laughable, usually doing no more than 10-20 damage, even at higher levels. Also, the concentration skill that I mentioned earlier; it is a skill that allows the spell casters in your party to have a chance to continue casting a spell even after being hit or interupted in any other way.
I sure hope that this has helped. Just start a party with some of the basic characters and try to play through the pro-log. Once you get the feel for the game, then ask around for help on how to make effective multi-classed characters. You may enjoy the game greatly if you play.

[Lord Nyax]

On the first line in the above post, player is supposed to be played. Also, IWD2 is based on much the same idea as BG2, so if you like any game that can be compared to BG2, you will probably like IWD2.

[Brynn]

I removed these few posts from the Wand of Undead thread.

IWD is a great game indeed, if you like RPGs, you'll like this one, too. However, if you've already played BG don't expect the same experience, since there are no interactvie NPCs here. Apart from that, it's almost as entertaining as BG. I love the sorroundings in IWD, it has really nice screens and exciting quests - you have to use your wits sometimes . Definitely worth a try!

[winter sorrow]

In some ways IWD2 is better than BG2, depending on your perspective.

In BG2 a high level mage was untouchable except by other magi (or a inquisitor wielding holy avenger perhaps). What BG2 has are tons of protection spells, contingencies, illusion spells and spell triggers for the mage. You can spend lots of time ripping down defences in BG2. What this means is that (a) battles are quicker (b) melee characters have a chance as the mage is nowhere near as invincible in IWD2. In my mind, that's a good thing. You're more likely to play other classes that way and enojoy yourself.

The downsides are various. e.g. Rogues and rangers are not as effective to play with. If you loved these, too bad. Racial enemy is made more versatile but is not great for most of the game. There are no traps to set if you liked doing that, and there aren't any critical traps to disarm. Bards also have some offensive muscle taken away (though this is offset by other things). I miss a lot of the kits in BG2.