izigame.me

This DLC can be described as: "We have so much ideas and things to squeeze into this DLC but (PANIC) Baldur's Gate 3 is about to be launched, so we must hurry up and finish this Palace of Ice faster than light, so we can milk some money". Palace of Ice is bugged, with desync if played online, uninspired, linear, way too much easy, recycled bosses and assets from the original Crown of the Magister, boring unskippable dialogues where you are given the choice to select what to say but it doesn't matter because, in the end, you have to select all the options and listen to every blah blah blah.
Everything is rushed:
- most cut-scenes are taken from above camera like games made in 2000/2005 era;
- your actions don't change the story even if you are asked to make an important choice;
- random encounters are always in the same scenarios with almost always the same monsters;
- no new monsters added but recycled ones with different colors;
- crafting useless, you can find better weapons, armor and so on by looting or buying them at the vendor (you receive so much gold that you can buy the entire kingdom);
- your allignment is useless, it doesn't even change the dialogues;
- your background is useless too as it adds nothing to the story;
- when you'll be at 30% of the story you'll have already capped your characters to 16 and will be smashing everyone you encounter;
- quest bugged and auto-solving: spoiler alert in a quest you'll have to guess who is the masked sor'akkat between 5 soldiers after having spoked with them. You go into quest log and see 5 times the same name so pratically the game tells you the answer;
- speaking of answer, every dialogue ends with "stay in the light", booooooriiiiiing;
- you can import your party from the original CotM but without your stash but don't worry you'll be overpowered even if unarmed;
- no matter what you choose as draconic descendance you'll always get fire resistance (bug);
- your tactics (and some classes) are f****ed up by cut-scenes so bye bye hidden thieves, advantages, surprise. Add to this, monsters that appears out of nowhere and again, bye bye tactics
- quests are go find this or kill that, copy paste especially the kill part. Boring, linear, forced like why should I go exploring the kingdom for free, fighting monster for you, when you have all the problems. ah and the fantastic scene where they say "go kill this boss, take this melee weapon" (I'm a sorcerer), "this will help you destroy him" only to discover that he have the flying ability and you can throw your useless weapon into the void.
I loved Crown of the Magister; played with other friends, it has been a good experience (even with desync issues). Palace of Ice introduces new classes that you cannot fully play with the original because it lacks recipes to craft something better for the new classes and other things. But this is nothing compared to the lack of everything a good game or dlc should have.
Buy Palace of Ice only if discounted by 75% or more. Developers should have put more love and polish their creature.