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Mod author: Flysoup (+ pro5, Badgert, Erebusant, Roberciiik, TotoR)

Version used for review: 3.0

Drizzt is on his way back to Icewind Dale from an errand in the Sword Coast. What he doesn’t know is that dark times are upon Dale and his companions will lead him and the protagonist to an adventure of epic proportions.

In the normal version of the mod, you meet Drizzt at the original area fighting some gnolls. In the same area, you will encounter Regis muttering something about a dark ranger. After joining Drizzt head back to Regis and the Drizzt Saga begins.

Drizzt Do’Urden is a classic character that I’ve never held that much love for. Beyond reading the first three books as a child (from which I have since forgotten 100% of the content!) my main exposure to him has been through killing him for his swords in the Baldur’s Gate games. Naturally. Introducing him and his cohort of adventurers as companions in the games was always going to end up happening, and in 2006 players were given that opportunity with this mod, the Drizzt Saga.

Calling it a Saga is a bit of a misnomer. It’s not a particularly large mod by today’s standards and it sets out to accomplish a rather simple goal — create a hack and slash adventure with Icewind Dale and the friends and foes of Drizzt as a backdrop. In that regard, it is largely a success.

Drizzt and his companions will fill out your entire party and they are all around Level 15 when you meet them. To accommodate this, the mod offers you the opportunity to increase the level cap to a much higher point, and you’ll need it in order to get through this adventure.

When you first meet Drizzt after killing the gnolls, he immediately joins your party, unless you select the “delayed introduction” component, which has him approach you after the party has cleared Durlag’s Tower. Unless you are specifically playing the game to experience Drizzt Saga like I was, I would recommend using this — it creates a much more natural game experience, in my opinion, because right after having Drizzt join, Elminster shows up to teleport you to the Nine Hells in order to rescue Wolfgar.

It’s not really much of a rescue. He’s in the first room you meet him in, and he joins the party as a high-level Barbarian (who actually majorly outshines Drizzt in combat). About ten feet to your right in the next room, you’ll encounter Belhifet, who is just chilling there. Killing him isn’t given much weight, and once you do you can simply move right on.

Despite this being the Hells, where devils rule, they are consistently being referred to as demons. This is, in the grand scheme of things, entirely irrelevant, but given that I’ve spent the last year running a Descent into Avernus campaign, the distinction is rather important to me personally.

You’ll escape the Hells sooner rather than later and be transported to Icewind Dale, where the true meat of the adventure lies. There are many tough enemies to face, and the encounter design isn’t too bad. There are some interesting ideas here that make quite a few of the battles unique and engaging, which is something I appreciated, especially since there is exceedingly little story or dialogue to keep you hooked.

After several maps worth of enemies, you’ll finally recruit Catti-brie, the last member of the troupe that joins you, then face off against Jarlaxle and Artemis Entreri. It’s pure fan-service, but the focus is on the combat rather than lingering too heavily on the melodrama of Drizzt meeting his nemesis. It is a rather difficult fight, and one I enjoyed a fair bit. If you’re an evil character, you get the opportunity to recruit the two instead.

There is also a threadbare plot about a local tribe’s child being stolen, which is a simple matter of parading through the Dale and killing everything in your way until you find the baby.

Once you deliver the child back to its home, the main quest is over, but there is an additional area where a hooded man teleports you to the Mountain of the Dead, or some such, where you’ll fight through more enemies, enter a dungeon, fight through a hoard of vampires, and then meet the hooded man again.

That hooded man is actually The Hooded Man, i.e. Irenicus. It was actually a fairly neat reveal for me, because the plot didn’t exactly have me engaged enough to pay attention to it that much. There are a few reused lines from David Warner, and I think they’re inserted pretty well, even if you can tell exactly where they come from.

Why is Irenicus there and trying to kill you? Who knows! I certainly don’t, and I don’t think he himself does either. It’s just dumb fun.

There is also a wealth of powerful items you can obtain and upgrade, which seems to be one of the biggest focuses of the mod. A majority of these items are scattered loosely, with no real rhyme or reason to where they are, except for those dropped by bosses. They, of course, seriously unbalance the rest of the game, but they’re fun for what they are.

As far as I could tell, every single new area in Drizzt Saga is completely new, with reused assets stitched together to create unique maps. They’re well-constructed and look good, though on the Enhanced Edition engine they can oftentimes appear too small or wonky. The new areas go a long way to make this mod a more engaging experience.

Outside of their introductions, Drizzt and co. have practically zero dialogue, which I quickly became thankful for, given that the dialogue that IS present in the mod is… well, it was clearly an afterthought most of the time. The player is almost exclusively given single dialogue options to choose from which serve as “continue the plot” buttons and all the dialogue is written with an overwhelming lack of commas.

All in all, Drizzt Saga gives the player a lot to chew on mechanically and the implementation of the iconic characters seems to be more for the cool factor of having them in your party and controlling them against hordes of enemies, which I can respect, since the premise of the mod doesn’t really make that much sense within the story structure of the games.

If you are a Drizzt fan, there’s a good chance that this mod will simply disappoint you, but if all you’re looking for is a hack-and-slay adventure featuring powerful protagonists, then I would actually recommend this mod — especially if you’re looking to play it on non-Enhanced Edition software, since I believe that is where the mod would shine the brightest in terms of pure vibe. It’s quintessential early 2000s modding, and for that, I’m a fan.

Thanks for reading.