Back in July, we brought you our hands-on impressions on the
Dungeon Siege II beta, and now we are back to give you our
thoughts on the full game. The beta that many were able to
test only offered a few hours worth of gameplay, and
abruptly ended after finishing the last quest included in
that version. We understand that many of the Dungeon Siege
fans have already purchased a copy of the game or are
planning on buying it in the near future. For those of you
that are still sitting on the fence about whether you should
purchase the game or not, hopefully this review will help
you make that decision.
A common complaint about the original Dungeon Siege was that
it didn't have a very good plot. It appears that Gas
Powered Games heard those complaints, and obvious
improvements have been made in DS II. You start the game as
a mercenary that was captured for a merciless warrior named
Valdis, who now has an ancient sword that possesses some
great evil. After the tutorial and first battle of the
game, you'll wake up in a dryad prison, with a "ring of
submission" on your neck (this is the part of the game that
beta players will remember). Your new goal throughout the
game is to stop Valdis from finding some artifacts that will
unlock the evil in his sword.
There are four different combat types you will get to choose
from: melee, ranged, nature magic and combat magic.
Something that RPG fans will enjoy is that starting as a
melee character doesn't mean that a player cannot dabble
with a combination of the other combat types. It is possible
to level up as a melee fighter and then decide to equip a
bow and begin dabbling with ranged attacks. This makes
gameplay a lot more flexible and enjoyable, because it is
possible to have a character that is strong with several
different combat types.
Players will be able to choose from four different playable
races in Dungeon Siege II: Dryads, Elves, Half-Giants and
Humans. Dryads make excellent archers and have high
dexterity. The Elves are the most intelligent race, which
makes them the best suited to cast spells. Half-Giants are
physically stronger so they make melee fighters, but don't
have high intelligence or dexterity. Humans are equally
balanced in all traits and can be used for any combat
discipline.
A major improvement is the new skill tree system that has
been implemented in Dungeon Siege II. Each time one of your
characters levels up, you gain a point that can be put
towards any specialty you decide to invest the most points
in. We recommend that you try to avoid spreading out the
points in more than one or two categories, because that
weakens the character in the long run.
Each combat type has a specific skill tree that allows
players to specialize in a certain type of attack. A lot of
the different skills on the skill tree are passive. For
example, melee fighters can put skill points into critical
strike, which will increase the likelihood to inflict a
critical strike on an opponent. Some spells may require a
player to meet certain levels first, and also require
prerequisites.
Gamers will start out by watching a movie and going through
a short introduction that covers how to attack with melee
weapons, use spells, gain experience and other basic game
essentials. What is nice about Dungeon Siege is that it
unlike many other RPGs, the controls are fairly easy to
master. Once gamers venture into the world and slay a few
enemies and complete the first quest is when people that
played the beta will recognize the game.
Pack mules weren't the most effective party members,
especially since they were not able to attack enemies.
Since the pets do take up a slot that could have gone to a
regular party member, it is important that they actually do
something useful. Luckily, players will now be able to add
pets that do damage and can attack enemies and defend fellow
party members. Players will be able to feed any old or
unwanted items (weapons and armor) to the pet to make it
stronger. The pets will go through several stages: baby,
infant, juvenile, adolescent, adult and mature, getting a
new attack or special ability each time they level up, so it
is important to make sure that you take care of the pet.
You will be able to find pet shops in every town.
Like we mentioned in the DSII preview, enemy AI has been
improved considerably yet it’s still not tough enough (more
on that later). Not only are some groups of monsters
organized, so they attack together and in formation, the
monsters often times will have ambushes ready for
unsuspecting players. This sometimes forced me to use
hit-and-run tactics to easily eliminate any monsters in the
general vicinity. There are quite a few new monsters that
you will ultimately run into while venturing around the
world. Even from the beginning of the game you may run into
packs of monsters that are several levels higher.
As for graphics, one of the first things I noticed when I
played the beta was that it still looked fairly similar to
the original Dungeon Siege, which isn't necessarily a bad
thing, but it would have been nice of GPG and Microsoft
worked together and put Dungeon Siege II on the same level
of graphics as other current games.
The sound in the game is decent, and there is a large amount
of voice acting. Almost all of the NPCs that you interact
with will have a voice conversation with you. Although it
was rare, there were still several parts throughout the game
where I found the voice acting was a bit too silly or too
amateurish.
