We liked the original Dungeon Siege. It was a good, solid game to play through
and whilst it was undoubtedly an enjoyable experience it never quite seemed
to fulfil its vast promise. A bit of a guilty pleasure then if you will. Thankfully,
the industry we’re in is able to solve problems of this ilk with the
good ol’ sequel and as such we’ve been rather excited by Gas Powered
Games’ follow-up.
The original game was shallow and as recent games in the genre have proved to really hook a player in you’re going to need something with a little more depth. A decent story perhaps? And maybe some well-developed characters whilst you’re at it. And so it is that DSII has both of these. True, it won’t win any awards for it’s plot but it at least provides you with a modicum of support to the otherwise sedate experience of right clicking on everything that comes near you.
The game itself breaks you in gently with a good tutorial that teaches you the basics as you play through the introduction to the game. You find yourself slap bang in the middle of a huge battle, following orders from your superiors, and ridding the world of some annoying bug creatures as you go. However, it soon turns out that things aren’t as they seem and by the end of the intro you’re banged up in jail, wounded, whilst your best mate has been killed. Not good then.
Once set free you’re going to need to gain some experience and find out just what’s going on. Thankfully this is done by completing quests, talking to people and then having your skills upgraded depending on which weapon you’ve used in combat and how good you’ve become with it. It’s a nice method of gaining experience and means you don’t have to trudge around killing rats for hours on end.
You can choose whether to play the game alone or with a party, however, it makes you’re life a whole lot easier if you recruit a party with members of different classes and skills. You can recruit up to a total of six and you’re going to need a lot of cash as size initially is limited by the amount of dollar in your pocket.
As for your initial character, well you get a choice from four classes that include Human, Half Giant, Elf and Dryad. Naturally each class has its own positives and negatives and the class you choose now will also influence the characters available to you to recruit later on in the game. You can even go a little bit further and purchase a pet to carry around your inventory and essentially do the same job as the mule in the original game.
Whilst initial thoughts on the game are positive the party management does leave a little to be desired as it is rather simplistic with your options for formations in combat being rather limited. It’s easy to use, but it seem as though this has been gained whilst any tactical thinking has been lost. The only commands you have available to you are either Mirror or Rampage which simply put tells your members either to concentrate on a single opponent or to spread out and attack anything that moves.
However, this is a minor irk and there’s no denying that DSII certainly provides a mammoth world for you to adventure across. Granted, it does play rather similarly to the previous title, but then this is to be expected. And whilst combat does take up a large part of your time there are various puzzles which need to be solved and NPC’s who need to be spoken too. It’s probably also worth mentioning the size of the game as it’s going to take you months of playing time to complete. Unfortunately, with a game of this size whilst you always find yourself coming back for more, it does lose focus after a while and a lot of the game just seems to be padding rather than quality throughout.
There doesn’t seem to be a particular feature of element to the game that makes it stand out, head and shoulders above the crowd. It’s certainly a good, solid, workmanlike product, but you’re always left with the feeling that you’re doing stuff you’ve done a million times before in different games.
Matters aren’t helped by the rather disappointing graphics, which look tired and dated, and when there are so many other games full of graphical goodness there’s little excuse for having an engine this limited. In the game’s defence the interface is a dream and means you can get straight into the game without having to battle the control system beforehand. The camera can be rotated, zoomed and panned at will and combat, magic and your inventory are all easy to get to grips with.
And that is pretty much that. Dungeon Siege II is a solid if slightly uninspiring sequel which whilst providing you with exactly what you’d expect from a game of this type, doesn’t offer much more. It ticks all the boxes but then doesn’t go any further. It’s good, it’s thoroughly recommended to gamers, just don’t expect to still be playing it this time next year.
Good, but not great
