A Mercenary’s Journal (Dungeon Siege 2 Review)

It's all about gold my friend. There is no better way than to live by my sword to who ever pay me well to get a job done. Today I found myself starting heading off to a far land on the back of a dragon with an army led by Valdis. I don't know much about whom he is or what it is that he wants but he pays me well enough to not worry about it.

By myself I was able to bring friends and even pets with different abilities which let me complement my own quite well. With so many foes, let me tell you that they are quite welcome and you do not want to be alone. For the rest you will have to see for yourself as you can relive this epic quest with your own eyes from the use of unknown magic to me...

Review

Dungeon Siege 2 brings back to life the essence of the first title. Nothing much has changed since. Upon starting a new game you will have the option of creating a new character with only a mere selection of appearances. Right after the confirmation you will be plunged into a really beautiful cinematic introducing you to the world and setting.

The action is fast paced but lets you learn the basic before swarming you in it. Beside the starting location aren't that crowded with monsters to bash on. Once you start you'll quickly find yourself entering some vast environment and might even get bored of the same setting over and over again.

Each place is carefully designed with some hidden rooms and roads, some pretty nice tile sets showing details and nice colors to enjoy while swinging like a mad man. Actually this might be a problem of the game. You pretty much only swing around without having much to do. The only interesting classes that offer variety are the Nature Mage (NM) and Combat Mage (CM). There you get to switch different spells to do the required effect passing from summoning a pet to casting a huge attack spell or just cursing the enemy. As a matter of fact, the CM is probably the most powerful class in the game. Isn't that a surprise? Yet another game with overpowered mages...

The game's engine is nicely made to fully enjoy those spells as well. There are lots of particles flying by in explosions, nice casting animation of spells with tons of colors making them hard to miss. All of that can be enjoyed without any real lag from the computer chopping the action down to a few frames if you at least meet the requirements of the game.

Characters rise in power by using the given type of their choice between Melee, Ranged, NM and CM. By gaining character levels (not skill level) you will be awarded 1 point to put into the tree of your choice. There is one tree for each type of skill mentioned previously. The key to real power is located there. If you do things properly and check how to make your template, you can result in a pretty strong character. Upgrading some items in the tree will sometime unlock a special attack that can be unleashed when you're special meter is filled. Those are a life saver when entering some pretty huge fights where you'll be swarmed by dozen and dozen of monsters all at once. Check them carefully and their requirements and go get the one you want. It's worth it.

Along the way of your travels, you can decide to pick up some NPC or pets to aid you. Those are pretty interesting although not really necessary in the first level of difficulty if you take the time to look everywhere in every location. It's pretty much like in every RPG, if you take the time to explore you'll get more levels and have less of a hard time farther on. Each NPC brings you a different fighting style and personality along your quest. It's rather quite amusing sometime to have your follower stop the action and say some comments of the current situation. Pets are weaker than the NPCs but still brings some good back up strength to the team. The pack mule is one of the most useful pet since when fully grown (you feed pets some items to make them grow stronger) will have a three page inventory which is quite enjoyable if you don't feel like making endless trips between town and dungeon.

What would be a good RPG without sound? Well there is nothing really special about the sounds and music in Dungeon Siege 2. It's the pretty average track you find in most games of this type. It's not bad but it's not great either. You know it's a pretty generic music that could be used several time not really setting any type of mood into the player. It's just there so that the player doesn't fall asleep while playing.

Game play was really easy to pick up and master. You mostly play with the mouse since it's a point and click type of game. Some keys on the keyboard are used to use potions, pause the game and some macros to save and change equipment on the fly which is pretty neat. There isn't really anything hard to remember or accomplish control wise. As a matter of fact you might even turn a little zombie from playing it and stop realizing that time still flows around you. Like any good hack and slash game, you can get addicted to it and I'm sure all of those Diablo 2 fans out there know what I'm talking about.

There are three difficulty settings to accomplish in the game which would bring your character to a maximum level of 100. Each of them is exactly the same but the monsters are stronger so they'll give you another challenge and appropriate experience to keep gaining more levels. It would've been nice to have a little variant story wise or possibly have new types of monster or something. But it's the same thing over and over again which can get pretty boring at some time.

The story of the game itself is pretty simple and there isn't that much twist to it. It is pretty much as written in the Mercenary's Journal above. You have a change of heart and end up going after the bad guy to save the land. To those of you, who would be playing the game to see a cool ending, well don't waste your time on it. The ending sequence is extremely short and the kind that would make you say things like "what the $%#@ is that? Was that the ending?" and I'm unfortunately not kidding. It was a major deception. It just seems like the development team ran out of time and just pitched something in so the game could go gold.

Overall, Dungeon Siege 2 is a nice and enjoyable game with a good engine and easy game play for everyone to enjoy. Although it has its low points there is still lot of things to enjoy. Granted it might not suit everyone but which game does anyway? If you've loved the first one, you will definitely love this second title as well but don't expect it to have any link to the previous game because there aren't any in the story.

Game play: 7
Pro: Easy learning curve for the casual player.
Con: What you see is what you get. Hardcore gamers won't have anything to customize.

Technical: 8.5
Pro: Great engine for this kind of game and lots of colors.
Con: The music and sounds of the game lacks originality.

Entertainment: 8.5
Pro: Swarms after swarms, you're always killing stuff.
Con: Once completed, the game tends to become somewhat more boring.

Overall: 8