Dungeon Siege 2 : Games : Web Wombat

As I limped out of the hardware shop, stained axe in one hand, several metres of rope in the other, I realised one very important facet of life had changed forever:

There is now a massive market out there for action role playing games of the dungeons and dragons mould. Shocking, I know.

I almost dropped the rope in my daydream-like reverie, coming to the conclusion that anything with the word dungeon, devil (especially in Latin-derived dialects) or demon would pique the interest of RPG fans everywhere.

One could point his slightly malformed fingers at the Diablo series as a primary example, and the plethora of clones that followed.

Of course, one of the more interesting action RPG's to develop in Diablo's wake was Dungeon Siege, a game that borrowed many of the elements that made the former so playable - real-time hacking and slashing, millions of fascinating magical and super rare weapons, armour and trinkets - and added it's own intuitive character levelling system.

Dungeon Siege was a pretty cool game back in its day in 2003. It wasn't super long (in core RPG terms), but the 3D game engine was a pearler, and with a solid online following complete with modded map files, weapons packs and more, it was only a matter of time before the sequel came out.

And by the time I arrived home brandishing my axe and loop, the sequel, Dungeon Siege 2, had arrived on in the letterbox, some three years after the original came out. And so putting my handyman/sociopath dreams to one side, I installed the 4-disc game…

As a massive fan of the original game, I was at first a little disappointed with the game, largely the interface. Not only did it look crapper, older and less polished, certain shortcuts and hotkeys had been changed or removed entirely, and I didn't like the fact that you couldn't equip melee and ranged weapons simultaneously in the inventory screen (gaining bonuses from both simultaneously, no less) and swap between the two at the press of the 'Q' key.

But before my anger got the better of me, I slowly put the axe down on top of my Cambridge PC subwoofer and played through the game. And you know what? I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game.

The plot that bookends the gameplay is both scintillatingly good and highly unoriginal. Anyone heard of J.R.R Tolkein? Well, he wrote this trilogy of novels called 'The Lord of the Rings' that were widely read, and the story here takes some of the major elements and moulds them into its story.

The graphics look a bit blocky when zoomed
in, but at least this magician is delivering fiery
justice into the face of her would-be executor

Long ago, when evil fought against good for bragging rights that were largely inconsequential, an evil sword was used against a magical shield of piousness and wouldn't you know it, these two magical artefacts share a common fate in the lands of Aranna.

There's a dude called Valdis who appears to be on the trail of the once-lost artefacts and as the story unfolds, you'll turn from one of Valdis' mercenaries helping him out into his pursuer.

I quite liked the story - as unoriginal and slightly kooky as it is at times - and there's a handful of rendered cut scenes in there too, which sweetens the deal appreciably.

After the intro, narrated in an aptly solemn style, you must create a character, which is more interesting than the original. This time around you can create your look and choose a race, each of which have different stats. Some are good fighters (half giants) and some are good for nothing (Elves). Humans, of course, are the middle ground, with median stats across the board, able to equally handle spell casting, archery and melee combat.

Next up you jump into the game and begin as a mercenary in the Valdis army (unless you set up a multiplayer character, where you skip the first bit). And from the outset one thing is crystal clear: this game is very beautiful.

I wasn't surprised to hear that it uses the same graphics engine as the original game. Back in 2002 Dungeon Siege showed off very impressive particle and lighting effects, and the tweaked engine here takes these aspects to the next level, while adding higher polygon counts to all 3D models, higher quality texture maps and more detailed environs.

Beyond the 3D graphics, this game could almost be labelled Diablo 2.5. And though I am no fan of those who lack originality, in this case I don't care, because the game is just so playable and thoroughly entertaining no matter what stage you play at - whether a level seven beginner or online brawler reaching a character level of 53.

Almost everything apart from the experience system contains the nut and egg traces of Diablo 2. You can imbue weapons, armour and jewellery with magical powers from reagents you gather on your travels, there are underlings to control, spells to cast and the health/mana potions are pretty similar too.

There's also a skill tree that smacks of Blizzard-ideas, split into four groups: nature magic, combat magic, ranged and melee skills. Within each tree are a number of useful abilities, most of which are passive. Two such examples of the 50 or so skills include a) a certain percentage chance to stun enemies with a two-handed weapons, or b) an increasing percentage of damage added to ice-based spells).

Furthermore, when the correct combination of abilities reach certain levels you can unlock special moves of which there are 48 (12 in each of the disciplines), and these lend Dungeon Siege 2 a fighting game feel that ups the intensity of combat remarkably.

And this is a special move, being focussed on
what appears to be a scorpion-like demon entity

Let me explain: you may be surrounded by up to 20 foes, each keen on rending flesh from bone, and you're lowly barbarian and grand mage are barely keeping themselves alive thanks to a combination of healing spells from the nature magic discipline and healing potions.

But each time you whack an enemy your 'special' metre increases ever-so-slightly, and then 'hello your honour!' It's full and you instinctively whack the spacebar to pause the game, giving yourself a little breathing space.

Your barbarian currently has several special moves to his name, but it's the higher level grand mage who has the best area-effect specials.

You choose an elemental special, unpause the game and initiate the special move, watching as huge icy pillars erupt from ground, much to the chagrin of your 1.8Ghz AMD processor, which proceeds to overload somewhat as two dozen or so blighters explode in a arresting mess of blood and chunks, the few surviving nasties frozen for - what's that? - 8 seconds. Not bad guvna, not bad!

These special moves are an integral part of the game, and unlocking the higher level moves (and even upgrading your current specials) is a huge motivator. These super-powerful special moves also let you tackle boss monsters and more difficult areas much earlier than your character/s otherwise would have the tenacity/ability to do so, and they look spectacular, shaking the screen as baddies everywhere get mulched into gooey chunks of flesh and ichor.

I tell ya, I love 'em. And here I have more examples; there are fiery onslaughts to barbecue multiple enemies with (combat magic), super-powerful critical hits that do something in the order of 2000% damage (melee) that are great for wounding mini-bosses, and the 'bleed' skill that's available to those proficient with the bow and arrow (ranged), making enemies, um, bleed, steadily losing hitpoints even when not being punctured by a volley of cobalt-lightning arrows.

One are where the game differs greatly from the Diablo titles is in the experience and leveling up areas. Rather than apportioning stat points every time you pass a level, you constantly improve in an area upon use. In other words, if you use nothing but a pair of dual-wield battle axes, your melee skill will increase; cast a lot of spells and your magic prowess will level up, and so on. There are four skills here: melee, range, combat magic, nature magic.

This opens up the door to a rather cool class system as well, whereby my first character became an grand mage (or something like that) after reaching level 26, with pretty much all her experience being in spell casting. She was dead sexy too! Another character meanwhile, reached the level of knight, after excelling in the melee skill. Cool, no?

You can choose to go things alone and hog all the kills for youself as you play through the enthralling game or amass a trusty troupe of tactical combatants to back you up. The latter option is a lot of fun, but quite confusing as the chaos of having six characters all hammering away tends to turn the game into an in-depth real time stragety (RTS) than a role playing game (RPG), where you oversee actions rather than implement them.

This arch-necromancer has again used a special
move; an energy orb that floats above him and
fires out pure energy at his foes all of its own will

On the upside, having three archers, one fighter and two spell casters (one healer and one combat magician, for balance of course) is pretty cool, as each character augments the other and death becomes a foreign concept.

My personal favourite way to play is via LAN (even when I'm not hooked up to a router - as you can play through the story as many times as you like and keep your character levelling up) with just my main character and healer who follows me around diligently and saves me from needing millions of health potions when enemies swarm.

It's a fine game in my humble and often ridiculed opinion (yeah, I'm talking to the jackass who emailed me and called me an Xbox fan boy for enjoying Forza), and one that I envisage I'll be playing for many years to come.

It's also true that up until this release I was playing a fair bit of the original, so perhaps I am a bit biased in my conclusion. But even if you haven't played the first Dungeon Siege game, I think there's a lot here for newcomers. As I said in the intro, these action RPGs are very popular, and it's not surprising - they're an absolute barrel load of fun.

And don't be misled by the title either. Though there are always dank dungeons to demolish dutifully, there's also a huge amount of topside action, which is always good to see. As a lover of all things fantasy, my thirst was well and truly quenched here, with a huge amount of different tilesets, environs, background objects and mythical castles, township and communities. Gas Powered games has created a fantasy gameworld that is tremendously varied, populated with a truly huge range of ghastly monsters to slay and plnety of towns to go shopping at for all the best in weapons, armour, magical items and spells.

Playing the game is a lot of fun - there's no better way to describe it. It can be tackled like a straight-up action game if you like. Head into battle and click on the orcs whose skulls you want to crush under your almighty hammer of righteousness. Running low on mana or health? Push 'M' or 'H'. Easy. Beat the game, good times.

The other way to play is as the anally retentive freak, like me. I weigh everything up when I get a new item. Do I really need more strength, or is that Crossbow of Divinity worth equipping, with its 18% chance to find magic items? Hmm, better get out the scientific calculator for this one.

I often spend more time at the villages and towns than hacking thine enemy to pieces, as I look at my stash, buying and selling equipment to improve my character, if only by a nano criterion.

There's a lot to like about this game. The graphics are very good, incredibly colourful and all the special effects are highly memorable, and I can't wait for the mods to start coming out either, which will increase replayability significantly. The levels of eye candy that appear at any one time during a battle are sometimes gob smacking. Yes, so intense you'll smack your bog. I mean gob. Eww.

The sound too, is pretty good, and I particularly like the score - it sets the scene well, even if it is - again - a bit too Lord of the Rings-ish. The voice actors aren't brilliant, but it's nice to have truck loads of speech in there.

One could nitpick at certain aspects of the game, like how it sometimes drops unique items you already have, or how imbuing reagents to weapons/armour is largely unbeneficial. And of course there are the originality issues as well, but if these things stop you from having fun in Dunegon Siege 2, you're probably taking yourself too seriously.

I've already written more words than I should in this review, and the sad thing? I've still got more to say. But before I bore you with my favourite unique set, the best combination of offensive spells and how to milk end-bosses for the best magical items, I will instead say this: Dungeon Siege 2 is tip-top.

Game: Dungeon Siege 2
Players: 1-multi
Online: Yes
Developer: Gas Powered Games
Distributor: Microsoft

Rating: 90%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

Dungeon Siege 2 is on the shelves now.

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