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A rehash of baldurs gate and diablo II

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 62
Date: August 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I played balurs gate I and II. If you liked those games you will love this game. I however wasn't the biggest fan of those games and preferred games with less story telling and more of freedom to do whatever you want type of games. This game feels like I am playing Baldurs gate it has a very similar look to it. I never cared for the look or graphics in baldurs gate so I can't say I am very impressed with this games graphics. I prefer either the Everquest of Diablo II look. Many similarites in items and abilities that are in diablo II. Socketable items, exceptional items( same name as diablo II) , uniques(just like diablo II), rares, magic, magic find ability (diablo II), whirling strike (diablo II's whirlwind) , icebolt, firebolt. The skills tab and progression looks just like the one in Diablo II. So this game is like baldurs gate and diablo II meshed together. Online gaming was mediocre unlike like the big battle.net community in diablo II. The provoke ability is a copy off of the Everquest skill Taunt. You can't really go and explore and go wherever you please like in Everquest and World of Warcraft, I prefer that style of play. This is old school gaming. Questing and a rigid path your character must follow. Really can't game designers learn this is the past and Everquest and World of Warcraft are the future of RPG's. This game while entertaining and has very nice cinematic movies, is going to die a slow painful death.

Better than the first

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 18 / 22
Date: August 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This review is based on my impressions from about 4 hours of gameplay. From the start, I think this is a better game than the first one (and I loved the first game). The first game was pretty straight forward: see enemy, click to attack enemy, kill enemy, gather loot, repeat all the way through the game. Dungeon Siege 2 improves upon all the aspects of the first game and adds some twists. The game plays more like a roleplaying game than a hack-and-slash. Think of it as a Neverwinter Nights (not Baldur's Gate) game without the swing-and-a-miss attacks. You still click on enemies, but this time, there are bonus attacks, skill trees to improve your character, new items that can be enchanted, and places to add temporary points to your stats. Overall, the game world is more convincing - there are more enemy types and each now have a different mode of attacking, offering a bit more strategy during combat. The game is now a bit harder because you only have two character to start the game until you buy more spots for others. On easy, you are only allowed 4 characters (more open as you beat the game). The enemies exhibit better AI and do more damage, so you are constantly attacking, healing, and moving around to getter better attacks on the stronger enemies. Also, you can no longer "creep and save" through the game. Loading a game takes you back to the closest town, which means you have to adventure out to get back to where you were (and killing more enemies along the way). The graphics in the game are fantastic, and you can zoom all the way in to see every detail on the character. There is more terrain to walk over and more natural effects to keep you glued to your screen. So far, the game is fun to play - there are more items to discover, quests to fullfill, characters to interact with and a feeling of strategy in each battle. I found myself thinking much more about what I was doing in Dugneon Siege 2 than I did in the first game. Dungeon Siege 2 feels more like a roleplaying game than the first, but maintains the same amount of "fun" by making you want to keep clicking on enemies and killing them to find out what happens next. I think it appeals to both kinds of gamers - those who want a roleplaying experience and those who want a dungeon crawler. I highly recommend it!

Great graphics...for 3 years ago.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 11
Date: August 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

My biggest complaint about this game is the use of a dated graphics engine. Even at the very highest settings, textures look terrible, character shapes look blocky, and lighting is marginal at best. One of the biggest annoyances is that character mouths don't move at all while talking. It is hard to get into the game when other games out there, such as NeverWinter Nights, are available and offer much better graphics and non-linear gameplay. This game is okay, but feels like it was produced 3 years ago.

Great graphics, great RPG fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 112 / 130
Date: August 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Dungeon Siege II is finally out!! This is computer RPG gaming at its finest. The graphics are great, the gameplay is addictive, and there's even a storyline!

First, you create your character. You can be a human, an elf, a dryad (wood / nature spirit) or a half giant (large, brawny type). Each race of course has its strengths and weaknesses. There is some basic customization of how you look - light / medium / dark skin, hair style and color - but really, your character on the screen is about 1/2" tall on good resolutions. It's not worth obsessing much over how those teeny pixels look :)

Off you are launched into your world. You don't choose class or profession or anything like that. In a style that I really love, what you do determines what you progress in. If you do a ton of archery, your archery skills increase. If you do a ton of combat magic, your combat magic skills increase. It makes sense.

You start off as a mercenary assaulting a village area. I have to admit that I didn't like this beginning. First off, it says you and your blue-haired elf friend have been mercenaries for many years, yet they have you hitting training dummies. I realize this is necessary for helping newbies learn the combat system, but really, they could have had a pre-assault training area, instead of landing you on a beach and then saying "Oh wait we have some training dummies here for you to play with" :). Also, having the instructors call you "maggot" and "worm" incessantly got a bit much. Someone was watching a few too many old boot-camp movies.

However, soon enough you are free of the mercs and off on your adventure. The characters you interact with seem real, they have their motivations, secrets and goals. It's up to you which people you want to help out. I really would have loved more options in the dialogue - sometimes they only give you one option and I really don't agree with it. It made me feel like my personality was cemented in a style I did not enjoy.

The combat is great, of course, and as you build up party members, you really get into some massively fun fights with spells flaring, arrows flying and swords swinging. You have to learn what area the large creatures are weak in, and exploit those weaknesses to win. You can't just hack and slash your way through if you want to do well. By customizing your party members, along with pets, you can really have the combat experience match your individual style.

Add in the armor / weapon enhancements, the ability to resurrect or to have corpses brought back to safety (for a small fee), and general teleportation fun, and the game really does address many of the annoying issues that make other, similar RPGs a bit cumbersome. For example, if you leave a corpse in a field of battle, it still of course has your "stuff" on it. You can choose to try to wade back into battle with a "fresh you" to retrieve your stuff, or you can pay to have the corpse brought back into town magically.

Once you finish the main game on all 3 difficulty levels, there is endless fun in online multiplayer action!

Highly recommended!

Same hack-slash routine..a bug..decent game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 108 / 124
Date: August 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Playing Dungeon Siege 2 is like playing Dungeon Siege 1. There's absolutely no difference in playing style, a few improved graphics, a new skill tree, lots of things to kill, a "save at town" save feature, and a mysterious bug where items you had in your pack seem to disappear when you respawn after getting slaughtered.

Technical Part:
The game comes in a whopping 4 CDs (or 5?). Comes in a nice plastic case, and a manual. Installation is straightforward. Install, replace CD, click OK, then wait, then put next CD. The game runs pretty well on a medium build PC (e.g 2.5g P4 with a 128 mb card). You can always adjust the resolution and texture quality of the game. No crash to desktops. All in all, pretty stable installation and game playing

Bug:
Ok...now the bug. For some reason you lose items when you respawn after getting slaughtered. Now...it only happened to me once. After hearing other players about it, I realized it is an existing bug. So...my advice. Keep all your important stuff in the storage.

Gameplay:
There's no point in really trying to focus on who to target specifically when the fighting starts. You can get mobs thirty deep so all you can really do is squint and view the monsters, the special lighting effects, and a mass of confusing graphic paperdolls hacking away at each other. Getting mobbed by thirty baddies is almost downright impossible to see your team from the rest of the unforgiving hordes of baddies. There's a lazy fix to this. Go to Options and select: Auto Attack and Auto Defend. This puts your Dungeon Siege 2 act like it's Dungeon Siege 1. Remember the first Dungeon Siege where the game auto kills anything without mashing your mouse button? Well, you can do that here too through the Options menu. Select both options, sit back and relax...throw a few heal potions using hotkeys and you have one automated hack slash festival.

So....is the game any better than other hack and slash games? Umm...nope. In fact, DS2 borrowed so many concepts and structures from Diablo 2...from storage chest, teleporters,save a town only feature, skill tree, and separating the whole game into chapters. You can say DS2 is the 2005 version of Diablo 2. Structure and framework almost similar to Diablo 2.

How's the fun factor? Well...let me put it this way. If you don't want to think too much and you basically just want to get your mind involved to do stuff (besides sleeping and staring at the TV), DS2 does the job well. It's one of those games where you just want to play it and not lose your mind over a brain-damaging puzzle. It's a pure hack-slash mindless romp across exotic locales. Sometimes it's good not to use your brain and just want to relax. Well...DS2 does. It's a good game. Good graphics...simple and easy to beat. My advice: BUY IT.

Worth the money

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 16 / 19
Date: August 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Veterans of the first Dungeon Siege will find much here that is familiar. DS2 sports the same party-based 3-D action with the same engine as it's predecessor, and while the graphics are prettier this time around, I wasn't blown away this time around as I was playing the first DS.

Starting off, you will notice there are three difficulties of play, the latter two only unlockable by completing the game on an easier setting.

The four main disciplines are still present: melee, ranged, nature magic, and combat magic, although there is a skills/feats system for greater character customization than the first.

As a fighter, you start off only being able to use a weapon in your main hand. When you advance a few skill levels you will find you can train along one of three main skill paths: one-handed weapon with shield use, dual-wielding, and two-handed weapons. As you take skills along one path, it unlocks other skills you can learn to enhance your abilities further. Additional skills are restricted by both level and prerequisite skills. Which feats you get are determined by your skill choices and the levels your skills are at.

Ranged weapon users start with bow only but can then specialize in bows/crossbows, and thrown weapons.

Nature and combat mages can tailor their spell affinities to various elemental damage spheres as well as
death magic, summoning, and healing for nature mages, to name a few.

Some other differences:
You start off with a party of two, and can purchase up to 2 additional slots when you meet the level requirements to do so. In the harder difficulties, it is possible to purchase additional spots above 4. That's a shame you can't get a fifth in normal difficulty, because the pet system is great and it's nice to have one character of each discipline, as well as a pet on the field.

Animal companions in addition to your packmule are not new to those who played the expansion to the first DS, but here they have been greatly enhanced. There are about 10 different pets available (dire wolf, ice elemental, dragon, etc..) based on your game progression and some only unlockable by doing side quests. Pets carry stuff for you with varying capacity, as well as fight alongside you. Pets stats and level always match those of your main character, but you can "mature" them by feeding them equipment. The type of equipment you use determines the bonuses they get when they reach their next maturity level. Use ranged weapons to increase dex, melee weapons to increase str, health potions to increase health, etc.. Maturing them also upgrades their attack weapon and gives them access to feats. A fully mature pet constantly emanates a useful power for a certain range around it to your party's benefit if you are in that range.

Items no longer have stat based requirements to use them; they are purely based on character level or combat discipline level. Some items can also be enhanced by adding reagents to them, in basically the same method as the socketing system from diablo 2.

There are unique item drops as well as special unique items called set items. Unique items are based on existing items with more powers than rares, although as they are pre-defined, their stats are not random. Set items have a unique appearance which carries over to your character when wearing them. Each set item belongs to a group of typically 2-5 items where if multiple items in a set are worn together, you receive additional bonuses. A single item in a set is usually very good, but you may find better equipment. Add a few more pieces to the set and you will find they are much better again, a full set adds even more powers to the mix. To start you off, there's one full set of 4 items (2 in hidden locations) early in the game, found roughly between levels 2 and 10 or so. Many higher level uniques and set uniques will add ranks to many of your skills while worn. Although ranks added in this way function normally even if you don't meet the requirements to learn the skill yet, these additional ranks don't count towards prerequisites for learning other skills.

I found in playing so far that you will sometimes find duplicates of set items, which sucks. Unique items are supposed to be unique and set items are legendary unique items. Hopefully they will fix this "bug" at some point, at least in the single player game. That being said, any time you find a very rare and cool set item is one of the best moments in the game.

When you re-spawn after your whole party is killed, your equipped items, but not inventory items, are on the ground where you died. You can pay 25% of your gold to have your items teleported back to town, or you can go get them yourself. A nice feature is that when you get close to your death site, the items all re-equip themselves on your party members exactly as you had them.

You can save the game quickly at any time (ctrl+s), and there is only one save spot. There's no easy way to load a game, you have to exit the current game and then select continue, but you should find no reason to do this often. Your items, stats, and quest progression is saved, also the status of any boss or unique mobs you may have killed, but your actual position is not. When you load a game you always start at the teleporter in the last major town you reached. There's a large equipment storage chest for your use next to this teleporter which is a nice addition. While this can be a pain at times, in general you will find teleporter destinations to be plentiful and reasonably close to wherever you may wish to go. In addition, you can teleport via a spell to town and back to that exact location whenever you want.

The main story is "okay", and you will find most of the meat and fun of the game to be in doing the side quests and exploring areas off the main path. While the game and areas are in general very linear, there are lots of side areas along the way to keep you occupied for much more time than the main storyline will.

The AI could be a little better but it's okay. There are two modes of combat, mirror and rampage. In mirror mode your party all follows the lead of whatever the main character does, and they will not attack on their own, although they will cast certain buffs, summons. and healing on their omn if you set it up that way. In rampage mode, the characters will attack on their own, with the exception of the selected character, whose ai is always automatically disabled.

In closing, this game is a lot of fun, and fans of diablo and nwn will find a solid dungeon crawl with a lot to offer, and only a couple minor flaws. I am looking forward to playing online as well as using the harder modes of play when I complete the game in normal mode.

nearly very good

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 11
Date: August 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

When I saw the graphics and the development trees I was really enthusiastic, the story sounded good...then the let down...its terribly linear, like walking through very pretty corridors, and theres no save so you have to go back and redo lots of unnecessary stuff...respawn also seems to have bugs as you lose things- perhaps theres a patch to fix this.

So, wont be buying this one , perhaps next time they will realise that a PC game can be more than a console style and I'll shell out some cash.

DS2 stands for Disappointment Siege 2

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 33
Date: August 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I was so looking forward to this game, so after years of development it finally got published. I bought it, played it, and.... I asked myself what the developers have been doing all this time. Did anyone even play the original Dungeon Siege? If you are a fan of the original Dungeon Siege, because you liked the fast pace, simplicity, and quick action, this game won't really give you the same feeling. Yeah sure you can hack some monsters, grab treasures and spells, but it is all so similar to other games now.

So if you want something like the other games, sure go ahead and buy it, but if you were looking for a Dungeon Siege 1 follow-up, you're better off waiting for some other game... Maybe Worldcraft is better. lol :-)

P.S. The story sucks !

Missed the Mark

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 15
Date: August 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

If the developers were trying to appease devotees of the original Dungeon Siege with this version, they greatly missed the mark. This game wastes too much space on videos and complicated character development. I still enjoy playing the original Dungeon Siege and was hoping this version would provide different worlds and monsters, with essentially the same mechanisms to play the game. The characters in DSII won't even attack a monster unless you right click on it.
The developers were on the right track with Legends of Aranna, where they upgraded the original version with new spells and weapons. However, the new realm provided in Aranna was so boring I didn't even complete the game. I'm beginning to wonder if I'll be able to stick it out to completion of this new version, too.

Dungeon Siege... Good or Bad?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: August 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Many people are wondering if this game is worth buying. I would tell them YES, but I really enjoyed the first. This is one of those games you will either love, or can't stand. You should first download and play the DEMO before you buy this game. Then you will have your own opinion of the game, and can make a decision from your own knowledge.

Here are my Pros and Cons.

Pros!
1- Excellent enviornment graphics! The world makes me feel as if I'm there.
2- Addicting gameplay, improved over the first. This game has fast action.
3- Many interesting enemies that have decent A.I.
4- More robust skill tree and more interesting skills.
5- Enemies are not just randomly placed around the map. They help each-other and are in larger groups. Its alot of fun to unleash a powerful spell amist many enemies =)

Cons!
1- Poor charcter customization, also the graphics of the character's faces need some work. Wish there were more choices, especially in the hair department.
2- Too much like Dungeon Siege 1. Did they use the same engine? Animations and movment are almost exactly the same.
3- Music isn't terrible but not good either. So its a con.
4- Storyline is weak in areas.
5- Pure hack n' slash gaming, can get old fast.

Overall it is a GOOD game but nothing new. I often wonder why it took so long to publish this game, when many of the graphics and animations were used in the original. Try the demo and buy if you like! I think this game is worth buying and am happy with my purchase.

For me? I would give this game 4/5 stars. Have fun!

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