Reviews
Games
The single player begins where you are with another member of your party and are learning how to play the game and to get a feel of it. Towards the end of the level you are both capture by your enemies and have to do deeds to be freed. After being freed you turn to become allies with Aranna and side with them to fight Valdis. This is where the the single player quest begins. The chapters can be as simple or as complex depending on factors such as character level, weapons, party size and others. They'll keep you going for a long time with over thirty to play and all of them being around half an hour to an hours playing. There are also secondary tasks which you can play to gain more gold and to have them ticked off in your quest journal.
With you there are five other possible players in your party. These can be five pets, five partners or a mix of the two. They help you by accompanying your main character in the chapters of the unfolding game. To get the best party you need someone who specializes in each of the skills - melee, ranged, combat magic and nature magic. When there are other players who specialize in each of those skills with high levels it's soon realized how helpful it can be with some being offensive to some enemies and others being offensive to others. The enemies on Dungeon Siege II are widely varied and for every different area you and your party come across you can expect different enemies to face.
The online element of Dungeon Siege was greatly praised and this one fails to disappoint. There are three main ways of playing online. One of them is where you and three other players use only your character to get through the chapters of the game. Another is where you have either a pet or teammate with you and are fighting with two other players. The final one is where you can have up to six(the maximum) people in your party and are fighting alongside one other player. They are all equally beneficial but beneficial in completely different ways. The first one puts minds together to work out how to accomplish the next part of the game, the final type helps increase the levels of your whole party not just one character and the second one is a compromise of the two. The objective of playing Dungeon Siege II online is exactly the same as single player and although it sounds bad it isn't if you have people adding ideas to yours and you adding to their's.
The graphics of the game are not what you would call the best on the computer but this proves to be beneficial. Many games with good graphics seem to work slowly and have high requirements that not all can meet. The people at Gas Powered Games realized this and decided to opt for a slightly worse graphics engine. The sound however is perfect, you know exactly what's happening in the game just by listening to it and adds to the gaming experience. Although the graphics aren't the best, this doesn't mean they can take visual effects to another level. They are crisp and take full advantage of the heroes special powers which range depending on the type of character you have.
To conclude, Dungeon Siege II is a brilliant roleplay game that will have anyone addicted to whether on or offline. The cinematic story takes you through the whole game and the online play will make you want to help others achieve what you have achieved and also become the best Dungeon Siege player around. This is also a change from your typical MMORPG these days and goes back to a more fast paced game. However, whenever you play this game you're playing story mode all the time and there is no change in that.
89/100