The down side

Oddly enough, I didn’t actually feel as if Dungeon Siege II was the kind of game you can autopilot through. Maybe much has changed since the first title but DS2 is fairly involved. There’s a refreshing level of uncertainty in every fight, simple fights can turn complicated as hiding monsters reveal themselves or a key character dies while you weren’t watching Even at higher levels the action is very, very fast.

While unpredictability is good, the designers seem to have gone off the deep end at several points in the game, with monster difficulty ramping up in general to surprisingly high levels. We’ve already mentioned the spider example, but there are repeat performances that take a while to adjust to. These sections aren’t in any predictable location either, it’s not as if the player is entering a new act. Otherwise, play balancing is remarkably smooth and the game never overtly indicates how the player should upgrade his party. While there’s no shortage of gameplay mechanics that make no sense in the story of the game world (ie, the never-ending resurrections), Gas Powered Games has resisted the temptation of telling the player how to play; at no point are you instructed to take on an extra party member or upgrade certain skills however beneficial that may be.

Where even the most rabid fanboy would have trouble coming up with compliments is with respect to the graphics. At best, Dungeon Siege II can be said to be dated; the engine does not look much advanced over the original and definitely falls short of the standards of 2005. Textures are the least of the offenders, more glaring are the jagged low-poly models with enough jagged edges to slice through a quarter and still cut your tomatoes cleanly. To be fair, DS2 does give off a healthy feeling of chaos in combat and the various special effects do spruce things up with their mere presence though they could obviously have a touch more pizzazz.


Multiplayer is generally solid though it actually gives the player less to do since he ends up controlling fewer characters. The major annoyance comes from having to use GameSpy to connect to public games. While not a bad service in and of itself, it’s yet another account to remember. Worse, the regular GameSpy email/password doesn’t work, you need to create an account especially for Dungeon Siege as well. It’s all so unnecessary and tedious.