Dungeon Siege II

by Microsoft

Product Features

• Lead an elite battle party against a vicious marauder in this RPG
• Choose up to 6 battle comrades; each class with unique heroic powers
• Powerful and unusual allies; exotic creatures with special abilities
• Challenging opponents; cinematic storytelling; interactive world
• Online multi-party gaming for cooperative or competitive gameplay

Product Details

• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B0009PQCSU
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: August 16, 2005
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,312 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #89 in Video Games > PC Games > Role-Playing
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Edition: Standard

From the Manufacturer

Return to the beautiful fantasy land of Aranna, a land scarred by civil war, where the lines between good and evil are blurred. As the courageous player, you must lead an elite battle party against Valdis, a vicious marauder determined to return the world to order--no matter what the cost.

Features:

• Elite battle party: choose your battle comrades carefully as you build a party of up to six members.
• Hero powers: each class now has access to unique heroic powers that are capable of turning the tide of battle, but these powers require wisdom and strategic timing.
• Powerful and unusual allies: The packmule was just the start. You can now choose from a number of exotic creatures with special abilities that grow right alongside you.
• More dangerous enemies: face off against opponents whose power and tactical abilities rival your own.
• Interactive world: pitched battles rage everywhere, and you can turn special environments to your tactical advantage--so you'll do well to pay heed to the world around you.

Product Description

Dungeon Siege II takes you back to the land of Ehb, to vanquish a new menace. A thousand years ago, magic spread across the land after an apocalyptic battle between the armies of two gods. The powers of magic spread to every corner of the world, flowing through any who could command them. These energies have started to wane, as a new heir beckons from the Plain of Tears -- the site of that original battle. Each day, his strength grows and he destroys those who do not submit to him. With none to oppose his ascendance, an age of darkness awaits mankind, unless you raise a party with the skills & powers to defeat him. Jaw-dropping special effects create an amazing environment & atmosphere, dazzling spell effects and an immersive gaming experience Dungeon Siege II introduces a new Flick authoring system, keeping players in the game world with adventures that evolve with players, as quests & missions are completed

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

116 of 132 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Same hack-slash routine..a bug..decent game, August 22, 2005

By 

Paul Arellano "Last Days on Earth" (VA, USA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Dungeon Siege 2 (CD-ROM)

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.

114 of 131 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great graphics, great RPG fun, August 22, 2005

By 

Lisa Shea "medieval swordfighting enthusiast" - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Dungeon Siege 2 (CD-ROM)

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!

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Dungeon Siege 1.5, September 29, 2005

By 

R. Bradley - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Dungeon Siege 2 (CD-ROM)

Five years or so ago DS1 traipsed party-based, 3D hack and slash through some lovely scenery, and the result was good mindless fun. There were some gripes - not enough customisation in how a character could level, no interaction from the NPC, for instance - but they didn't spoil the overall fun. Now in 2005 I pay $50 and get... well, the same game as 5 years ago.

Not quite the same of course. Those gripes have to some extent been addressed. Your NPC companions do occasionally chip in some mindless chatter, and each has a side-quest. The skill tree adds a nice level of customisation. The trouble is that many of the improvements are distinctly half-assed. Thus you companions mostly start chatting when you're being attacked, so the conversations are interrupted. The dialogue is so corny and the voice acting so appalling that it is clear that they used the old "friends and family" approach to game production rather than getting professional writers or actors.

Still, it's churlish to complain about that kind of thing in a hack-and-slash game. The real problem is that the game fails to do several things that it promises. For instance, "a party up to 6" means that on the *third* run-through the exact same game you are allowed 6 party members. "oh well" you might think, "another run-through will let me try another player character class". Wrong. If you want to try a new PC you go right back to beginner level and max 4 party members. More seriously, although the box blurb happily talks about tactics and use of the terrain this is nonsense. You cannot do anything with your party other than pile in mindlessly. Remember in DS1 carefully positioning your archers before opening doors? None of that this time. Spellcasters and the rest charge into the fray regardless. As for the terrain, the AI is so bad that it's nothing but an inconvenience. For some reason, if you tell your archers and spellcasters to attack a foe just over a ridge the archers will stand there shooting the ground while your mages either do nothing or go stand next to the beasties, getting eaten. Happily none of this really matters since the combat is so easy that you can just leave your guys hacking while you go make coffee.

There has definitely been an attempt to spice up the story a little and give it a less linear feel. While the main plot is as bog-standard a fantasy yarn as you will ever see, there are enough side quests to prevent it feeling too linear, and the game retains enough of the compulsive feel of the original to keep you going.

Finally, the graphics, so outstanding 5 years ago, have basically not changed from DS1. There are some improved textures, but there is no getting around the fact that while other games have moved on Dungeon Siege is serving up the same old engine. This is not all bad: some of the scenery is simply beautiful. But the character and many monster models are primitive and clunky.

All in all, if this had appeared 3-4 years ago as an expansion to DS1 it would have been a nice job. For those looking for no more than a new run at an old favorite, this is worth playing, though in some important respects (party control in particular) it is inferior to the original. For those expecting the new game that "DS2" implies, it's likely to be a disappointment.

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