Dungeon Siege II Review
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Puzzles? Don't make me laugh. The few you can find are so braindead as to deserve Monty Pythonesque scorn. Game companies have been pulling back on this aspect of RPG gameplay for years, now, convinced that to get the largest market for their games, they had to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Judging from the abysmal puzzles in games such as KotoR and DS2, these include legally certified halfwits and intergalactic aliens that have yet to learn Terran logic or language systems. As in the original DS, the gameplay also feels flat after a while. You can acquire fresh spells and more powerful items, and pump up your new powers, but the enemies still rush at you in large quantities, without thought to tactical positioning. The areas may look different, but there's little interaction with them, and the NPCs you find in town still feel like blandly written objects whose sole purpose is to trade, offer directions, or give a quest/reward. There's nothing long-range to strive for, nor any sudden new purpose that opens up a completely different pathway like the sudden career move to Jedi in the original KotoR. And guess what? You get to play the game through three times, at ever increasing levels of difficulty, facing tougher enemies and getting better goodies. I'm afraid that where game design creativity is concerned, this really doesn't cut it.
I've already dealt with the poor writing. Add to that clumsy plotting, a separate matter, with villains who act against their own best interests and plenty of good guys who apparently do stupid things for non-existent reasons as a matter of course. Hack and slash isn't known to focus on such things, but there's no reason it should be done so ineptly.
Conclusions
If you like the Diablo series, the original DS or Sacred, you'll probably love DS2. It really builds on the original title to allow character customization; not to mention the pets, randomized goody drops, endless enemies, and plenty of missions. But if you want to play a game that faces a growing party with distinctive and original challenges, couched in a creative fashion, with good writing and voice acting as well as interestingly devised combat, then look elsewhere.
