Like most of the games that Blizzard has produced, the original Diablo laid down many of the rules for the hack and slash adventure genre. Followers of the Diablo design have been numerous, but few have been as well received as 2002's Dungeon Siege. The sequel, imaginatively named Dungeon Siege II, follows faithfully in the footsteps of the original fantasy RPG from Gas Powered Games. Solid, satisfying combat and a worthwhile storyline mark this solid genre title. Read on for my impressions of this medieval slasher.
- Title: Dungeon Siege II
- Developer: Gas Powered Games
- Publisher: Microsoft Games
- System: PC
- Reviewer: Zonk
- Score: 7/10
If you've ever played a fantasy hack and slash game, you've played Dungeon Siege II. This double edged sword swings heavily. On the one hand, you'll be familiar with the tropes, the controls, and the expectations. On the other, if you know you don't like hack and slashers you can safely avoid DSII without missing out on content you might have otherwise appreciated. That said, if you do enjoy the genre there is a lot to like here.
The first Dungeon Siege was widely hailed for its combination of strategy elements and party based combat. Dungeon Siege II doesn't mess with a good thing. As a mercenary far from home, you begin the game working for a powerful evil force that is just starting to work its way across the land. As with the original title, characters develop abilities by using them. If you want your main character to be a melee fighter, you equip him with a sword and start him swinging. If you want him to be a combat mage you put a spellbook in his hands and let him blast away. During the course of the adventure, you can recruit other hearty travelers to round out other roles in your party. As with your main character, you control their inventory and can thus guide their ability development. Though this may initially seem like a system with possibilities to exploit you quickly realize the "multiclassing" capabilities are limited. While you can give a spellcaster a sword to swing around, you're going to want to focus each character on a particular set of abilities in order to maximize their power. Unlockable critical powers are revealed with higher levels of specialization as well, giving you very little incentive to have jacks-of-all-trades.
Those critical powers are used when your characters enter combat. Combat is a major focus of the game, and while there isn't a lot of innovation here the hacking and slashing is very satisfying. Holding down the mouse button on an opponent tells your main character to go to town. NPC allies can be given instructions to focus their attacks on your target, or put into a spree mode where they'll cut down anything that moves. Combat moves for both melee fighters and spellcasters have a lot of crunch to them. Opponents are dispatched with zeal, explosions of blood and body parts accompanying your victory. While the makers of the Dungeon Siege series have a background in RTS games, there isn't really a whole lot of strategy involved once the axes start falling. As long as you've got all the characters equipped with the best weapons and spells you could find or purchase, the chaos of battle will mostly run itself. The downside to this is that it's very hard to protect your weaker NPC allies. Magic users in particular fare badly, as the monsters all known the "geek the mage first" addage. In large combats you'll almost certainly be waiting on your spellcaster to regenerate from the large holes that have been ripped in his thinking parts. Additionally, while the entertainment value of new critters to kill is high, the combat mechanic never really changes and thus can get old in a hurry.
Combatting creatures, as always, nets you experience which eventually allows your party to level up. Depending on what they use in combat, you are given several options in a skill tree for ways to focus their advancement. While multi-classing is again not the best idea, each character has available all the different skill trees. Using the weapon type appropriate to each tree nets you skill points for that tree. For example, using a bow nets you a skill point for the Ranged Tree after a sufficient time spent in the field. Within the trees you are given several options to customize your adventurer's attacks. Melee fighters can specialize in one handed weapons with a shield, or can go the path of the strongman and wield a two handed weapon. Combat mages can focus on different elements (fire, electricity, etc.), while ranged combatants can focus on crossbows or throwing axes. Given the limited number of allies you can have, this ability to focus their abilities is crucial to ensuring that you have party roles fulfilled to your satisfaction.
Combat and mechanics are all well and good, but roleplaying games should be about storytelling. Questing and story are always important elements to a roleplaying game (though in this case I use the term lightly), and in this respect Dungeon Siege II manages to break a little ways out of the cookie cutter mold much of the rest of the game adheres to. Starting your career as an adventurer in a Dryad prison is hardly an auspicious start, but from there you are swept up into fight against your former employer, a wielder of a deadly dangerous artifact from an older era. Aside from the main quest pushing you ever outward into the world at large, folks you meet along the way have a series of errands and personal vendettas to settle up. While they're the usual "i can't be bothered to go five minutes down the road" type of RPG sidequests, the writing and voice acting are usually fairly well done. This adds a level of personality and polish to the experience that many other games can't touch. Additionally, the game isn't shy about giving you quests some time before you can complete them, giving you time to consider you objectives and watch out for the opportunity before you can actually fulfill the request. The only real frustration with the game's theming is the vanilla nature of your NPC allies. They occasionally stop to have prescripted interactions between themselves, and those are well done and usually amusing to listen to. You'll never grow that attached to your companions because they simply don't have a lot in the way of soul. The blank faces of DS II can't hold a candle to the likes of Minsc or HK-47.
The game is somewhat lacking in personality when it comes to visual presentation as well. Up close, characters and monsters have a likeable roughness, with interesting details and personality coming to the fore. Pul back to keep track of the action, however, and the somewhat dated graphical look of Dungeon Siege II is readily apparent. There are some blocky elements to characters which stand out at a distance, and environmental textures can become somewhat repetitive. On the positive side effects for special attacks and magical combat add the same visceral quality to the game that the melee combat movements do, with sparks of light and fire limning the field of battle during most engagements. The auditory experience has the same quality, grunts and cries adding a first person experience to what could otherwise be dry hacking and slashing. The musical accompaniment is as successful in augmenting the gaming experience without overwhelming the player with its presence. The music itself has a similarity to the musical experience from the first game, but somehow didn't come off as repetition. The orchestrations are different enough that the feeling evoked is one of remembrance rather than ripoff, and works well within the gameworld.
Dungeon Siege II, then, is a competent hack and slash RPG. Built on the Diablo 2 model and paying close attention to the lessons learned from the original title, the sequel to the 2002 hit is a satisfying gaming experience if you're a fan of spilling orc blood. Combat, story, and questing are all well executed, with an eye towards presentation and visceral feel. Even though the game hews very close to the genre standard, the entertaining and visceral combat gameplay can make this a worthwhile addition to your library. If you're looking for some mindless fantasy fun, Dungeon Siege II will provide.
Slashdot Mirror
The review doesn't describe *any* differences between DS2 and DS1. Which I guess is OK since DS1 was fun already.
DS1 was a very easy game. You don't have to aim or exercise much skill, you just have to follow along as the game more or less plays itself. As long as you don't stray too far outside of the realm that you are supposed to be in at any given point in your character's development, the creatures around you will be easy to kill and will provide more than enough experience to quickly level up and move on to harder creatures (which aren't really harder at all since your character is now more capable). It's repetitive but satisfying.
By far the most fun I had with DS1 was when playing multiplayer with my friend, when we would purposefully move early out into harder areas and try to figure out how to, using cooperation, kill creatures that would be far too difficult for either one of us to kill on our own. Usually the strategy involved having one character be chased around while the other laid into the creature, and then switching roles, until the creature was dead. Sometimes we could lure creatures into spots where they couldn't hit us but we could hit them (like from a ledge above them), which was fun too.
I personally much prefer games where you have to aim and dodge to games where you don't, but the DS series is still fun. I just wish these games didn't cost $50, or take so long (years) to drop down to lower prices.
I'm not trying to troll here, so let's forget for a moment that the
article clearly wasn't spellchecked, that the grammar and
capitilzation are terrible, and that the poor punctuation makes many
of the sentences mean things that were clearly not intended (or at
least not correct).
The big problem here is that this review doesn't tell us anything
about the game! Sure, combat and graphics. Nice. What about the menus?
The story? It only had one word about the story. Items, and item
creation? Is the UI frustrating? Does the game crash? Does it have
multi-player? Co-op?
Please, Zonk, if you're reading these comments (seems dubious, but
if..), tell us what it's like to play this game!
This review tries to make it sound like the game is good... but I can't help noticing that it succeeds in exactly the opposite.
"Diablo model"? (How old is Diablo now?)
"Very close to Dungeon Seige I"? (DS I was good but that was years ago.)
Those games are both archaic at this point when we have WOW and other MMORPGS, the game needs to offer something that those other games don't. Storyline? NPC's? FMV Cutscenes? Depth of character development? Thousands of rare items a la BGII?
I don't know if it was this review, but the game sounds positively retro.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
the original Diablo laid down many of the rules for the hack and slash adventure genre
This is totally incorrect. Diablo is a direct rip-off of Rogue and its many clones including NetHack. All Diablo brought to the table was evolutionary graphics.
You can download the demo from here a review the game for yourself.
Hopefully I can get it working under wine!
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
that this game is so close to being Diablo 2 that you always find something missing.Its the closest that come to D2 which in my opinion is the best RPG ever. People who have played D2 will like this game and find it very easy to play.Unlike Neverwinter Nights the DS I was very fast paced.So for everyone who like fast paced RPG(lots of spells n magic) go for this one!
Lord of the Binges.
I feel like such a nerd for knowing who minsc and hk-47 are.
the game plays a lot more like Diablo2 then Original Dungeon Siege. Although Dungeon Siege 1 copied some element from D2, Dungeon Siege 2 took A LOT MORE from D2.
Skill points, even the graphics and description looks like D2.
Teleporter system
Magical, Rare, Set, and Unique items
Town stash
game difficulty system
if you are D2 fan, you'll spot a lot of similarities..
of course, the game has put a lot more then just copying D2, the party fighting, enchantment system, summoning, and special powers are all pretty good.
Graphics is pretty good, but I like the , and I have decent framerate with my AMD 1700+ with ATI 9600XT. so hardware requirement isn't too bad.
the game do have a lot of bugs though, hopefully the next patch will solve the majority of the problem, such as adding party members and various scripting bug.
my most disappointment is the network play, which only allow maximum of 4 players to join a single game(I have more friends). and there's no way to play IP based game (to prevent pirated copy going online?). however LAN based game is possible, and I know you can trick the game to use Hamachi to play LAN over internet.
I have found that while DS1 was more like the SSI type DnD games, DS2 is *much* more like Diablo 2. The craziest lacking thing is the ability to control single characters. So you can't make a picket line and send one guy to pull the baddies in. It's either "everyone do what i click" (mirror mode) or "everyone kinda do what i click" (rampage mode).
It's taken almost ALL of the strategy away, but the result is much faster paced combat, including massive explosions and lots of gibs.
Instead of runes (ala D2), there are Reagents which an NPC can enchant into enchantable items. But these reagents are typically not so powerful compared to the set based and uniqe items. Some of which are pretty awe-inspiring.
One new feature (?) is the autocast section in the spellbooks. Each mage may have 2 spells (not direct fire ones, more like curses or monster summons) that automatically cast at appropriate times.
The super-linear plotline and map is kind of annoying after playing so much D2 with a more area-based (vs linear) approach, but the maps are nice.
However, I have not seen the same beautiful landscapes that actually sometimes wowed me in DS1.
Anyways, the game was a good buy. It's super long, and some of the sub-missions are pretty cool.
m
I very much enjoyed the original DS. I loved how the game allowed you to advance based on how you play.
BUT...
After 20 hours it gets damn annoying to smash every crate and check the loot to find the good upgrades. I would have preferred fewer crates with more 'valuable' goods in them. After finding my 200th Robe of Defence +1 it gets annoying.
Advancing your character: one fun trick that I found at later levels;
Set your healer to auto-heal himself & you, never attack. Have your character start roaming in an area of low-power bad-guys auto-attacking everything he sees with the weapon you want to increase in power.
Let the game play itself for a few days, and your player & healer have both leveled up 10+ levels.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Given your ennui, I suggest Russian Roullet. Some suggest, if you loose, you move to another level, up or down.
enjoy
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
This is a reveiw of Dungeon Siege I. DSII is only mentioned in passing. I mean, come on! :)
I don't play fantasy games often. RPGs, MMORPGs, etc. Just has never been fun.
I did, however, LOVE Diablo2. I loved playing 8 hours straight with some friends in a LAN game. So much fun.
I recently was asked by one of those friends to try out Guild Wars, which I incorrectly thought at the time was a pay-to-play MMORPG. From what I've read, and since I've played the game for nearly 90 hours now as a complete novice, it's more of an online RPG that (a) doesn't cost you monthly to play but (b) doesn't include the limitless exploration and community building that you might expect from World of Warcraft.
DIFFERENCES FROM DIABLO2
First off, you have to log in online to play Guild Wars -- kind of annoying if you're not used to online RPGs, but you do get instant updates. I hated having to keep up with updates in Diablo2 -- since I didn't play anything but LAN games, so I never did the Battle.net thing.
Secondly, you have total control over your PoV in Guild Wars. I love being able to go first person to see things up high and then pan around a raging battle.
Third, and this is why you want the PoV -- THE GRAPHICS ARE INCREDIBLE!!! The rendering isn't all that sophisticated from what I've read, but they use software anti-aliasing (???) to really add a "fantasy" look/feel to the game. The environments, although not limitless, are terrifically rendered. I probably spent my first 10 hours looking around at stuff. Waterfalls, leaves, etc. are all nice touches to the gaming world.
Fourth -- when you play online with folks, you cand do it 2 ways -- in a questing mode OR in a PvP mode. I haven't touched the PvP mode, but you always know it's going on. There are constant updates in the chat area of the screen indicating a win for Europe or a win for America. It's intriguing, but not really enough to interest me in trying it out yet.
Finally, when you online with folks, you don't have to "share" an entire world/area like you do with World of Warcraft (correct me if that's wrong). You instance out an area of the world and take you and your designated party with you. Basically, they've negated the chances of you entering, as in Diablo2, the world, stepping out of town, and having some high level player go hostile on you and kill you for your stuff. I think this also helps them keep server/hosting costs down -- and this means you DO NOT PAY MONTHLY FOR ACCESS TO THE GAME!
BIG DIFFERENCES FROM DIABLO2
The BIGGEST aspect of this game that is different from me, since I've only played Diablo2 pretty religiously before, is the whole crafting of armor/weapons aspect.
Basically, if you had crap in Diablo2 that got dropped, you could sell it for armor and weapons.
In Guild Wars, you gotta salvage stuff you can't wear/use, make raw materials, and then you go to crafters who make stuff from the raw materials. Armor is crafted by default, I think -- you can't pick it up and use it normally on the battlefield.
Weapons can be crafted, but you have a better chance of getting weapons in battle -- I have only crafted like 1 weapon since I started playing.
What does this mean in terms of gameplay? You have to customize EVERYTHING you use. You can't sell armor (at all) and customized weapons. They only work for you.
I do like that they have RUNES in Guild Wars, and you can buy these when you advance to the REAL storyline after the intro quests. Unlike the runes in Diablo2, however, you can only insert runes you buy or find (from salvaged enemy armor) into your own customized armor. And the runes are specific to your primary character class. Thankfully, you can salvage runes you've used in armor whenever you go to upgrade -- as opposed to losing them in Diablo if you want to sell a weapon that's been "runed."
Character class, by the way, is a duality in Guild Wars. You pick from the standard classes and then choose a secondary profession (if you want) that gives you all the additional powers of the secondary class except th
They took the original Dungeon Siege, absolutely ruined the pathing and AI, neutered the spell system, added an extremely shallow and uninteresting skill tree, and a handful of special attacks that can be triggered when you've dealt enough damage. Of course, the graphics have been dolled up. The game looks good; the environments are positively lush, and Jeremy Soule (Morrowind, Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Siege) did the soundtrack, but it's probably the most bland and forgettable score he's ever done.
DS2 focuses more on story than its predecessor, but has the usual array of predictable plot twists and subpar voice acting, all implimented by dialogue boxes, similar to Neverwinter Nights.
The crippling multiplayer problem that prevents just about anyone with a firewall (regardless of port forwarding) from playing online that was around in the original still exists, and although multiplayer has been improved, it's still impossibly shallow.
DS2 would be great... if it was an expansion pack. It's entirely unworthy of being a standalone game though. For Dungeon Crawler fans, I'd recommend picking it up, but only after it hits the $15 dollar bin.
Well, one of the things the review DIDN'T mention is that the netcode is terrible. You can't just connect to a friend's machine over the internet anymore (LAN you can, though), you are FORCED to "meet up" in the Gamespy/close variant chatrooms.
The problems arise, however, that at least with Linksys routers, the stupid game inserts a forwarding rule through uPNP that makes no sense. MS refuses to acknowledge the problem, but when you try to start the game and the rule is there, all you get is a black screen on ANY multiplayer DS2 game (even local). If you go in and delete this rule and restart DS2 (there's no way to cancel the "load" that is frozen) it works fine.
Turning off uPNP helps, but it took me 3 days to find this solution on some random forum. Even now, weeks later, there's nothing in the DS2 "knowledge base" about this problem, or the infrequent crashes to desktop that occur.
I'm still waiting on a return email from M$ on this problem. Their "24 hour response turnaround" is at about 2 weeks now.
"Magic users in particular fare badly, as the monsters all known the "geek the mage first" addage. "
Slashdot editors in particular fare badly, as the posters all pwn the "badmouth the editor first" subtractage.
Seriously, I do have to say that this is important for Hack n Slash games. If your magic-user is a tank, what fun is that? Without the risk of dying, hack n slash loses my interest very easily...
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
My wife and I simply loved the cooperative multi-play in Diablo 1 and especially 2. DS1 was hailed as a Diablo heir so we tried it. The first day it seemed great, some really cool graphics and atmopherics, definitely a step up for us as we'd not bought a game in two years. After a few days of on-and-off play we realized it was boring! The action took care of itself so you were left to do the directing... the land was extremely sprawling and at times difficult to work out or remember directions, so even that was out. And the story wasn't exactly Oscar material. Boring! If they haven't fixed the action aspect then I really don't think this is going to be any great shakes.
Now, what's this about Diablo 3 on the drawing board?
Damien
Holding down the mouse button on an opponent tells your main character to go to town.
No no no no no.... clicking the mouse button on an opponent should tell your character to kick the opponent's ass. If I want to go to town, then I'll click on the town...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
'They wanted me to sign a copy of the game,' defended Taylor, who was at The Software Boutique promoting Dungeon Siege. 'No, I mean an actual copy, burned onto a CD-R! I only intended to sign originals at this promotion.'
Geek Of The Day, "A geeky place for geeky faces."
Slightly off-topic.
I'm just waiting for Dungeon Keeper III. Yes, a completely different game from Dungeon Siege II, DKII was much better than DSI, in my opinion. For those not familiar, in Dungeon Keeper, you are in SimCity-like control of an underground area with a few imps to serve you. You tag rock for the imps to dig out. Relatively early, you find a gateway where creatures enter your dungeon. You build a lair, hatchery (chickens to feed your creatures), training room, library for your spellcasters etc to keep your creatures happy and trained. You then send them out to take over other Keepers' dungeons or protect your dungeon from do-gooders from the top-side. If you don't keep your creatures happy, they can rebel, damaging your dungeon, or just leaving. Fun game. The DKII disc had a preview movie for DKIII. I just hope they actually make it someday.
But why is the rum gone?
solution" is. A game becomes more fun when you dicipline yourself. Try playing in a way that you get bashed less so you use less potions. Don't buy that shiny new weapon when you can get by with what you have no matter how many times over your wallet can buy that new equipment.
*rubs eyes*
Is this review about a WoW patch or update or something?
*drools incoherently from lack of sleep*
Must not be.
*Goes back to using PC for what it was intended: a WoW terminal*
/sig
- Tell everyone in your party to not attack.
- Save the game. (we might want to come back if we mess this up)
- Set one or two of your party members to cast healing spells. (they'll do it automatically.)
- Take the character that the hag is attacking (we'll call him 'bait'), and have him stand away from the rest of the group.
- Set the other members to not advance, so the bait is between them and the hag. (this will be the combat group)
- Have the combat group use ranged weapons (or spells, but spells require babysitting)
- Make sure that the combat group can *not* hit the hag.
- The bait is allowed to heal (even if he's crap at it) or use close combat weapons (but he can't move, so it's mostly useless)
- Save again (just in case you want to try again should this fail)
You need to watch it for a few minutes,but once you're sure the hag is targeting the right folks, and the hags aren't getting hit by stray arrows (you may not want to have the bait directly between the hag and the party, to reduce the chance of accidental shots).Baby sit the setup for a few minutes --mana potions for the healers, etc, but after a while, you'll feel good about leaving it
It's tricker to deal with 2+ hags at once, especially if they target different folks, so you have to subject more guys as bait, but you can get great gear this way, and a ton of levels.
(I was also criticized by my friends for making Command and Conquer unplayable within a week when finding you made money if you sold not quite full silos, and ruining the spirit of Morrowind with my overpowered potions)
Oh -- and a while back, there was someone who had a ranking system for computer games, based on 'crates'. Basically, the more crates (or sooner you ran across them in a game), the greater the lack of originality in the game. I want to say it was done about the time of C&C2
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I like big budget games as much as the next guy. And I'm sure that DS2 is a nice hack'nslash game. But does anyone wonder why slashdot's game coverage is pretty much oriented towards the big studios instead of the small indies that are acutally doing creative and new things? Slashdot's editors are the sort that bemoan the lack of creativity in gaming, but when that creativity shows up, they don't give it any press. What about great old school RPG's like Spiderweb software's Geneforge series, with real plots and dialog? What about great physics-based platformers like Gish? Instead, we get the same EA Games/Microsoft/Vivendi stuff that all the big publishers cover. When is Slashdot going to move beyond asking for creativity to rewarding that creativity with reviews and coverage? I just wish that Slashdot would put their money where their mouth is regarding coverage beyond the shovelware studio system.
Diablo, and every other game remotely similar to it, really drew their inspiration in terms of computer game heritage from the rogue-like text adventures, of which Nethack is the most shining example. While they've tacked on nifty stuff like shiny graphics and networked multiplayer, they have still completely and utterly failed to capture even 5% of the depth and complexity of gameplay that Nethack has enjoyed for years.
11*43+456^2
wow, excellent advice! Let's not bother with develeopping good, challenging games anymore. Let's train the players to adjust their gameplay so that the game will last a bit longer. What did you use to do with in the old days when an arcade game was too easy? Will your hand/eye coordination to be worse? on second thought that might still work on some games nowadays
It's 2005. Computers are fast enough to load the surrounding landscape's data in the background when you get near the edge of an area. If you want to know what good those up-and-coming dual-core CPUs will be for games, well, there's one answer.
Game developers: My gaming money will go to a game with a lower frame rate and no annoying interruptions in gameplay before it'll go to a silky-smooth game that makes me twiddle my thumbs on a regular basis. I bought DS2 specifically to show my support for no-loading-screen games -- and (I hope) it won't be the last game I buy for that reason.
Diablo built on the game structure outlined by much, much earlier games such as Rogue, Hack, Nethack, Larn, Angband, Sword of Fargoal etc. Now these were all turn based, but there were a couple of early efforts to bring this type of game to a more action oriented real time style of play. The most famous is of course the arcade game Gauntlet, which stripped out almost all of the little details of the previous game, focusing instead on a heavily action oriented arcade game play.
Another early attempt that comes to mind, is the game Gateway to Apshai. This was a real time dungeon crawler that built on Epyx's Temple of Apshai series. Released for the Colecovision and Commodore 64, it was closer to the traditional Rogue style of gameplay than Gauntlet, but was played with a joystick in real time.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I'd second the Fallout/Fallout 2 recommendation. If you're willing to go old school, look at Darklands, Realms of Arkania, Daggerfall, or even the Quest for Glory series.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
My RPG background came from the Pen-N-Paper group up to BGII and NWN when computers became the deal, and having never played DS1, I have to say "It's OK" ... My one true complaint about the game is, as previously posted, is feeling like you're being led around the nose about where you need to go, and how to get there. In NWN, you'd take the FedEx Quests, and get the "general location" of where you needed to be to get part XYZ to finish the quest, but in DS2, you simply follow the arrow. The massive clickfest does get old and my party of 2 ranged, 1 Nature Mage, and my melee dire wolf pet are all level 27 or 28 at about halfway through Chapter 2 (of 3) Act 1 (of 3). Zonk nailed the "Geek The Mage" since my wussy magic wench is always getting jacked 1st, even though she's supposed to be a healer who hides in the background. When getting mobbed by a goonsqud of level 25 Vai'kesh zealots does bring about the pseudo-death (unconciousness) to both my mage and my 2nd Ranger (the pregenerated chick from the beginning who I must say sounds way too "Valley Girl" to be any bit beliveable when we have to stop and listen to her babble on or bitch at the Mage)and when they both get wacked, the wolf and I need to run for cover until they wake up and rejoin the fight. Only once so far as anyone actually gotten tombstoned (real death) but that's as simple as burning a Resurect scroll.
Zonk never did mention the pet owning, which might be in DS1 (again, never played it) and I thought it was facinating to actually have to FEED your pet. Granted my wolf must have an iron gut because I fed his ass armor, swords, spears, magic crap, and now fully grown, is a rather badass beast and very useful. I haven't had too much complaint of another user's post of "collecting my 200th cloak of protection +1" and the loot I pick up actually makes you think about what to equip. Does this ring which raises armor X points over what I have now beset the ring that has some armor upgrade but also some secondary or tertiary benefits. Choices, Choices... in NWN, everything was more absolute that This Ring Is Better Than This Other Ring.
I have yet to play it online and am happy to hear that one copy will suffice for LAN'ing since that's about as Multiplayer as I'd get with it(if I want to play against people, BF2 does the job)
For what I paid for the game, I feel I'm getting my money's worth, however I do trully miss "HERE COMES HALFLING DEATH and NO ONE WALKS AWAY"
Here's to waiting for NWN2.
I have been playing CRPGs since Bards tale on the C64.
Here is my take on Dungeon Siege 2: They tried to figure out what worked in Diablo and failed. It has all the mechanics copied to the point of annoyance. Three play throughs (same story monsters have more HP each time), town portal, teleport locations, skill trees, saves now only save your state, not where you are. Done because I think they can't figure out what actually made Diablo fun. It doesn't work. Throw in some side quests on the linear road to try to inject more Roll play and that does work either. Candy coat it so it is so warm and fuzzy that you 5 year old will be comfy. Pablum RPG.
Action RPG fans of Diablo: No comparison. Diablo 2 is a much better action oriented RPG. This is boring and slow.
Story or hard core RPG: Nothing here. A few pointless sidequest departer from the strict linear game that you couldn't not make it to the end if you tried to get lost. Has nothing on Baldurs Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Planescape Torment or any good single player games.
It feels like a comitee sat down and picked some elements from succesful RPGs. The result is nothing but a monster/treasure treadmill. For those folks who just want to level up and find more elite weapons endlessly. It is the "spinal tap" of RPG games, with the treasure output cranked to "11". If some treasure is good, heaping piles of it must be great. Somehow the concept of less is more never registers. If you always have tons of crap, it just plain doesn't matter. The value of something is in direct relation to it's scarcity. The best PnP games I played, you might find one magic item during a days play. But when you did find it, it was amazing.
Graphics look pretty much identical, to DS1, which is fine by me, heck they are better than Neverwinter Nights, but NWN is actually a fun game.
Bottom line, there is just a hollow shell again. They just dont' grok action RPG and they don't grok story RPG.
I think you can still buy Neverwinter Nights, or Diablo Gold if action is more your thing. Both cheaper and better.
Seriously - I've been looking for a good RPG for months now, I tried the demo of DS2 yesterday, and it's slightly better than 1, but it's still just a screensaver with swords.
Where's a GOOD RPG with a storyline? Character Development?
Where's this years System Shock 2? NWN? Eye of the Beholder? Morrowind? Fallout? Planescape Torment? BG2? Anything?
I've tried Sacred, DS2, and about 10 others that just sucked hard, either because of major bugs, or dull gameplay ( click-click-slash-slash-drink healing potion-repeat ).
Any suggestions? please? Or am I just going to have to wait for the Morrowind followup (Oblivion) and reinstall Nethack?
henry -- the human evolution news relay
What makes the game good:
- Neat (not too special) story line
- Tons of nice side quests
- Quite nice voice acting
- Some neat puzzels
- Rememberable locations (the old but pepped up engine put to good use)
- Few loading screens (teleporting)
- Enjoyable difficulty
- Pets!
The major drawbacks are:
- Linearity
- Lack of strategic combat handling.
- Buggy pathfinding
- Stupid AI
- Badly scaling engine (got a gforce 6800gt, amd64 3500, 1gb ram and it lags like hell on large scale battles)
- Ugly textures on closeup and the heroes look like shit most of the time, especially casters.
- Total ripoff of known titles (diablo, nwn)
- Teleporter animation: YEARGH!!!
- Music featured by the usually genious Jeremy Soule tends to be annyoing in times, especially in the town Aman'lu.