The advantage of hybriding games...using the best and forgeting the worst.

User Rating: 9.2 | Dungeon Siege II PC
By SSJ4_majin | Review Date:
It's hard to be original in a world where most ideas have been used, so you have to do the next best thing... take the best from everything and mix them up in one. This is what the guys from Gas Powered Games™ did with Dungeon siege 2: they’ve created a hybrid between a lot of successful games. Of course, for creating a hybrid, you need a starting point with a small amount of originality. In the past Diablo ruled the market without a contender, for the simple fact that the game was very accessible. The first contender was Dungeon siege 1. It failed because of the small amount of quests and items. The idea of the party was fantastic but you did not have enough control over it and it became frustrating sometimes. The skill tree was to similar to Diablo so nothing came as a surprise.
Personally DS2 will fail as its predecessor (what can I say, I loved Diablo) but is definitely the closest any game will ever get to dethroning Diablo.
First of all, the story: based a little on Heroes 3 (I think) the story revolves around a Sword and a Shield, both with great powers. Of course the two met and a great cataclysm destroyed the first age of men as a result of the conflict. In the second age a big dude called Valdis manages to get the Sword, becoming almost invincible, and start’s looking for the Shield. Enter a mercenary on his side: you. Start on the bad-guy side, **** hits the fan; he tries to kill you, believes he did, you get captured by good guys, you convert… and so on.
The races are very few… they could of done a lot better. There are only four races: humans, elfs and dryads. Also only four Classes of development: Fighter, Ranger, Battle mage and Nature mage. I guess they wanted to keep things as simple as possible. I’m not going to tell you more because the game elaborates more in the beginning.
The party is finally under your full control. To be successful you will need a tank, a healer and a damage dealer. A little tip from me: damage dealer=battle mage, but make sure to get at least 1 level of nature magic on him so you benefit a skill of mana-cost reduction.
The game, believe it or not, is much more chaotic than Diablo. You MUST use pause game if you want to stand a chance (in pause you can give orders like cast a strong magic or take a potion).
The Game-play is, well, hard. In the beginning you manage, but the game overwhelms you very fast. You have to stay in control and use every advantage you can get. Tip Number 2: ranged attacks don’t go up a hill (BUG).The skill-tree is a combination of Diablo and World of Warcraft, using the best of both worlds. Skill points are used in passive powers that combined create active special hits than can be used.
The spell-book contains three types of slots: active spell, spells that you can use in combat and switch between, reserve spells that are just slots used to free space in the inventory and Auto-cast spells : two spells that are casted automatically no matter what you are doing. The auto-cast spells are great for healers and for curses. The spell is cast only when needed.

Remember that this: the game is a RPG not a hack-and-slash. Use your skills in winning a battle.

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