Dungeon Siege 2: Broken Sword PC Review

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Dungeon Siege 2: Broken Sword improves on the original game wonderfully, the skill system works beautifully to provide better control over your character's development, and it improves the overall experience a few notches and ramps up the entertainment value of the title.

Dungeon Siege 2: Broken Sword has been improved in all the areas that were criticized by gamers in the original Dungeon Siege, with a finely tuned character development element, a more challenging gaming experience, and a deeper and more involved game play for veterans to explore.

The button mapping included with Dungeon Siege 2: Broken Sword is very useful, making it easy to have your party mirror your actions, go into Rampage mode and kill everything in sight, or switch between characters within your group on the fly for seamless game play.

Dungeon Siege 2: Broken Sword only includes a few types of characters for you to recruit to fill out your party, but you can get pets (through purchases) that can be upgraded as they age.

The visual spell effects are a bit weak for many of the spells, especially the elemental spells, which look a little dull and lackluster.

The voice acting included with Dungeon Siege 2: Broken Sword is below average; the actors' voices are kind of boring and dull, and they seem to lack energy, like they were disinterested in their parts. The dialogue is pretty bad, which is probably the reason for this obvious boredom.

Dungeon Siege 2: Broken Sword has a unique fantasy setting, with atmospheres and environments that have been wonderfully created to immerse your senses in a reality beyond our own. The detailed objects and characters look absolutely stunning, even with the blurred effect that seems to be a feature of the scenes. The assorted environments and regions have enough variety to provide interest and the feel of a cohesive fantasy world. Shadowy forests, dark dungeons, and barren forests all look natural and provide enough options to help provide for great game play.

The character animations are reasonably smooth, but occasionally they look a little unnatural and awkward, which can take you out of the moment.

Dungeon Siege 2: Broken Sword comes with a fully orchestrated themed-soundtrack from Jeremy Soule that helps set the mood and atmosphere in each region wonderfully, adding energy to the pace when necessary or slowing it down when things are a little more thoughtful. It was fresh and delightful, sitting in the background unnoticed. The music doesn't repeat constantly, so you only notice it when the moment arises.

The sound quality is amazing, with sound effects that are sharp and clear, and totally distinctive and memorable. The sounds of battle are almost constant as you play the game, but at least they are fresh and don't sound like they come from a can.

Dungeon Siege 2: Unbroken Sword is an RPG that takes place over three acts, each with a varying number of parts that often culminate in challenging boss battles. This is a fantasy story, very Tolkien-inspired like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but it only seems to exist as a glue to tie all the set pieces used in the game together into a reasonably cohesive canvas.

Dungeon Siege 2: Broken Sword allows you to eventually add up to six controllable characters to your party, but it took me a long and arduous 45 - 60 hours to get there after starting with two.

You can control only one character at a time during combat, but you can give commands to your party members with the push of a button.

The AI included with Dungeon Siege 2: Broken Sword is intelligent. You can tell companions where to go and what to do and they'll actually complete the request.

Four character classes are included: Ranger, fighter, combat mage, and nature mage. The class of your character, however, is chosen by the path you take while playing Dungeon Siege. You can even learn special powers based on the developmental path you have chosen for your characters.

The learning curve of Dungeon Siege 2: Broken Sword is reasonable shallow, so it's pretty easy to learn to play and get right into the game without too much trouble. The game includes several challenging difficulty levels, but you have to defeat the game on easy to unlock further settings. You can play through the game using co-op with a friend via LAN or online, or you can import a party from your single player campaign.

It took me over 40 hours to make it to the veteran difficulty level and then over 40 hours to reach the elite setting of Dungeon Siege 2.

Dungeon Siege 2: Broken Sword is long, yet unique adventure with wonderfully designed combat and game play that provides hours and hours of entertainment for the RGP fanatic. Despite the nice length of Dungeon Siege 2: Unbroken Sword, the game could be a much more challenging game with a few tweaks that would have improved the entertainment value by a few ranks. Fanatics who like an entertaining dungeon crawl should certainly try Dungeon Siege 2 at least once or twice, but beyond that, they probably won't be coming back for more. New gamers will certainly be entertained, but unless they have patience and like this kind of game, they'll eventually become bored and search elsewhere for easier and less drawn-out entertainment.