Dungeon Seige II: Broken World
Score: 75% ESRB: Mature Publisher: 2K Games Developer: Gas Powered Games Media: CD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Action/ RPG
Graphics & Sound: Dungeon Siege II: Broken World is pure expansion goodness. Picking up where vanilla Dungeon Siege II left off, the expansion plays just like the original, with some minor additions and modifications. As far as the window dressing goes, not much has changed. No major changes have been made to the game engine as far as I can tell. While the ambience of Dungeon Siege II could already get pretty dark in places, Broken World is even darker, which affects the general tone of the game graphics and sound. So, there’s new art, environments, sound and music, but it’s all more of the same of what you saw in the original.
Gameplay: Players who completed all three Acts of the original Dungeon Siege II know that the story ended on something of a sour note. Broken World plays like an Act Four, concluding the storyline of what occurred after Valdis was killed and the world was thrown into chaos. With the stakes higher than ever, the player will face more formidable foes than ever before. Some of these include Volatile Boggrot’s, which explode when killed, Bound Husks, Incinerating Bound Elves, and even familiars of the Dark Wizard himself. Aside from the story and new creatures, Broken World plays identically to the original game, with a few additions I talk about in Game Mechanics.
Difficulty: Being an expansion, it goes without saying that Broken World is more difficult than vanilla Dungeon Siege II and thus requires more powerful characters. Newly created characters are not allowed to partake of this fourth Act until they have completed the original game. If you want to skip right to the end, however, the expansion comes with some pre-built level 39 characters you can use.
Game Mechanics: New multiclass character types have also been introduced in Broken World. Fist of Stone’s combine melee prowess and defensive magic, while the Blood Assassin is a ranged attack marvel, melding ranged attacks and combat magic into a powerful offensive force. Some other new odds and ends introduced in the expansion are the ability to play as a dwarf, the ability to right-click and remove helpful spells and summoned creatures, two more autocast spell slots, and the ability to reset your skills. If you liked Dungeon Siege II, you’ll like Dungeon Siege II: Broken World.
-Alucard, GameVortex Communications AKA Stephen Triche
Minimum System Requirements: Windows XP SP1 or newer, 1.8 Ghz CPU or greater, 512MB RAM, ATI Radeon 7500 or Nvidia Geforce 5750 or better, 1.4GB Hard Drive Space, Dungeon Siege II required to play   Test System: Windows XP, Pentium IV 2.8 Ghz, 1.5GB RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro video card
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