Dungeon Siege II: Broken World

I have played Dungeon Siege II and its expansion through twice already but something made me start a new game once again. This time I decided to make a weapon and a shield using Fist of Stone (melee and nature mage hybrid) character instead of the usual dual-wielding pure melee build I favor.

As companions I picked Deru (ranged: bow), Taar (nature mage: healer + ice magic), and Finala (combat mage: lightning). The embrace spell of choice was (as always) Spirit Embrace -- elemental resistances and immunity to curses for the party; what's there not to like.

The wrath spell was a bit harder to decide on. I have used the Wrath of the Bear in the past (increased critical hit damage) but went for the Wrath of Ice (melee and ranged attacks do bonus ice damage + a chance to freeze targets) this time as it fits the ice and lightning theme of the party. The obvious curse to use was of course Drown (dot + increased vulnerability to ice and lightning).

I must say I found the game to be much harder than I recalled it to be. One reason for this could be the fact last time I used a Reasonably Better Loot mod, which essentially meant that my party was pretty fast wearing complete item sets and uniques. But then again, the Dungeon Siege games are always harder until your party grows into a comfortable size -- in the first game you could have a grand total of eight characters in your party (iirc), which meant that in most encounters you were more numerous than the enemies.

I think having a defensive main character instead of offensive had something to do with the difficulties I encountered as well. Your character just isn't sturdy enough at the start, no matter the build (I think), and enemies dying slower means you take more damage. And the dual-wielder's power, Waves of Force, is easily the most powerful in the game. (The expansion nerfs it a bit.)

Things finally got easier in Act 2 when I got to pick the fourth party member (Finala) and enemies started dying faster. I'm not quite convinced about the two hybrid builds Broken World adds. If there was no Stone of Fist skill tree, my main character would have started picking the offensive melee abilities instead. It's hard to tell which is more optimal. Although, one thing is certain -- my character did her job and stayed alive nevertheless. I found tanking to be quite a welcome challenge at times, though: combat mage's curse does a great job at drawing aggro.

The playthrough was pleasant and I'm eventually going to go through the two harder difficulty levels as well, picking Eva (melee: dual-wield) and Ressa (blood assassin: throwing weapons) to my party on the way.

Dungeon Siege II is one of my favorite games. It adds a lot of stuff to the original Dungeon Siege game, making it a much more interesting and interactive gaming experience.

It doesn't quite capture the strangely alluring atmosphere of its predecessor though. However, DS2 and its expansion have their own cool thing going on; the world is much lusher and the world textures have more variation. Weapon enchants and spell effects have been improved as well, not to even mention the new flashy class powers.

One thing they failed in is enchanting. To me it seems the only major game developers making it right thus far have been Blizzard with their Horadric Cube in Diablo II, and of course the World of Warcraft's enchanting profession. Where DS2's enchanting system fails is being attractive; the only thing I ever go for is a ring or two enchanted with +15% magic find reagents to get better drops.

Broken World does improve enchanting somewhat by adding a bunch of recipes that drop as loot, which, when used, create a unique or even a set item using the enchanting system. Reagent hunt can sometimes get more than slightly tedious, leading into reloading your game multiple times to get the right reagents to spawn in merchants' inventory. At least if you don't want to go adventuring without the possibly useful items.

Even for a first run I'd recommend using couple mods to remove the ugly selection rings under characters (in DS1 there was an option to turn them off) and one to remove the also ugly mouse-over outlines from creatures and game world objects. The latter one might be weird at first but you get used to it quickly enough. And it makes the game look better. Also, mods that increase fog distance and camera angles are nice. (I think these two are included in a load-all-saves mod, which of course refused to work for me.)

There was a side effect with one of the mods; the secret switches and plates that usually show as dots on the mini-map were gone. A good thing I had not forgotten where to look for them.

I believe both games, Dungeon Siege I and II, are given free (or were at some point) for those who preorder Dungeon Siege III, which should be coming later this year. I wonder if it manages to improve the Dungeon Siege series even further.

In other news, I finished Titan Quest: Immortal Throne with a Conjurer (Earth & Spirit trees). It wasn't a pleasant experience, and I'm not planning to take the character through the harder difficulties.

Edited 2021-04-28: Fixed typos and removed deprecated screenshot carousel.