Dungeon Siege 2

[Phred]

Haven't seen any mention of this here yet so I thought I'd toss out a mini review. It's definately a decent game. Good for any diablo 2 junkies who want a gear finding fix. It's a lot like DS1, same terrain style with invisible walls everywhere, so it feels kind of linear, but it has a ton more quests that take you back and forth around the world. Some quests are dependent on which npcs you have in your party, and they've made a slight attempted at baldur's gate style npc interaction between your party members. It's kind of funny hearing the half giant I have in my party hitting on the dryad occasionally. It has 3 difficulty levels, like diablo 2, unlockable by beating the game at the previous level, and lots of nice set items, uniques and rares as well. The game has mini bosses in it, denoted by a glowing ring around them, sprinkled randomly around the world. One thing that I found quite cool was the boss fights that pop up occassionally were well designed, with some scripted events to them, rather than basically pile on and reduce hp to zero type fights. One interesting fight against a dragon I had to aim and fire a balista at it while being assaulted by giant crabs that were being thrown at the tower the dragon was attacking by catapults.

They've also added a skill tree which allows you to beef up your fighter's toughness, mages damage and summon abilities and ranger's archery damage. As well there are powers which you can upgrade by selecting certain combinations of skills. One unique power for a single player game is ae taunt that fighters can get. This makes it handy to pull agro off a caster who is getting beat down as well as bunch up a pile of monsters so your mages can drop a couple of huge ae power bombs on them. I've heard some critcism that the powers make the game too easy, but I tend to keep mine in reserver rather than using them all the time so I didn't particularly notice this.

They've responded to the criticism of DS1 playing itself by making the default a click to attack model. You need to repeatedly click or click and hold to keep up attacks. However, for those who don't particularly like this mad clicking style gameplay you can set it to a 1 click continuous attack mode in the options similar to ds1. You can also set your main character to react to attacks in the options menu as well. I prefer playing it this way though it does have the occasional glitch where my character seems to switch mobs after having been told to attack 1 to respond to another attacking him.

The main problems in the game I've found so far are; questionable replayability, as the level maps are identical every time you play it unlike diablo 2 and difficultly at higher levels.  At higher levels it seems your party is too strong against the monsters, as you have better equipment with more resists as well. Dispite the fact the added mob strengths at higher levels it still seems a bit easier to mow through them than at lower levels.

I've tried it online where they have gamespy providing a closed battlenet type of character save serverside and it seems to work ok. I only did pickup games as I don't currently know anyone who has the game to play with but technically it seemed to work fine. I am behind a NAT router and when someone failed to connect to me the game popped up a url that took me to a page describing exactly which ports I needed to forward in order to host properly, which worked first try.

If anyone is playing or decides to get the game and is into some online action I'd be happy to play a new character in a coop game with them. PM me if you're interested.

[Strazos]

I played through the demo. I did not like how they ended it.

Though, after turning "autoattack" on for my main character, the game became MUCH more enjoyable. Also, the autocasting of buffs and heals helps a lot.

I'll probably get this in October, when I actually have some money.

[Kail]

They've responded to the criticism of DS1 playing itself by making the default a click to attack model. You need to repeatedly click or click and hold to keep up attacks.

I... agh... but... grr... they... what?!  That... aaargh!  I mean... just... (vocabulary... failing... cannot find words... to describe idiocy...) That's their solution?!

How's the balance this time around?  I think I remember mages being pretty screwed in the original game.  That's pretty much what killed it for me; my brother being something like a 23 fighter, and me being like a 13 or 14 mage (even though these characters always played together).  My brother found a grenade launcher or something that had a strength requirement, so he could outdamage me at range (and at melee, of course), had better armor and HP, better hit rate, gained experience faster, and never needed to rest for mana.

[Strazos]

I might go out tomarrow and just drop ths on the credit card. I have money coming anyway....

[Signe]

I might go out tomarrow and just drop ths on the credit card. I have money coming anyway....

You got a sugar mama!  Good job!

[Shockeye]

I might go out tomarrow and just drop ths on the credit card. I have money coming anyway....

You got a sugar mama!  Good job!

She prefers to be called "Wonder Woman" and it looks like most of the Wonder has gone out of her.

[Strazos]

Actually, she perfers to be called "The Bursar's Office of Rowan University"

[Nija]

I powergamed for about 30 hours into the single player, and i've done 2 quests into act 3, so i'm on the final act..

But I've not played this entire week. It's just more of the same. My Combat Mage is real powerful and I just keep getting upgraded versions of spells I've had since the beginning.

[Phred]

How's the balance this time around?  I think I remember mages being pretty screwed in the original game.  That's pretty much what killed it for me; my brother being something like a 23 fighter, and me being like a 13 or 14 mage (even though these characters always played together).  My brother found a grenade launcher or something that had a strength requirement, so he could outdamage me at range (and at melee, of course), had better armor and HP, better hit rate, gained experience faster, and never needed to rest for mana.

It's hard to say as I've mainly played the whole party thing so far. Experience is done differently for one thing. Everyone in a group shares experience equally. All my characters pretty well ding within about 5 min of each other. The only drawback to the experience system is they've incorporated some anti powerlevel code into it and even stupidly applied it ot the single player game. I put my archer in the inn and played with pets for a while to see what powers and auras they got, and got distracted and didnt go back for my archer until I was about 12 levels higher. The archer was so heavily penalized on exp gain she would not catch back up but would have slipped even further behind, as well as being ineffective on the deep red mobs we fought. Fortunately it seems there's a 20 level limit on inn stays after which characters get bumped up to your level -1 (20 or so, not sure and none of this is documented) So basically I put my archer back in the inn and grabbed one of the other ones. I never did get around to putting the original archer back in my team.

As to mage balance, his lightning bolts with talents and all hit for around 1100 min to 1900 max while my neture mage's entangle spell hits for 3400-4100. I'm not sure his dps is up to a dual wielding warrior though as there's no way to track dps in this game. A dual wielding warrior with the elemental talent they get for damage add is a serious powerhouse. As well, unlike most mmog's and other games there doesn't appear to be any penalty for that second weapon, so dual weild is very nasty. I discovered late in the game the nature and combat mages can dip into each other's talent pools for some nice improvements, the nature mage picking up increased mana per int while the combat mage got the nature tree's mana reduction. You can train up skills very easily later in the game as it seems that low level spells hitting high level mobs levels the skill up really fast. It took maybe an hour for both mages to hit the high 30's in each other's skills to qualify for the top talents. Some gear comes with bonuses to both trees as well so mage builds can get kind of interesting.

The summoned pets are kind of nice too. Nature mages get a talent to share health with their pets so every hit the mage takes 30% goes to the pet who typically has way more hp than the mage. As Nija mentions though, the spell advancement gets kind of repetitive and their spell design is pretty basic. The interesting stuff is in the talents more than spells. Almost every nature mage pet for instance has the same hp and armor, the only difference is in their dps and special characteristics. My favorite is the forest golem who reflects a huge amount of damage back for every hit he takes at higher levels. Combined with the pet taunt talent this can make him pretty nasty.

Same as diablo 2 though, you'll have everything you're gonna get by 30, from there on it's just upgraded versions of the same things.

[Llava]

What??  It's out?!?

FUCK!!!!

Damnit, I need to pay more attention!!

Chris Taylor said he'd give me a free copy if I emailed him on release day.  Goddamnit. There goes my free copy.

[Nija]

yeah, lightning hits for 1500 and nature hits for 3500, but the lightning i use will hit 3 random targets + each shot has a 40% chance to arc to another target. I just have to right click and hold on any monster that is alive and everything will be dead soon without any interaction. Actually I think i just had bad luck by blindly choosing a lightning mage. I think fire would have been much more interesting. Lightning really is the 'easy way' to play.

[Phred]

Until you run into lightning immune mobs in the next difficulty level at least. There isn't a really powerful fire spell, though fire bolt comes about as close as you need, as do the embers spells. Unfortunately, the ignite talent peaks out at 1/2 your int in damage per second for 3 seconds so it's not really that impressive. The worst thing about most of the potentially interesting fire spells is they tend to miss a lot of mobs as they are designed to fan fan out or bounce around.

I've run across bosses immune to fire, death and lightning which sucks. I keep meaning to level up archery on my mage but never remember to buy a bow low enough for him to be able to equip it when I'm back in the newbie town. Plus the new interface makes switching to a bow a lot more awkward than the old ds1 interface, so I'd lose the set bonus off my lich's fists in my weapon slot too.

Death magic has some pretty kickass spells in it but most of the final chapters feature mobs that are immune to it, or worse, in elite level it actually heals them. I keep seeing 320 heals pop up over enemies heads now and I realized it was coming from one of my warrior's swords that had added death damage on it. As the swords he's using are part of a set I really don't want to replace them though.

Another interesting aspect of the game is the curses. Blindness is pretty cool, lowering the chance to hit on all melee and ranged attacks. Currently I'm using drown which is a dot and also lowers lightning and ice resists. Pumping up the talent that increases the effectiveness of curses can put a serious dent in many of the monster's resists, ac, or accuracy. A nice complement to the nature mage's buffs, which can add to crit damage, hp, or one of my favorites which adds ice damage to all melee weapons and a 5% chance to freeze the target for 5 sec.

[Strazos]

Just picked it up. Open to try multiplayer with people.

[SurfD]

anyone run into any of the crushingly evil bugs in the game?

I discovered 2 which pissed me off to no end:

There is a chance that the Old man you need to interact with to open the pass Off the starter island will get Stuck in his script where he asks you to help him, and you basilly have to restart your game from scratch (unless you saved fairly soon before talking to him, but sometimes even loading an old save wont help).  Total gamestopper there

There is a sidequest for one of the teammates you can get where you bring her back to fix a broken elevator.  I fixed the elevator and it was still broken, completely preventing me from progressing in that sidequest.

[Strazos]

Did you try the patch?

[Phred]

I had the old man get bugged. I think it happens if you accidently click him and start a conversation in the middle of the fight. I had to restart and it sucked but it's not that far in at least. I have never got around to doing the elevator quest because I really dont need another combat mage in my party so haven't run across that one.

According to the patch notes it only fixes some multiplayer bugs, but it also refused to load my saved game from the original so I backed out of it. Wasn't having any online bugs when I tried multiplayer.

[Strazos]

I just learned that I have to complete the entire game with only 4 people in order to play the medium difficulty and have a fifth person.

  SAD PANDA IS ME!


My party was shaping up to be a 2hander warrior, a sword and board tank warrior, a pet/healing nature mage, a nuker/healing nature mage, and an archer.

Whoever came up with the idea of only letting you have 4 people unless you want to beat the game multiple times is a moron.

[WindupAtheist]

Anti-powerleveling code.

For single player.

Fuck that.

[Sairon]

I've played this game tons. I played solo on internet, since it's basicly the same thing, and then I can use my "single player" char in multiplayer games if I wish. The only real restriction seems to be that I can only have 4 peeps total in my party, and I only want 1 char anyway, I dislike this party deal. I did a little testing and well, the game is very unbalanced it seems. Rangers totaly OWN, and that's what I'm playing.

My ranger has like 70% chance to fire arrows which goes through mobs. If the mob is far enough away, every pass through will trigger an PBAOE effect which does additional 25% or so dmg. There's also a skill which increases dmg by 70%, critical chance by 50% and lastly a skill which makes critical shots deal 400% dmg. Now these skills togheter with a huge ass monster pull means major hurting, since it becomes a sort of chain reaction kind of deal. To top the matter of it earns enormous ammounts of "power" which means that I can shoot of a skill which does 2700% extra dmg and 100% passes through mobs. 1 of those shoots is a sure kill on everything in a straight line infront of you. If I'm fighting a boss I have a move which does 4700% extra dmg to a single target, and it's VERY fast recharge, I can basicly fire it off every second arrow with my gear. So imagine first 70% extra dmg, then 4700% on top of that, and if it crits, that 4700% extra dmg turns into ~19000% extra. That's like 30 000 dmg with my current bow.

[Strazos]

I never understood the appeal of going through an RPG with only 1 character...

[Sairon]

Well in my book DS has always been a hack n slash. Also, I hate to depend on crapy AI for my team mates.

[stray]

I never understood the appeal of going through an RPG with only 1 character...

Really? Like, stories can't be enjoyed from a single perspective or what? 

[Nebu]

I never understood the appeal of going through an RPG with only 1 character...

I'm completely the opposite.  I enjoy playing rpgs that are single person only.  All about personal preference I guess.

Maybe it's ego (enjoying having the adventure center around one toon), maybe it's not having to min/max multiple characters, or maybe it's about not having to depend on the AI.  I still hate having computer-controlled associates.  Could also be a reason I prefer multiplayer online games to single player... but that's a whole different story.

Note: I've played DS1, Diablo, Diablo 2, and many clones.  I still don't get the appeal... these games are really nothing special and I have yet to stay interested longer than a couple of hours.  I complete most of them just because I feel like I have to to justify the purchase... I need therapy.

[Dren]

The only times I really like multiple character solo games is with turn based combat.  I like having the control of combat and templates for each of them.  In RT, you are just adventuring with a bunch of robots and it always feels that way to me.  I still play those games, but it just isn't the same.

It would be fun to pick up for multiplayer games though. 

[Calantus]

I hate AI controlled companions. Either let me solo the damn thing or let me control my companions (<3 BG).