Vendor's Overview
Players return to the world of Aranna and start an all-new adventure in the Dungeon Siege expansion pack, an addition to the popular Dungeon Siege PC title. Players are drawn outside the original Kingdom of Ehb into the wilds of Aranna to solve an ancient mystery.

The adventure reveals the origins, lives and eventual downfall of the ancient Utraean civilization. Building on the critically acclaimed gameplay found in Dungeon Siege, the expansion pack features a new part of the world to explore, fantastic creatures to battle, treasures to loot, mysteries to unlock, weapons to wield, armor for protection and unique items sets.

Features

• All-new campaign. Journey through nine spectacular areas, including an all-new jungle region, as you unravel the rich history and mystery of the world of Aranna.
• Additional spells. Mages wield dozens of new magic spells including Diminution, Animal Rage, Zorkon's Bonecrusher, and the Orb of Fire.
• Half-giant player character. Standing over nine feet tall, the new half-giant player character towers above the rest of the characters and attacks with a primal ferocity.
• Even more intense battles. As you adventure through Aranna, you'll encounter previously unseen creatures to battle, including the reptilian Zaurask and the catlike Hassat.
• Cooler treasures. Discover rare and powerful treasure sets among the spoils of battle that, when combined, grant the owner new and wondrous abilities.
• New pack animal. This pack animal fights back, defending the player's treasure to the death if necessary

Game Play
To those of you that have played Diablo or Diablo II on the Macintosh, Dungeon Siege will have a very familiar interface. You determine what your character will equip (armor and weapons), and as your character gains experience, better things can be equipped. You travel through different areas, killing enemy creatures, and picking up goodies that they leave behind (gold, armor, weapons, etc.). Dungeon Siege is broken down into chapters, and within each chapter are various quests to complete. You obtain information about your quests from people you meet along the way, mostly in towns. Some people want you to rid their basement of monsters, or retrieve some lost books, while the bigger quests focus on long term goals of fortifying a fort, retrieving an important artifact, or hunting down an evil enemy.

Legends of Aranna (LoA) is an expansion to the original Dungeon Siege, and the game comes with the original Dungeon Siege so you can play it if you haven't already (that also means that you don't already have to own it to use the expansion, unlike most expansions). The story in this sequel is much different than the original, and although there are a few new features in the game, the game play is pretty much the same. In many respects, that is a good thing. I really enjoyed Dungeon Siege, so being able to play more in this engine with an all new story and environment was a blast for me.

In Dungeon Siege you encounter other characters who are welling to join you on your quests. In the original, you sometimes had to pay a fee for the help, but I don't remember having to pay for any characters in LoA. There are more extra characters than there are available slots, so eventually, you have to let someone go once your party is filled and you meet someone you feel will benefit you more. I kind of get attached to the characters, so it was always a difficult decision for me. I did it twice, and both times I corralled the players into a safe area (towns or villages), and even kept them equipped with weapons and armor (even though they would never be in danger unless they were a part of my party). Go ahead and laugh.

In addition to your comrades, you can also purchase mules in certain towns, providing you with extra capacity for collecting items as you go. I found the mules quite useful, as it meant less effort picking and choosing what to keep when my inventory was full... just throw it on the mule. New in LoA are pack animals that behave as mules in that they follow you around and carry your stuff, but they also fight back. Your game party has a limit of 8 characters, including mules and pack animals. In the beginning it's not an issue, but once you have 6 characters and 2 mules, and then encounter another character, sacrifices have to be made (lose a mule or a weaker character to accept a new character). Fortunately, LoA also introduces new back packs that each character can purchase from a shop, allowing you to carry much more, and eliminating your need for a pack animal.

What really sets Dungeon Siege apart from other RPG's I've played is the interface, graphics, and soundtrack. The interface is something you notice immediately, as everything uses true 3D modeling, and zooming and angling is as simple to control as moving the mouse. You can change your perspective 360 degrees at any time, and zoom close enough to see the details of your characters, or far out enough to see all your characters plus much of the terrain. The 3D graphics are unbelievable. Great detail has been given to every object, creature, plant, building, and rock. The terrain effects are five star. There are areas where it is raining, snowing, or fog drifting in, and the translucent affects of the weather, as well as obstacles which might otherwise block your view, are done fantastically well. For instance, you may be heading into a forest area thick in trees, but once you get right up on the trees, the translucent effect allows you to see past the trees, providing you better visibility and creating the next best thing to peripheral vision. And while the effects enhance the visual experience, they don't impede on the game play, as most of the "eye candy" you can virtually walk through (such as trees, plants and small rocks). The larger items, such as buildings, cliffs, boulders, fences, and other objects that are intended to block passage must be ventured around. LoA introduces some new terrain and creatures, although much of the terrain and creatures are quite familiar. One thing that did stand out in my mind was that there were a lot more climbing, scaling up high mountains, turn after turn. It was almost as breathtaking to stand on the cliff of these mountains as it is in real life. Spectacular views up there.

The sound effects in the game are great, as is hinted immediately when you start the game and watch and listen to the effects of the game menu. Once in the game, everything comes to life. From rivers to rain, critters to characters, everything has a sound, and there is a strong sense of a living environment that you travel through. Added to the great sound effects is perhaps my favorite part of the game, the music soundtracks. The music is original, intense, and wonderfully integrated into the story. From one area to the next, the music transitions perfectly, and each area has it's own theme, some are variations of earlier themes, while others are completely unique. You can be walking through gorgeous and spooky caves with eerie music, or traveling along steep cliffs with fog rolling down the mountain side with suspenseful music. LoA introduces some new music, but I was also quite pleased to hear the familiar sound of the character's theme. It is a very vibrant piece that adds to the intensity of game play (makes you feel like Indiana Jones).

The "cut scenes" are another thing of beauty in Dungeon Siege. Cut scenes are those movies that are breaks between chapters and at the start and end of certain quests. In most other games, especially older games, these cut scenes shift from the game screen to a movie which is of a greater and completely different style and quality from actual gameplay, often showing generic scripted scenes regardless of the player. In Dungeon Siege, this has been taken to the next level. Utilizing the amazing 3D engine in the game, Dungeon Siege plays the cut scenes live, right in the game, with the scenes and characters that are already in use. During the scene, it pauses the player's ability to control any of the characters, as angled shots shift and slide, like in a movie. Text scrolls at the bottom along with a scripted voice describing the scene. These characters that you dressed, trained, and befriended during your journeys become the stars of each movie. LoA implemented this in the same fashion as the original.

There are some monotonous scenes in LoA, where you must go from area to area, several in succession, fighting the same battle over and over again. After having done that for so long in Dungeon Siege, I found myself a little more bored with tedious battles in LoA. Besides having all kinds of new weapons and armor to discover (including magical items that made the character glow), there were special "set" items. These were items that as you found each item in the set, each items special value dramatically increased. For instance, a set could be a Sword, Helm, and Ring. If you just have the Ring, it may give you a defense value of 4 (you try to build up your defense value throughout the game), but in combination with the Helm, the value may become 8, and with all 3 items, the value may be 16. The one thing about these sets, especially the ones you get early on, is that once you finally get all the items, you don't want to part with it (even when you've advanced so far in the game that their elevated special powers are insignificant). The other thing about these items is that you have to explore more to ensure that you don't miss some creature or treasure chest that may be holding one. Sometimes you just don't feel like exploring every nook and cranny; hence, I only completed 2 or 3 of the sets, while having partial items of all the rest.

I really like the new features, especially the back packs, and the "distribute" potion button that distributed your health and mana potions accordingly amongst your party (taking out the tediousness of doing this manually). These are features that removed the tediousness from the game, which allows you to enjoy the game play more. They could easily improve on this, because one of the most tedious aspects of the game is redistributing armor and weapons based upon the players ability. For example, some items required high dexterity, while others required a lot of strength, and others required more intelligence. Picking and choosing what each character is going to wear and wield is fun to a point. A lot of the number crunching I had to do in my head to determine the best players for an item was not fun, and something that a computer can (and should have) helped me with.

I also noticed more interface problems in LoA then I did in Dungeon Siege. For one, on several occasions, when I had my party selected and was ascending from a stairway, the upper level that they were ascending to was shown as black (even though I had already explored that area), and I was unable to move the characters into the area. Sometimes this was so bad, I thought I was stuck for good, but with enough juggling of the players (and patience), the game eventually recognized that I was trying to ascend, and let my party out into the sunlight.

The overview mapping function is somewhat limited as well. In LoA, there is a new feature for "world" map that shows you where you are in the world (versus the detailed overview map). Although I though this was interesting, I did not find this feature too helpful in navigating. For navigation, you use your memory and the overview map. The overview map spins around as you use your mouse to pivot around your party, so it's really easy to forget where you were coming from or where you are going. I tried a bread crumb trick (dropping certain items in certain places to let me know where I've been), but the items that I dropped disappeared eventually. New in LoA are "displacers" that help in getting back to a town after a long and hard fought journey, and that was a good thing. The first displacer I came across, however, I somehow got one of my players stuck on the edge of it, and no matter what I did, I could not free him. I eventually had to quit and go back to a previously saved game.

Most of the time, the dialog of other characters changed as you progressed, but sometimes they were inappropriately unchanged. In one town that was made up of sections connected by bridges, I was told by a guard to rid the city of the "Lizard" people (and this become one of my tasks). However, after completing the task, the guard still asked for the same thing.

In the very end, after completing the final quest, it felt like LoA was shorter than the original Dungeon Siege. On the other hand, I found that the final battle scene with the Shadow Jumper was much tougher than the final battle scene in Dungeon Siege (this is a good thing, as the final battle in the original seemed too easy). I failed several times, and even when I did succeed, the majority of my party had died in the battle. Fortunately, I had plenty of resurrection scrolls to bring them back to life (and the main character had to be brought back to life in order to trigger mission success).

After your Shadow Jumper journey is completed, you can then journey out onto the internet to travel with other Dungeon Siege players through a whole new set of maps (both original Dungeon Siege and LoA). As with any internet play, you are at the mercy of the internet throughput, and your co-players can enter or leave any time they choose (unlike your faithful comrades in single player mode). I found the internet play interesting, but it didn't keep my attention or fascination as much as the single player game.

Summary
Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna is a sequel to the original Dungeon Siege RPG. The Dungeon Siege engine does a good job of removing much of the RPG tediousness out of the game, and while LoA includes more features to help in that respect, it doesn't remove it all. Equipping your characters can still be tedious. However, the majority of the time you are adventuring off into breathtaking cinematic environments, engaging in exciting battles with strange creatures, wielding swords and crossbows, casting magic spells, all with an easy-to-use streamlined interface that allows you to focus on the game play. It immerses you into a living world full of beautiful graphics, sounds, and music, and challenges you with interesting quests and a huge variety of enemies to fight against. It is one of the most rewarding gaming experiences I've had in a long time. With the exception of a few slight interface quarks, and the downside of not yet being available for the Mac platform, Legends of Aranna is a wonderful expansion to Dungeon Siege.

Pros

• Streamline interface with 360 degree perspective
• Awesome sound effects and music soundtracks
• Gorgeous 3D graphic game play and integrated cut scenes
• Great new features (like back packs and potion distribution)
• All new story line and new quests

Cons

• Not yet available on the Mac
• Limited overview map function
• A few interface quarks
• Tedious weapon and armor distribution

Overall Rating:

4 out of 5 Mice