Dungeon Siege 2

Just wanted to holler out that I've been playing Dungeon Siege 2 on and off in case anyone else has played it or are curious about it.

Alot of the features are similar to the original Dungeon Siege except there seems to be more functionality in this version, thankfully. The movement is the same and I'm still not happy with the preset path the characters have to take...a little too linear for my taste. I guess I'm partial to wanting that free roaming capability offered in some other RPGs. Nevertheless, there seems to be all new creatures and items as well as a pretty decent storyline to follow with a primary quest along with subquests to take on. The game still has the four skill paths...the two magic paths of Combat or Nature magic, the Ranger and the Melee paths. You can choose to be a Dryad, a Half-Giant, a Human, or an Elf for your main character each with their own special characteristics. The inventory is set up the same way. Special item sets can be found again. This time instead of adding members to your party as you go, you have to pay a set fee to up the number of members in your party first. You have the option to raise a "pet" as part of your party and it's skills will grow on level with your own. They've added more merchants such as necromancers whom for a fee can resurrect your fallen party members or transport you somewhere else. There is storage in every town now to stash stuff instead of having packmules. Some items can be enchanted now so you can make your own custom items and the game graphics are so much better. Furthermore, there are more movie clips into the storyline and real voice scripts which add depth to the overall game experience. LAN and multiplayer online is available if wanted.

After finishing through the game once, I added some cool mods made by Guru-a DS2 fan modder. I highly recommend finishing the original game as is before adding mods...the ones Guru offers can be considered cheat mods. With his +EXP mod, my characters got 2X experience for kills (he had a 4X one). Also, he has a mod for magic item drops which causes enemies to drop a magic item upon death. Some of these magic items require high level character requirements in order to be equipped which is why the XP mod comes in handy. In order to hold all that wonderful elite magical items dropped, Guru made a mod which allows pets to carry four pages of inventory.

Why would I want to play with these mods? As I said, I recommend these type of mods only AFTER the game has been completed once through. I use mods like these to see item availability and choices which would never have been able to be seen until very high levels have been reached. I enjoy seeing all the attributes to a game, but realistically, I don't see myself playing a game after it's beaten just to reach level 100 and still maybe never see the uber items that could have been dropped (we're talking very low chances)

Here are some screenies I took:

Amhren: i27.photobucket.com/albums/c153/cncmomma/amhren6.jpg

Aranna: i27.photobucket.com/albums/c153/cncmomma/aranna3.jpg

Drevin: i27.photobucket.com/albums/c153/cncmomma/drevin5.jpg

Gratuitous gore: i27.photobucket.com/albums/c153/cncmomma/gore7.jpg

Jailbait: i27.photobucket.com/albums/c153/cncmomma/jail10.jpg

Movieshot I like: i27.photobucket.com/albums/c153/cncmomma/movie2.jpg

The bad man..otherwise known as Valdis: i27.photobucket.com/albums/c153/cncmomma/valdis1.jpg

Valdis...because bad guys seem to look the coolest in games: i27.photobucket.com/albums/c153/cncmomma/valdis4.jpg

Yes...again...Valdis: i27.photobucket.com/albums/c153/cncmomma/valdis8.jpg

OK, so there you have it...Dungeon Seige 2 is an immensely fun and engrossing game to play. Overall, DS2 is, in my opinion, much, MUCH better than the first DS.