The original Dungeon Siege is one of my favorite games, but I’m extremely disappointed with the expansion pack. While the games share the strength of the Dungeon Siege engine, poor play balancing and dull level design in the expansion creates a repetitive and boring experience. Having played the original twice, I began Legends of Aranna on the hardest difficulty. By simply having the patience to break open all the crates and sift through all the treasure, my party was near invincible in comparison to my enemies after only about 30 minutes of play. As my characters grew in experience and found even more magical and powerful armaments, they stayed several steps ahead of the increasingly powerful enemy. This allowed my small party to slice through monster after monster, rarely using healing spells and even more rarely using healing potions. With gameplay this unbalanced, the strategic points of the original Dungeon Siege are completely lost, as you really don’t need to pay attention to kill wave after wave of inferior monsters. Level design is also lacking compared to the original. The original game packed a variety of interesting, challenging monsters into a detailed world. Legends of Aranna contains only sparsely populated monsters scattered throughout a long trek of indistinguishable underground caverns and forests. The original Dungeon Siege combined a variety of monsters in a large group to create tactical challenges, while the expansion places small groups of similar monsters that can be easily disbanded. While ‘crate smashing’ was an annoying task even in the original, crates contained much needed supplies or hard earned treasure. In Legends of Aranna, I honestly believe I encountered more crates than monsters. These crates and vases are scattered randomly around the map in dense clusters, and the repetitive clicks to smash through them all is truly a test of patience. The game provides a large amount of treasure for very little work, causing much more time spent smashing crates and viewing treasure than in actual combat. The new monsters encountered in the game are completely unoriginal. Cat people, Lizard people, and uncreative variations of some previous ideas aren’t as captivating as the wide variety of new creatures encountered in the original. Another disappointment was the selection of items found at the shops. The magical items found during questing were far more powerful than anything sold in the shops. This takes away from the RPG formula of slaying monsters, selling loot, and purchasing more powerful items. In fact, with so many great armaments lying around in unguarded crates, you’re left to wonder why your enemies can’t put up a better fight. Maybe they would rather die than have to break open any more crates…
Other Helpful Reviews for Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna
This is a great expansion for a super hack and slash RPG. If you liked dungeon siege I would recommend this to you. It is basically more of the same, but adds some news features that will please hard core players (back... Read Full Review
I'm not sure why Gamespot reviewers don't like these games. They may not be as deep as some other RPG offerings but they are a lot of fun. This is a game I can get in and out of quickly when I don't have a lot of time ... Read Full Review
