Dungeon Siege may not be revolutionary for an RPG in its time, but it was particularly noted for very, very handy features and controls that made playing the game very easy. Watching the player characters go about playing the game for the player was also amusing to some players who are used to (or tired of) holding the hands of player characters in RPGs.
However, this appeal would only last for one Dungeon Siege title – namely the first. The expansion to the game, or any of the later titles in the series for that matter, would not benefit from this.
Unfortunately, the acclaim of the first Dungeon Siege game might have gotten to Gas Powered Games' head; it might have thought that it could crank out the next entry to the franchise without much of anything new and expect it to sell. That Legends of Aranna was developed by once-independent Mad Doc Software (now Rockstar New England) would have provided some warning signs to potential customers too: before this game, Mad Doc Software either made some just-decent games, or mediocre ones.
Legends of Aranna would have been seen as the latter, utterly so if Mad Doc Software had damaged the achievements of the original game. Fortunately, it did not, but the resulting game, which is a standalone expansion that also includes the original game, would leave a player that had played the original wondering whether he/she has wasted time on a game that isn't worth his/her while.
Legends of Aranna's story starts out much like the one in the original game. The main player character is again a lowly peasant farmer, though instead of rising to be a hero out of a crisis of personal tragedy, he/she has the motivation of wander-lust and adventure. The Kingdom of Ehb is in peril yet again after the events of the original game, and this is a good enough excuse to have the main player character closing the farm and going down the path of the typical high-fantasy heroic adventurer looking for trouble that can be solved with spell and steel.
It is also worth noting here that the story, which is set generations after the events in the original Dungeon Siege, limits the player to the use of a completely new player character, so there would be no importing of characters from the original Dungeon Siege. This may or may not be an annoyance, depending on the preferences of the player.
The villain is yet another mysterious evil-doer, who had stolen a powerful magical artifact for unknown but expectedly nefarious means – not that the antagonist's plans would be important to the gameplay at all, because the player can expect to do little more than wade through linear dungeons filled with monsters and creepy-crawlies or the dangerous outdoors – also linearly designed – with very frequent ambushes by hostile wildlife, bandits or the minions of evil.
By now, the player would have an impression that Legends of Aranna is simply the original game having been recycled and repackaged with little if anything new. The player would not be far from right.
There are very few new unique content in the game. There are new NPCs to fit into the canon of the story, but these are functionally no more different than those in the original game: they may make their case for joining the party, and if allowed to join the party, they become no more different from the main player character – mostly silent with a single-minded determination to get down to the bottom of the troubles brewing in Aranna. Of course, one can argue that Dungeon Siege did pretty much the same, but this is exactly the problem with the expansion – it does not do anything different, much less anything more interesting.
There are new terrain types, such as the snowy, mountainous regions of Arhok, but like all locales in the game, they are there for purposes of eye-candy; there are no gameplay ramifications to be encountered in fighting across different locales.
As to be expected of an expansion, there are new gear that the party may loot and equip. More precisely, there are new properties and visual designs for the randomly generated gear that can be found throughout the game, such as items that impart permanent spell-like boosts to the user. Yet, due to the random generation of loot, the player would not have much incentive to use gear with these new properties, unless they happen to be more powerful than the present gear that the party has and are thus worthwhile replacements – as is usual practice for a hack-and-slash RPG.
There are also additions like set items, though these are already old item designs during this game's time (and perhaps should have been in the original game in the first place). Like in games with randomly generated loot, getting these items is little more than a matter of luck, and considering that some other randomly generated gear may have stats that are even better than those offered by the full sets of items, collecting them is only for the curious. That the game still lacks an item-bank feature makes this seem more impractical to those who would rather keep space for other loot.
The new Backpack item practically extends the carrying capacity of a regular party member. It can also be used to organize inventory between gear that is to be kept and obsolete gear that is to be sold, as will be explained later when another new feature is described. However, it also detracts from the already flawed feature of animals of burden, as will be elaborated more on later.
In the original Dungeon Siege, wizardly party members have to rely on the others as a screen or bait for enemies that can only attack in close combat. In the expansion, they have access to spells that can transform them into certain beasts (that are also included in the game as enemies) so as to gain some melee or ranged attack prowess. Unfortunately, not unlike the transformation powers found in so many other high-fantasy RPGs, they render the spell-casters unable to cast any spells until they cancel this state (which they can do at any time, thankfully). Furthermore, the damage output of these beast forms is not up to that which can be attained by having the spell-casters stick to their usual spells. Therefore, these new spells can be considered red herrings.
New spells that are less of a red herring are the "Orb" spells. These spells are practically hands-free versions of existing spells; the spell-caster creates orbs that orbit around him/her and fire off spells at the nearest enemy. Some control over the targeting of the orbs would have been much appreciated, but considering that these do not cause the spell-caster to incur any disadvantages while they are active, the inefficiency of their autonomous targeting would not be much of an issue.
Like in the original game, certain enemy mobs can be seen from far away and can be lured piece-meal over with some baiting. In Legends of Aranna, the player can now set better ambushes with the "Glyph" spells, which essentially set magical traps on the ground that expend themselves to damage any enemies that step over them. They can even be used during battle against any enemies that are locked in combat with the tanks of the party, further increasing their utility.
As Legends of Aranna presents new exotic locales where mules probably will have a hard time surviving in, the game introduces a new beast of burden, the reptilian Tragg, that is more thematically appropriate and also has some advantages over the pack mule. The Tragg does not shy away from combat, and will rush into combat autonomously. Unfortunately, the novelty of such a creature would evaporate away quickly, as the Tragg is ultimately not as durable as actual party members and does not have as much damage output. That the Tragg does not gain any levels (like the pack mule) and has slightly less carrying capacity than a pack mule and the introduction of the Backpack item further reduces its usefulness.
As befitting an expansion, there are new enemies to be fought – or at least they seem to be new. Most enemies in Legends of Aranna, especially the regular throw-away goons in between bosses, behave not much differently from those in the original game, though they at least sport new looks and animations. The bosses are perhaps the most interesting of the new foes: they often have plenty of attacks that can ruin unprepared parties quickly, such as the multiple magical laser beams that a certain floating boss with many eyes on stalks can fire off. Others summon goons incessantly, thus necessitating crowd control measures. Unfortunately, like the bosses in the original game, these are far and few in between.
Perhaps the improvements in the game that can be considered the most convincingly beneficial are the improvements to the technical aspects of the game, e.g. controls, user interface and online conveniences.
The player can now make groups comprised of a combination of party members, either different ones or the same persons. For the latter case, they can even be set to use different gear or spells. This allows the player to prepare for different scenarios during battle and switch the gear and tactics of party members with just a simple button tap.
Characters can now be ordered to perform an "attack-move", similar to the one used in decently designed real-time strategy games. Furthermore, the same order transforms into an order to break open and loot any containers that are nearby when there are no nearby enemies to be attacked. This can lead to some amusing and possibly frustrating situations where one party member attacks enemies while another is looting away chests, but these are infrequent due to the large enemy detection radius used for this order.
The original Dungeon Siege's potion mechanic was quite impressive for a high-fantasy hack-and-slash RPG for its time. Legends of Aranna builds on this with a new feature to redistribute potions quickly, using scripts that guess at the roles of party members by analyzing their skills and stats and redistributing and repackaging potions as necessary. This can be very, very handy.
Selling obsolete gear and loot can be a pain in the original game, even if items can be sold with a single mouse-click. Therefore, Legends of Aranna introduces a feature to automatically sell all unequipped gear (e,g. armor/clothing, weapons and spells) at a press of a button, with potions and items in Backpacks ignored by the scripts that compute the sales.
In the previous game, the only warning that a player would get about an off-screen party member being attacked is his/her health decreasing due to a yet-unknown reason. In Legends of Aranna, there are clearer visual indications for this occurrence. Yet, considering that the camera designs remained the same (the player may not scroll ahead of the party too far and it is still follows the party around), the player would not have many chances to appreciate this change because party coherence is imperative.
The original Dungeon Siege did not have much in the way of a useful map, so the one in Legends of Aranna has been designed to include the locations of questing areas, towns and names for regions of different terrain (which are, in typical Dungeon Siege tradition, separated by underground segments that conveniently eliminates the need for smooth weather transitions). Yet, the map system in this game is still of limited usefulness, due to the linear designs of the game world.
Multiplayer campaigns can now have their progress saved, thus allowing friends to continue them later when convenient.
Yet, one can argue that these improvements should have been included in a patch update for the original game, and not exclusive to Legends of Aranna. Furthermore, the handiness of some of these improvements unwittingly causes the player to notice the tedium of the hack-and-slash gameplay even more.
As it is an expansion, Legends of Aranna does not present any improvement in the graphics department. There are the new locales, of course, but while they may seem different, they can be seen as somewhat-repackaged versions of the terrain types seen in the original game. The sound designs are largely recycled from the original game. Some of the new enemies have new voice-overs and sound effects, but these are mostly forgettable.
Perhaps some grumblings can be abated with Gas Powered Games' offering of a free expansion to this stand-alone expansion. The Return to Arhok "bonus pack" extends the story in Legends of Aranna a bit more, but it is mainly compatible with Windows XP.
In conclusion, Legends of Aranna would be suitable to those who have yet to play the original Dungeon Siege, as the improvements that Legends of Aranna made also extends to the original stories that are included in its package. However, aside from die-hard fans who cannot get enough of Dungeon Siege, this standalone is not likely to impress those who had played the first game.