Last night I began, for the fourth time, a new character in Dungeon Siege 2. Not necessarily because I have an unhealthy affinity for the game, but every time I start one up, circumstances conspire against me and for one reason or another I can’t complete the game. The furthest I’ve gotten was Act 2 (out of what I understand to be four three). That was quite some time ago, and that character and the three that followed were consumed mostly by my apparent inability to perform a proper backup. (Yeah, I know. No backup, no whining). I even bought the expansion pack for this game to be my impetus to actually see the game all the way through, but I keep getting distracted… Usually by something shiny.
It strikes me each and every time that I begin one of these characters how much it unabashedly resembles Diablo II in almost every conceivable way, right down to the swag being named “The (Adjective) (Noun) of the (Attribute)”. Indeed, the loot tables seem to have been crafted someone with a tenuous grasp of balance, as ‘the good stuff’ seems to drop all the time. I frequently find myself running out of room in my backpack and must either tediously run back and forth to town to sell the weapons and armor that carpet the forest (and why is a giant spider carrying a breast plate anyway?) or feeding them to my pet.
I’ll admit that feeding a pack mule my entire inventory of magical swords it simultaneously bizarre and intriguing, that too gets old quickly. To get your pets to the optimum stats, you have to feed it only the best stuff, which coincidentally also sells for the most money. So you have to make the trade-off between having a nice bankroll or a combat pet that’s actually worth having.
Maybe I can finally see what the 2nd half of the game looks like.