Players take centre stage in Dungeon Siege II as sword- wielding mercenaries traipsing across a vast fantasy landscape. After choosing to play one of four races — human, dryad, elf or half-giant — your new character joins initially at the Mercenary level. Ratings improve with each successful quest until the more resilient Veteran characters are unlocked. And unless you are particularly skilled at this kind of game, it’s likely that you will take weeks to reach the ultimate character class of Elite.

The landscape is solidly rendered and the cut-scenes are beautifully crafted, helping to drive the strong narrative and coherent storyline of the single-player campaign. But most people will want to play this game in multiplayer clashes since human opponents are more satisfying to beat than AI foes.

The developer, Gas Powered Games, has reworked the interface for this second outing, making gameplay more intuitive. Keeping track of your various quests and sub-quests is easier this time around, too. The game relies perhaps a little too heavily on mouse clicks — not only to inch around the levels, but also in the heat of battle, when thrashing opponents or summoning magic spells. All too often it can seem as if success depends solely on how quickly you can make your fingers move. These are minor quibbles, though — this is a handsome game with a stirring soundtrack, with the potential to deliver weeks of very involving gameplay for hardcore followers.

TIM WAPSHOTT

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