Dungeon Siege II Impressions

Both IGN PC and GamerFeed are offering up their initial impressions of Dungeon Siege II, just in time for the game's release. A snip from IGN PC's article:
The character development system is also much deeper. It feels like a hybrid of Diablo II and World of Warcraft's talent system. Each character class has three different specializations. The melee fighter, for example, can focus on dual wielding, or two-handed weapons, or sword and board, and there's a meta-level where you can decide to deal more damage or take more damage overall. The archer can focus on bows, or crossbows, or thrown weapons; the nature mage can focus on pure damage, healing, or pet summoning. There's also the combat mage (whose specialty is fire while the nature mage focuses on ice), but I didn't encounter many combat mage mercenaries and haven't given them a spin yet.

And a snip from GamerFeed's article:
Microsoft knew that the original Dungeon Siege was unique. So when it came time for Gas Powered Games to start work on the sequel, the development gurus were given as much time as they needed. You heard right, the team was not rushed to meet any of the deadlines that normally hamper game development. They were the ones who decided when the game was done, not the publisher. After spending some time with a final build of the game, we can safely say that Dungeon Siege II has greatly benefited from the extra development time.