Dungeon Siege II: Broken World Review
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Enchantment recipes are sort of fun things. There are about 45 of them in the game, and they drop like books (and are stored as such in your journal). Each recipe lists an item and a group of reagents, and if you enchant the item with the reagents, then you end up with a new, unique item. If you've played the original campaign then you know that unique items are usually pretty good, and the recipe items are no exception. The problem with recipes is that it's sort of a pain to track down the item to be enchanted plus all of the necessary reagents. Gas Powered Games didn't change in any way how shops work, and so it's tedious to an extreme to visit a shop, exit your game, load your game, and then repeat until you find everything you need for a recipe. I have no idea why they didn't modify shops to improve their selection (especially the reagent shops) to make recipes easier to manage. As a result, recipes are nice but also annoying.
The two new classes work a little better. The new Fist of Stone class is a combination of the Melee and Nature Magic classes. It's basically a tough fighter who can do some healing, and who can also inflict some area-effect earthquake damage. The new Blood Assassin class is a combination of the Ranged and Combat Magic classes. This class can (mark) its enemies and then (execute) the mark for additional damage and other benefits.
It's sort of funny; if you play the original Dungeon Siege II campaign, part of the tutorial cautions you against multi-classing, but the two new multi-classes provide a nice mix. They get to use the skills and powers of their core classes, and they also get skills and powers of their own, and so they can be pretty powerful. They also get special (weapon enhancements,) which are buffing spells that give a nice bonus to the character, and which also automatically split experience (using a 70/30 split) to the core classes, so you don't have to micromanage the experience on your own. I tried out both new classes when I made my way through the campaigns, and I thought they were fun to play.
Conclusion
Overall, I wasn't exactly thrilled with the Broken World expansion pack. I liked some of the changes, which you can use during the original campaign as well as the new campaign, but mostly the expansion pack left me underwhelmed, especially in comparison to the Titan Quest expansion pack, which did a lot to revitalize the game.
Nothing in Broken World is overly creative or exciting, and it seems like the expansion pack was created because everyone expected it to be there, rather than because there was any compelling reason for it to be made (sort of like Shrek 3). So be wary if you're thinking about buying it, even at this late date. Broken World isn't horrendously awful or anything, but there are probably better ways out there for you to be spending your time.
