You see many familiar faces here, including the spider-like Mucosas and all types of the undead, in only slightly altered guises. But this novelty is mitigated by the re-use of common monsters. Hordes of new creatures are present, including races such as the mysterious Utraen elders and their former servants, the catlike Hassat and the reptilian Zaurask. Dialogue leads you by the hand so much that it could have been excerpted from a children’s book. Still, everyone has seen these sorts of things in role-playing games many times before, and the presentation is marred by an abysmal script. There are gorgeous locales, including snowy mountains, cobwebby crypts, and aerial cities in the midst of tropical jungles. Plot is stock-standard claptrap about a peasant with a rusty knife leaving home to confront great evil, realize his or her destiny, discover lost truths about an ancient civilization, blah, blah, blah. Like Dungeon Siege, Legends of Aranna plays a lot like My First RPG. Such slavish devotion to the kill-collect-level-up treadmill makes the 20-hour dungeon crawl seem a little tired in comparison with its predecessor, although enough of the magic remains to give you a few more late nights. The expansion adds more monsters, more quests, more loot, and more user-interface amenities to make your adventuring life easier. So why mess with success? The standalone expansion pack Legends of Aranna, which comes bundled with the original game so you won’t need the first Dungeon Siege installed, is a carbon copy. But this was still pure action role-playing, so addictive that you kept exploring just one more haunted forest, just one more goblin cave, into the early hours of the morning. The original Dungeon Siege, a game that took the original Diablo and placed it in a 3D world, automated everything to the point that the game almost played itself.
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