Update 04-24-18:
Another special thanks goes to Killah not just for providing us the the expansions to DS2 & DS1 but also fixing the no mouse cursor issue in fullscreen and not being able to play the DS2 Broken World expansion in 1366x768. It is awesome to have someone work so hard to keep this legendary title running on newer systems.

I still own the physical Deluxe Edition of this DSI & DSII and was very excited to see them reach steam so that I can access and install it no matter where I might be in the world. I have probably put roughly 3k hours or more into this game alone.

I still consider this game to be one of the best action RPG's ever created. Rich story and lore, not the greatest but decent voice acting for it's time. In some ways this DSII still puts some of the newer RPG's to shame, and it is easy to see where some of todays RPG's draws it's roots from here.

At first glance the graphics look outdated, since this is not a remake of DSII, one should expect the graphics not to be top notch in comparison to today's titles. But once you zoom in to take a more detailed look at the characters, enemies, weapons, armors, & spells, it is still quite amazing. Far from the majority of cookie cutter RPG's of today DSII still stands out from the rest.

DSII is full of sidequests along with it's main storyline. But best of all true individual party member customization. A choice not truly given in a lot of today's titles. When a character joins your party you are given a "suggestive" path, based on the character's background in the story. But, every character & party member has all the ability trees available to them. You are not forced to build into that characters suggested tree. You want to turn your warrior into a a dual wielding assassin but also have healing, ranged, or combat magic abilites? You can do that. Or a fire wielding combat mage with a bow? You can build that too. A party of all mages? Sure. Picked up a bowman you want to turn into a healing mage? No problem. True freedom to make the party you want. Or even go solo if you want to.

There are still many mods available for DSII out on the net, some of them giving minor changes to complete overhauls or new maps and in a few cases a whole new story and storyline. Want to beat down your enemies with an overpowered pillow? How about pots, pans, spoons & forks? Want to play as one of the enemies in the game? Grab the mods. With all the mods available out there it gives the game a very high replay value.

Since the closing of gamespy, there has been no full internet accessibility. But creating a virtual LAN over the net using a 3rd party program like Hamachi or Tunngle can easily overcome this issue. And the Steam version user can connect to a retail disk user provided they are playing both the same version, example: DSII to DSII, or DSII BW to DSII BW, and same patch version (Since I own a retail copy disk I have been able to test this). If not, then you will not see each other in the LAN lobby. I would like to see cloud support in the future. (It is easiest to add the BW expansion Killa has provided in "guides" to get LAN working as it comes with the original DSII:BW launcher.)

In this review I would also like to thank Killa and everyone else that have done all the work to get the DSI & DSII expansions for steam working and making all the necessary files available. So that all who have purchased it can enjoy the complete classic Dungeon Siege experience. Since DS3 lacks everything that made DSI & DS2 such great games. Also if you enjoy the Dungeon Siege series of games give Space Siege a try, which is a spinoff of the Dungeon Siege series of games set in a fictional future. Unlike Dungeon Siege, however, items are limited much like Shadowgrounds (No relation). Also Space Siege lacks the party play style of Dungeon Siege, and I have not had a chance to test multiplayer on it (unlike DSI & II, Space Siege used GPGNet, & I have not yet had a chance to see if the service still works). But still nonetheless another great game in the Dungeon Siege realm.