There are a handful of new dungeons to fight through in Broken World, as well as a few optional side quests to keep you busy. The main campaign is fairly short, and you'll easily be able to finish it in less than 10 hours. If you take the time to do all the side quests, you might squeeze another couple of hours out of the game. But the problem isn't so much the length of the game as it is the content. The dungeons are all generic and fairly small compared to dungeons in the previous games. There are some larger dungeons, but they aren't any more interesting to explore. The last dungeon in particular feels like one extremely long corridor with nothing to explore, no puzzles to solve, and no secret treasures to find. Instead, you run down a long hallway that occasionally opens up into a large room where you fight a huge mob of monsters, then continue down the next hallway to do the same thing 10 more times before fighting a boss. The bosses in the game are also somewhat generic and disappointing. There are about half a dozen boss fights in the game, but only three different bosses. It also doesn't help that the main antagonist is a poorly developed character who just seems to be pulled from thin air to stand in as a villain. Beyond the dungeons, the story brings nothing to the Dungeon Siege universe and could just as well go untold.
Since the expansion is designed as high-level content, you can expect it to be slightly more difficult than Dungeon Siege II. The monsters all seem tougher and more varied in terms of vulnerabilities and behaviors. You'll still be able to easily hack through just about any enemy in a matter of seconds, but when the game throws a dozen of those enemies at you (as it often does), it can be a challenge to stay alive. With so many enemies, the challenge is derived not only from fending off multiple attackers, but also from the resulting confusion of having so many characters onscreen at the same time. Some of the enemies are very small, which makes them difficult to spot. You'll often just have to wait for your computer-controlled allies to start attacking before you know where your target is.
Dungeon Siege II was a good-looking game for its time, and it offered plenty of variety in terms of scenery. This expansion doesn't fare so well, partly because it's built on a rapidly aging engine and partly because the scope of the content is much more narrow, so you end up seeing a lot of the same places and faces over and over again. The environments are still the best part of the presentation, with dead forests and harsh wastelands that you'll wish you could explore further. However, the textures do look a bit blurry, and you'll see the same few tile sets repeated in just about every dungeon in the game. The character models don't look so good, either. When the camera zooms in close to your party, you'll notice that they all look very blocky. The creatures look better than the characters, but they often blend into the background or are too small to see very well, which can be frustrating. The special effects still look good for casting magic spells and performing special moves. It's especially satisfying the way creatures violently burst into a fountain of blood and guts when you kill them with your special moves.
The graphics haven't aged well, but some of the environments and combat effects still look good.
The accompanying thuds and messy sound effects of battle sound good, too. There's also a ton of voice work for every single non-player character in the game, and for the most part, it's all very well done. The soundtrack is composed of some orchestral tracks that are subdued most of the time but pick up when the action gets intense. It's good music, but it isn't anything you'll remember after you're finished with the game.
Dungeon Siege II: Broken World feels more like it should be the first act of a game rather than the last act. It doesn't bring anything to Dungeon Siege II in terms of the story, and it's too short to stand on its own as a separate campaign. The new character classes are a welcome addition, but they alone aren't worth the price. Broken World also doesn't add any multiplayer-specific features, so that part of the game remains unchanged. You can play through the campaign cooperatively and experience the new content that way, but the multiplayer doesn't increase the longevity of the expansion. If you're just looking for a hack-and-slash role-playing game, you'd be better off replaying Dungeon Siege II, because it's a much more satisfying experience.
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