Before I even started playing Dungeon Siege II, as I was walking home from the post office, browsing the beautiful screenshots on the back of the box, ogling lavishly rendered dragons and trolls locked in mortal combat, I could only think one thing: is this the game to finally usurp the late, great Diablo II?

Diablo II was unbelievably addictive, so much so that an urban myth (which might be true) is often quoted about the game. Supposedly a Japanese man once played it for months on end. He'd play all night and then go to work in the café the next day, serving the customers with pixels flashing before his eyes. Then he'd go home and play all night again, until one day he was found slumped in front of his PC, stone cold dead, but a Level 500 Wizard all the same. I genuinely don't know if it's true but I've been told this by so many people from different backgrounds that I'm inclined to believe it. Maybe he didn't die though - maybe he figured out a way to leave his body and become that wizard, playing Diablo II forever more!

Anyway, urban legends aside, I got home and fired up my copy of Dungeon Siege II, eager to throw ridiculous chunks of my leisure time into trying to actually finish an RPG for once. I knew what to expect; poor plot, no story, cringingly bad dialogue and hours and hours of mouse pumping gameplay, willing me on to that next stash of treasure or skill point to add to my character's rapidly growing abilities. Kill, get money, kill, get skills, kill, get money, kill, get skills - it's that simple, and I was totally up for it.

As soon as you boot up the game you'll be taken aback by how huge and seamless the Dungeon Siege II world is. You come across your first wave of monsters, hack and slash them away, then all of a sudden there's another wave creeping from a copse to your right that you never even noticed. To progress you keep killing all of the monsters, one by one, fulfilling mission objectives in your quest logbook that you can check at any time. Unlike the first game there's so many quests out there for you to complete. It's also not as linear as the first game, where if you got stuck on a certain quest, it'd take ages to find some other NPC gimp to give you something to do. I recall trawling through windswept deserts, scaling snowdrifts on mountains and all, just to find some shepherd who tasked me with finding one of his lost sheep, leaving me to traipse off in full battle armour looking like a bit of a prat. Dungeon Siege II on the other hand has secondary quests, so if you get stuck on the primary ones, there're hundreds of other easier quests to cut your teeth on.

It's even easier now to move about the DS world. In the first game, you might find one Teleporter for every 10 miles travelled. In DSII there're literally hundreds of Teleporters dotted around the place, allowing you to zip all over the map, killing monsters then popping back to base for a spot of R'n'R. Everything is well thought out for you, so you can spend more time on the killing and less on the logistics of how to get to and from the killing.

Like any RPG, there's an extensive system of character development paths and party organisational options. If putting together a party commensurate with the skills of The Fellowship of The Ring is something you find to be a joy, fiddling with each of your party members' stats and customising their equipment, then DSII is quite blatantly for you. For those of you not in the know, the Dungeon Siege world works across a skill based system consisting of Melee (close combat, swords and stuff - think Aragorn), Ranged (bow and arrow, spears - Legolas), Combat Magic (fireballs and stuff - Gandalf) and Nature Magic (healing - that elf Liv Tyler played). So, say you plonk a bow and arrow in your character's hand, their ranged skill gradually rises up, get them to cast fireballs and their combat magic skill rises, heal tons of random dudes and their nature magic goes up - you get the idea.

However, it doesn't end there, not by any means. DSII also offers a set of special skills that you can develop through killing more monsters and gaining skill points the more you kill. These special skills allow you to gain and improve on your Powers, which allow you to perform mean feats on the battlefield, from reducing an ogre to a bloody mist in one slash to casting a spell that makes you invulnerable to all hits. These Powers can't be used willy-nilly however; once used they need to recharge before you can deploy them again, so timing is of the essence if you're to use them for best effect. If you want to recharge quicker then you can use the relevant skills to do so; for example, if your special Power is a mighty kill-in-one-blow sword slash, then use your sword in the interim as much as possible to recharge your Power.

Suffice to say, DSII really does offer a completely open-ended character development system, with a far greater depth than the original Dungeon Siege. If you're willing to put in the time, you really can reap the benefits of your labour and watch your character grow from being a weakling who frequently gets caught short by a puny goblin, to a genuine champion who cuts a swathe through hordes of deadly foes.

However, there are certain elements of the game that haven't been improved from the first game. In fact, they've positively changed for the worst. For example, in Dungeon Siege you could command a party of up to 8 characters, whereas in DSII for some reason they've reduced this capacity to a mere 4 and God knows why! If you're willing to complete the game on Easy and Medium difficulty and you're still up for going onto Hard, then and only then do they let you command 6 in your party, but by that point you're probably bored silly. Couple that with the fact that they've also removed the snazzy option you had for choosing the formation of your men or what stance you would like them to take, and you're starting to get confused as to why they've messed with parts of the original that worked very well. In DSII all you can now do is tell your men to Follow or Attack, so they're either going hell for leather or just standing there taking hits and not even reacting. I've never been able to understand why developers making sequels decide to strip out what was actually good from the first game.

I must confess that I am disappointed by this, although I can perhaps see why they did it, as it does simplify the combat system, making the battles more seamless and smoother. Plus having fewer characters to worry about allows you to focus on each character in greater depth. One of the main differences is that they now permit you to have two spell slots, so you never again need to get caught rifling through your inventory whilst an ogre tears into your hide.

Dungeon Siege II also looks absolutely gorgeous. One of the main complaints with the original was that whilst it played like a dream, it looked pretty rough. DSII plays beautifully but now looks like it always should have looked and sounds fantastic too; thick forests cast dense shadows on the ground, streams and fountains pour at your character's feet, mountain passes crumble underfoot, goblin shrieks pierce harshly through the twilight. If you're lucky enough to have a set of good headphones, you truly must put them on, turn out the lights and then stumble hours later into the hallway wondering how breakfast, lunch and dinner just passed you by. And that's the key to DSII - it's really, really hard to stop playing once you've started, which is a good thing, because this game is huge, and I mean HUGE! If you're after value for money, DSII is sure not to disappoint. I don't know exactly how many quests the game has but what I do know is that I've played it for over 40 hours and I'm still not even scratching the surface.

Dungeon Siege II is a superb sequel that takes the great gameplay of the original and, while stripping out some of those party options, updates the presentation so that everything looks and sounds wonderful. It's very much a case of getting exactly what you'd expect, but with maybe a little more sheen. Whether you're a fan of RPG titles or not, I would seriously recommend that you get your teeth stuck in to Dungeon Siege II and let the brainboxes at Microsoft take you through a spellbinding action-fest that will last for weeks on end. If you still don't believe me, at least give Diablo II a whirl; some games just have to be played…