On opening the box the first thing you notice is that the expansion ships with a full version of the original game. Microsoft are to be congratulated in making such a generous move and more so when you consider the $49.95(NZD) price tag on the game. We can only hope that they start a trend and other publishers follow suit.

For those unfamiliar with the original game (where have you been!) Dungeon Siege is a party based fantasy adventure set in a stunning 3D world. The graphics are nothing short of gorgeous! Each game area has its own unique features that have been carefully crafted to convey such areas as jungles, swamps, snowy mountain passes and foreboding dungeons. The detail is stunning and you will often find yourself panning and zooming across the play area just to drink in the atmosphere of the world that the designers have created.

As in most games of this type you advance in ability the more monsters you defeat and you accumulate more and more treasure as you rid the land of evil. As you progress in your quest you also meet other adventurers willing to join your party with a maximum of 8 party members being allowed at any one time.

So what is new in this expansion pack? Well first off it has a new campaign that takes the player to the Lands of Aranna to recover the 'Staff of Stars' and unravel the secrets hidden within this new land. There are some side quests also involved in the story and overall it comes together reasonably well. Players are paced through the new campaign with some straight forward quests prior to taking your party across the varied terrain of Aranna.

Control of your party has been much simplified from the original game by the addition of a neat feature where you can set up hot keys for each preferred weapon combination of your party. You can set up your team so that they are all armed with hand to hand weapons or at the push of a key have some of them change to bows while others cast spells. Rather than having to change each character individually you can easily shoot missiles at oncoming monsters and once they are close switch to melee weapons.

Party control is further enhanced by a warning system that will flash a characters icon if they come under attack. This is great as it is all too easy to get yourself wrapped up in the fortunes of one character to the detriment of the rest of your party. Members of the party not under your direct control at any given time have also been graced with more smarts and they will now more readily move to aid other party members rather than standing by as they are cut to shreds.

Another great new feature is the introduction of a 'redistribution' button for potions. The bane of most RPG's is the constant rearranging of the parties pack to ensure each has a reasonable supply of healing and mana potions. No longer, as with a quick push of the button your total supply is shared out among the team. The magic users get more of the mana potions and the fighters more of the health.

Some interesting new treasure items have also been added. You can now pick up parts of 'treasure sets' that on their own may not be much but when combined are very powerful. All parts of the set are in the game so you don't end up carrying that set of Arctic Furs in the vain hope you will find the rest of the set. As you pick up each part more of the combined powers are revealed. In addition the developers have also thrown in some more armor types and some more 'gun' type weapons as well.

Some new spells have also made an appearance including the ability to cast glyphs to set traps for unwary monsters (more fun in multi-player games). Magic users can also pick up spells that will transform them into various beasts to enter into the melee combat as well as orb spells that spin around you and will follow you into combat. Overall though like the first game we feel the spells are a bit under done. It is very hard to develop an all powerful magic user as there is no uber area effect spells to discover and learn. This appears to be a conscious effort on the part of the developers as most of the game design appears to favor toe to toe fighting.

There is a bunch of new monsters added to the mix and these fit nicely into the campaign environment. Our favorite is the 'Automatons' that when first met appear as hulking robots but after some deft sword play their timber skeleton is revealed. They have some great animations and the slightly comic feel plays homage to the original game.

The donkey has been given an overhaul as well with the introduction of a new pack animal called the Tragg. This dinosaur type beastie hauls a heap of kit while also meeting out some serious hurt to any monster silly enough to come in range of its claws.

As we have said the graphics are superb however one let down for us was the adventure map. For some strange reason they have not allow players to add annotations to the map to note areas of interest. This is a pain given that some of the maps are really big and it can be a trial to find the right area to complete a particular quest.

Sound and music is top notch with party members now having a more unique personality and a wider vocabulary.