Getting in and adventuring in double-quick time was a highpoint of the Dungeon Siege experience, and the Legends of Aranna expansion pack doesn’t add a single wrinkle to the silk-smooth hacking and slashing. A new kit has been added, along with new weapons, new enemies, and dazzling new environments, but developer Mad Doc (standing in for paterfamilias Gas Powered Games) has wisely stuck to the franchise’s winning formula.

As $30 expansions go, Legends of Aranna is still vulnerable to accusations of thinness, even though it includes a copy of Dungeon Siege. The new campaign stretches across five major zones, graduating from forest to snow to tropic to swamp to fiery underworld. But while each new zone is a gorgeous tableau in its own right, none of them hides particularly fresh “tricks” — you follow the main trail through the area, clearing out its varied monsters and taking as much time as you want to loot side-quest dungeons. The “down the stairs into a dungeon” routine is back in spades, and don’t expect any new situational innovations to the basic gameplay.

Personally, I don’t mind this scheme at all, but consider yourself duly informed. For me, the mindlessly straightforward pursuit of the next town, the next villain, and the next Burning Sword of Improbable Lifeforce is the real reward. The incremental upgrades are the whole point: It’s always satisfying to showcase your new flaming scythe to a suitably impressed fellow adventurer. And I sleep easy with a sense of accomplishment having slain various dungeon bosses and liberated the mist-shrouded city of Illicor (which had been rudely enslaved by a lizard race).

As an example of near-perfect play-testing, Legends of Aranna is hard to beat. Whenever one of my networked party members would wonder aloud “Where’s the next town?” we were usually less than two minutes away from finding it. Any time one of us exclaimed “This had better be the last Dark Acolyte, or we’re screwed!” it usually was the last Dark Acolyte. You’re always making progress, and it’s always fun. (With one annoying exception, in our case: we spent a while fruitlessly wandering in search of the next quest after the game’s halfway point, unclear as to where we were supposed to go.)

Some of the environments are downright amazing, and crammed with great surprises. The hellish underworld realm is a big winner, with rivers of molten lava and creatures coughed straight up from Revelation. One early “boss enemy” is a massive beast-laying Medusa that spouts demons from a larval sac. Nasty! When we’d finally slain her, she gave us one final and unexpected “death rattle” that had me practically jumping out of my chair in fright.

Like Dungeon Siege, Legends of Aranna provides a seamless interface and worry-free online and network co-adventuring options. (Although online games are limited to four players, LAN games have a suggested limit of four — the game can actually support as many people as your collective lag will tolerate.) This add-on’s simple but absorbing gameplay is just as addictive as that in Chris Taylor’s original game. The story, such as it is, hardly bears mention, but that’s not the point of Dungeon Siege. Have Full Glaive of Incessant Rending, will travel.

— Dan Morris