It's been about a year since Dungeon Siege II was first released. Coincidentally, the events in the Broken World expansion take place one year after the events of the original game. The events of the main game ended with a cataclysm that devastated Aranna's character for a second time, destabilizing the land's magic, and blasting the land. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of things. The Dark Wizard, who was responsible for orchestrating the second cataclysm, is still at large and you have made it your quest to hunt him down and finish him before he destroys the world... again.

You start out in an Dryad outpost, where there aren't too many people who are happy to see you. The world outside faces new breeds of monsters - twisted versions of other races and creatures - which seem to be bound to a dark power. Luckily, the heroes you encountered from the previous chapter have all found themselves here. All of them have lost their way in this devastated world and are anxious for adventure, vengeance, or something to do. With them at your side, you start to continue your hunt for the Dark Wizard in earnest.

Players can import their saved characters from the original DS2 into Broken World, however they will need to have finished the first campaign on its minimum difficulty first. Similarly, a new character cannot be created in Broken World until the original game has been beaten. However, there is a good variety of pre-built characters to select from, all at level 39. Even if the player is dissatisfied with how their skill points are distributed, there is a trainer in the camp who will reset them, allowing the player to reassign them. This feature, among others, makes DS2 a much stronger game. However, even though the gameplay is improved, the campaign itself falls short.

Some of the great features in Broken World include two new cross classes: The Blood Assassin and The Fist of Stone. These two classes take advantage of two of the other core classes and make an overall stronger and unique character. The experience that they gain through combat can be split across the two core classes. In order to make a Blood Assassin, a character's skills need to be split across both combat magic and ranged combat. This archer uses magic to mark targets, throwing in additional damage or causing them to bleed over time. While the Fist of Stone class is a cross between Nature Magic and Melee, creating a class that greatly resembles a Paladin. They can use their bond with the earth to cause damage over an area or strengthen their resistance to damage. It's a little tricky to play a cross class character, since they first need to empower their weapons before experience can be split across their two core classes. That automatically means that a weapon empowerment spell (new to the game) needs to be put into an autocast slot. Luckily, Broken World increases the number of autocast slots from two to four.

Furthermore, Broken World adds Dwarves as a new race, who have the strongest damage resistance. Other than that, they don't actually add much more to the gameplay. Broken World has some Dwarven side quests, and the Dwarf can be selected to start a brand new campaign in the core game. There are also new set armors and regent recipes. Regent recipes are a natural development of the enchantment system. Through a specific combination of ingredients, players can now create unique items, and there are a few new sets that are only accessible through regent recipes. Recipes can be collected and kept in the lore book.

If you've never played DS2 before, you can now do it with all the benefits offered by the expansion, which is the strongest reason for playing this. However, none of the new features are compelling enough to replay the whole story from the beginning. While the new features make the gameplay more fun, the story leaves a lot to be desired. The campaign isn't very long compared to the core game, and many may be disappointed with its outcome, especially since this is the campaign that is supposed to "finish" the story. Apart from the story, the world's design is also a bit disappointing. For a shattered world, nothing really looks all that much different from the main game. Aside from a darker color scheme and new monsters, nothing about the landscape truly indicates a burnt or scarred world. There are new underground dungeons, but none seem to live up to the expansiveness or complexity of some of those found in the main game.

Broken World is a disappointing expansion because it does make some very important improvements to DS2's gameplay, and doesn't tell a story that is good enough to play. All the elements that made the original title good are there, including exploding bodies and big colorful spells thrown around by large adventure parties. But Broken World seems hollow in comparison to the main game. By far, the people who would benefit the most would be those who are playing DS2 through for the first time. Also, those who don't really care about the story, or people who are mainly interested in new gameplay features for multiplayer, have much to gain with this expansion. Otherwise, this is a story that nobody would have missed if it had remained untold.