Over the years, Snowblind Studios has done a great job of giving fantasy junkies an addictive hack and slash experience. Starting off with Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance a couple of years ago, Snowblind Studios has successfully brought the Diablo-esque gameplay over and given it new life on the PS2. With Champions: Return to Arms, the old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” seems to apply for the most part.

The story of Return to Arms picks up where Champions of Norrath left off; the player is put under the guidance of Firiona Vie on the road to save the world of Norrath. On the plus side for any returning players, Return to Arms allows you to import your character from the first Champions of Norrath. The story as a whole is a tad cliché and does little of nothing to submerse the player into the world. In the original, the story was a bit more inclusive and helped to give a better sense of purpose for the dungeon crawling aspects of the game. Not to say that the game is bad, just that the story could have done more for the player.

Like all games in this genre, starting off requires you to create a new persona. All of the previous character classes make a return in Return to Arms, but as a bonus there are two new classes: the Iksar Shaman and the Vah Shir Berserker. As you would expect, each race/class has abilities that cater to different play styles. Though there are numerous classes to choose from, new players will find the melee based barbarian or berserker more accessible. You will be happy to know that all the character classes are relatively well balanced.

At any rate, no matter which class you decide to play, the action formula is still pretty much the same. As you venture through the various “planes,” in addition to the mobs of creatures, there are barrels to smash and treasure chests to loot. Controls are very responsive and changing from melee to ranged combat is as easy as pressing one button. There is also a GUI to change your secondary abilities on the fly. Leveling up gives you a couple of different options to choose from ranging from stat increases to adding new skills. The skill tree has a branching system that allows you to focus on one type of upgrade or you can strive to get the prerequisites needed to get some of the heavier hitting skills. Even with all the bells and whistles, the action tends to get a bit on the monotonous side.

To kill the monotony a bit, Return to Arms incorporates a new side quest system, which gives you different challenges in previously played areas. The challenges are not too hard but they do give you some great rewards, such as boosting your character stats or giving the player an uber weapon. Some of the challenges even give you access to new areas that can be used in the online portion of the multiplayer game. Like in the original, players are given the opportunity to play either solo or co-op with support of up to four players via the multitap or internet. The single player portion is fun, but you don’t get to the meat and potatoes of Return to Arms until you get a full party running around causing havoc. To communicate with your party, the game offers support for the USB headset as well as the USB keyboard. Of course the USB headset is the better option to help the other players keep their minds on the hacking and slashing.

On the surface, improvements made to Champions: Return to Arms are abundant, but if you dig a little, you will see that it is roughly the same game that we have played over the past four years. The basic formula is pretty solid but veterans will come to expect more. The added bonuses do wonders in helping to rejuvenate the dated game mechanics. To date, Return to Arms is the most complete package released from the good people at Snowblind. Anyone that has not given the franchise a whirl, should most definitely give it a shot…It just might grow on you.