Jun 25, 2011
When Dungeon Siege 3 was first announced, I was excited. Not because I played the original games and had been patiently waiting for a return to that world, but because I had heard that those games were great and I hoped Dungeon Siege 3 would be just as good. And, though I have to be honest and tell you that it is NOT as good as its predecessors, which are pillars of the dungeon crawling community, it is NOT a bad game as many other websites would have you believe. Here’s why.
The first thing you would notice when you get into Dungeon Siege 3 is that the graphics are pretty stellar for a dungeon crawling game. All of the environments are lush and varied, from magical Dwarven caverns to the steampunk styled city of Stonebridge. There was no time that I felt I was just retreading the ground I had previously walked because the developers did not take the time to create a big enough world. In fact, while the game keeps you moving in one direction, the world does feel quite large. This is not because it is large, but because of Obsidians ability to make the world seem realized, which adds to the depth and makes you feel like the world you’re stomping through is huge and just beyond the edges of your screen.
Next, you’ll probably notice the loot. And why wouldn’t you, as it is the main reason for games like this to exist. It’s all about loot, and that’s ok. Unfortunately I was not overwhelmed in this aspect of the game, but I still think there was plenty to be had. What’s great about the loot is that it varies pretty greatly because the game gives you around 12 attributes that the loot will affect, giving each piece of equipment its own unique reason to exist. There are also different levels of equipment, denoted by different colors, that range from common to unique. What I liked about the varied equipment is that sometimes I had to make some tough choices about my character and how I wanted to play him due to subtle changes in ability that ended up drastically altering my style. Also, as you get into the game, the equipment will change the appearance of your character, which, while a staple of RPG’s these days, did make me very happy.
The combat is also a point in the win column for Dungeon Siege 3, though it’s nothing amazing. It may be just me, but I’ve grown accustomed to more earth-shattering, hard-hitting combat from my RPG’s. I know this translates to a dungeon crawling RPG differently, but I still can’t help but feel more could have been done to make my character feel like he packed more of a punch. I did say that combat was a good point for the game though, and that’s because it’s frantic and engrossing. Apart from your helpful party member, you’ll be tasked with killing hordes of bad guys so you’ll have to be smart, quick, aware of your surroundings. The monsters will vary from simple bandits to Ogre-Cyclops hybrids with scaling difficulty and you’ll have two stances (combat forms) to deal with them. You’ll be able to choose how you play though I found myself switching between the forms a lot between and during battles.
Lastly, I do have some issues with the game which prevent it from rising to the greatness to its predecessors. The first issue is that the story is linear and utterly forgettable until the last bit of the game. I found myself skipping through the conversation scenes as quickly as I could because the game just did nothing to make me really care about why the things that were happening…were happening. The characters were simple and had little substance to them, and ultimately I felt like there was no reason for the game to exist apart from its other mechanics. Now some of you may say that story is not an important factor in a game like this and normally I would agree with you. But, today’s gaming world puts it at the forefront of exactly this type of game, otherwise other RPG’s, which continue to borrow heavily from the loot driven format, will eventually take over and render a game like Dungeon Siege 3 obsolete.
This also leads me to the conversational pieces which seem derived from Mass Effect’s wheel of conversation choices. This is an utter failure in the game because it served only to push a lackluster story forward. There were some interesting choices to make in the game, like saving someone or killing them, but the choices had no bearing on anything in the game to make it worth thinking more than five seconds about them.
Another issue is the multiplayer. While I think this is a great idea in practice, it runs into a lot of issues in the game. If you play with more than two people, the camera has a hard time deciding where it needs to be, which causes a shaking effect which is really annoying. Also, if you play with other people, they can take all of your items and sell it at their leisure, with or without your consent. This had to happen to me once for me to give that straight up. If you can play with one trusted friend, I think you’ll find this enjoyable, but otherwise I would avoid the multiplayer until you’ve completed the game and don’t care anymore.
My last issue is small but important and it derives directly from the story. This game is not long enough to qualify as a quality RPG or dungeon crawler in my book. It took approximately 15 hours for me to get through the entirety of the game, which is well shy of other great RPG’s which tend to hit around 30 hours or more. Again, I know this is intended to be more of a dungeon crawler than an RPG but the game does not seem to be aware of that, which makes the short amount of time played feel cheap. Obsidian put a lot of time into this game and a lot of effort to make it into more of a functional hybrid, but ultimately it fails to find itself as a meaningful product because it doesn’t do either side particularly well.
While normally I would tell you whether you should Buy It, Rent It, Borrow It, or Forget It, it’s on PC and I lose two options right from the start. I am now forced to create another option which would be to Buy It (when it goes on sale). It is worth the crawl because it can be fun and entertaining, but it’s not worth the $50 you’ll put down on it. Wait until Steam of GOG or whatever digital download service you prefer puts it on sale, and then pick it up.
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