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Did you play Darkstone as a kid? Shutup–no. Of course you didn’t. Why? Because get off my lawn and somethin-somethin’ kids these days and Darkstone is an ancient old forgotten piece of art that never got enough appreciation and was probably the best game ever made and… and… oh dear word. It’s on Steam. For a buck. Well if that don’t beat all. Everything’s on Steam these days, including my childhood apparently. *Ahem* Anyway, as I was saying… shutup.
We’re reviewing the Dungeon Siege series today. Sheesh. Stay on topic, will you?
DUNGEON SIEGE
Back in the day, a little after Diablo caught on and actual 3-D sort of started being a thing, there was a slew of pioneer-games that ventured out to discover just what the limitations of 3-D fantasy/adventure gaming were. They were largely creative, innovative and despite following certain patterns amongst each other (i.e. the genre of hack and slash) they all usually had some odd set of quirks that also set them apart from each other. For example, Darkstone offered a pseudo-open randomly generated world with a likewise pseudo-randomly generated story, the need to manage your hunger and… a theme song sang by the town bard if you paid her. Shutup. Dungeon Siege gives me much the same impression. While it may not quite be as innovative as Darkstone, it just feels raw and robust–the product of an age less focused on marketing and more focused on making something new…ish. (Again, it still is a hack and slash game.)
Yeah, I know. Exciting, right?
Mechanically speaking, you don’t spend skill points in this game, which is sort of refreshing when compared to the more commonly used “make-numbers-appear-over-enemies’-heads-until-they-die-so-numbers-appear-above-your-head-and-you-level-up-and-get-skill-points” thing. Now you just make numbers appear over the enemies’ heads and you get stat bonuses depending on how you were making the numbers appear. Neat, huh?
You’re a wizard Harry! …and also a fighter and ranger…. potentially. But I mean, any sane person will just pick one.
Standard rules apply here overall. A lot of click-to-move, watch your character murder something, pick up loot, move on–rinse and repeat unto infinity. The music’s pretty good (as odd as that sounds) and the game runs smooth for its time. There’s an occasional hiccup here and there with the camera movement but the fact that you can move the camera in all directions in a game like this is pretty sweet to begin with since it’s not always guaranteed to come with the package.
Oh. And poke that bear. Yeah, get on that.
Believe it or not, this is solid Tier 1 waste-of-time material. I mean, it’s just like Darkstone. So bad yet so good as opposed to say, Might and Magic X — Legacy which was so bad yet so bad. The graphics are ancient by today’s standards, but just hold that rustic charm (and maybe I’m not the best opinion on the matter, but I think they hold up surprisingly well). I’m sure that very quickly the questing will grow stale, the stats will become dull and the monsters will all start to look the same… until you take an hour’s break and you have the sudden urge to come back to push your Int stat up just one level more so you can get access to that new spell you’ve been drooling over. Judging by some of the HUD, I think party members may become part of the mix at some point as well, so that’s a thing.
DUNGEON SIEGE 2
Yeah–no. I already tried this one before. Whereas Dungeon Siege felt fast-paced and hands-off, Dungeon Siege 2 feels like standing in line, waiting for a chance to get to fill out your Diablosque paperwork so that you can start processing your way through your grinding lessons. DS2 (and yes, in spite of the picture above it’s listed as 2, not II) starts you off with some lame story with some equally lame party member who lamely dies outside of the tutorial. Then you get captured by some lame tree people who think you’re part of some lame army and you have to earn their lame trust. You’ll immediately be deposited into a lame hub with lame shopkeepers that will outfit you for all your lame grinding needs. All of this so that you can go out and take part in your lame adventure.
…has lame lost its meaning to you yet?
Mechanically speaking, this is an upgrade of the first one. When it comes to this one though, I just feel like any freedom has been bleached in favor of letting you work the system. I mean, I know that all hack-and-slash game’s “challenges” are just a means to an end, but you could at least disguise it a little, you know? Apparently I gave this one a shot long enough to become a level 5 Thagur-… Thame-… Theurgago…. err… supposedly hot nymph. What little of DS I played felt like an adventure… what little of DS2 that I played just felt like a lesson in working ths shaft. Plenty of people love this one but I just can’t stand it. Tier 3.
Dungeon Siege III
Yeah, I’m not making this up. This time they used Roman Numerals.
Errgg… this game… is a product. A bad~ish… product. Oh, and Enix got ahold of it. So it’s a really, really polished bad~ish product. Look, I’ll just tell you–it basically has nothing to do with the other Dungeon Siege games–at least mechanically. It might not have anything to do with the lore/plot of the other games either, let’s be honest; have any of us really paid attention to the plot in these games?
The plot starts out with some nonsense about you being the descendant of the Legion and how there’s some crazy woman out trying to kill you all. You don’t get to create a character anymore or… really even shape your character apart from 4 premade molds. Generic noble-mc-fighter-knight, demoness “yes, you can see them through my shirt” stereotype the III, crotchety dr. spankalot the wizard and hoookerbot 9000. I chose hookerbot 9000 because she had guns. It was foolish though to assume that my choice of weapon had any meaning, for my character had “guns” the same way that Fable 3 tried to be a real game and failed epically and also happened to have guns.
Look, it’s just a generic Gauntlet game where you happen to level up, pick up generic randomly generated equipment with names that don’t make sense (“Carbine of Rage” or “Stockings of Resolve”) and occasionally push almost more than one button in combat. The reason this isn’t fun? Well, unlike Gauntlet, instead of fighting off hordes of monsters in a massive Conanic battle of the ages, you’re being stopped every few seconds so that an NPC can tell you something important like “hey, go push the “A” button on those three barrels.” Did I mention you level up when you do that?
Backing up a bit, templates aren’t immediately a bad thing but… the game has to be fun first. Take for instance Borderlands. You only got 4 characters to choose from in that game as well. You also did stupid mundane quests and picked up silly equipment. The difference was that all that crap came second to the actual “fun” part of the game which was runnin’ around and shooting things with brightly colored exploding nerf guns. Dungeon Siege 3’s “combat” is so simplistic that you’ll barely push more than a few buttons at any one point. Shoot, shoot, shoot, roll, shoot shoot shoot, roll. There are a multitude of perks you get when you level up but they are mostly gated by level or prerequisite skills (I literally got the “choice” to pick from a selection of one skill in one of the areas) to the point where I just feel like I’m walking down an already carved path wearing floaties with no water whatsoever.
Haha! This game thinks it’s a Bioware game! How! …sad.
If you have someone to couch-co-op this with you, it would be Tier 2. However, that’s not a testament to how good a two-player game this is and more a testament of the extremely limited and poor selection of co-op games available to begin with. Otherwise, this is Tier 3 all the way. I could barely stomach the 30 or so minutes I played on my own.
This Musket… does not fill me with determination.