Developer
Gas Powered Games

Released: April 4, 2002
Genre: Action/RPG
Players: 10
ESRB: Teen

5
10
8
7
7.1

System Requirements:

With the promise of new groundbreaking gameplay, I was looking forward to a medieval romp that broke away from the confines of the earlier Diablo games. I was getting pretty jaded with the entire RPG genre after recent trips through Nox, Icewind Dale, and of course, Diablo II; all of which seem to come out of the same mold.

Dungeon Siege offers several things new to the genre, and individually, they are excellent features, but combined, they still can’t manage to overcome the stale gameplay that consists of mindlessly beating on thousands of monsters, amassing treasure, and tweaking your characters. No matter how many gorgeous backgrounds the artists can create, and regardless of how many cool monsters and nifty spell animation effects the designers can throw at me, the core of this game is the same as any game that has come before it.

The story is simple and rather implausible. You play a simple farmer thrust into an epic struggle against the evil forces that have attacked your farm and the entire land. There is no explanation for your uncanny combat abilities. You begin the game with a pitchfork and tunic and upgrade your equipment as you proceed through this massive adventure. The rest of the story is unfolded through scripted encounters with key NPC’s and books scattered around the land.

Along the way you will recruit additional characters that will join your party. You might think that this would add some strategic value to the game, but sadly it doesn’t. The extra characters obviously add more firepower to your group and additional storage space for your growing inventory, and you do need to figure out which skills to develop for each character early on, but the actual combat is rather boring.

Bottom line – this game is nothing more that Gauntlet with fancier graphics and a more detailed RPG system. I’m sure thousands of you will disagree with this statement but if you look at the basic gameplay you will see it is true. In Gauntlet you lead 1-4 characters around beating up countless monsters, collecting gold, food, and magic items, defeat the occasional boss, then repeat on the next level which contains nothing but new scenery and new monsters.

In Dungeon Siege you lead 1-8 characters around beating up countless monsters, collecting gold and tons of equipment, defeat the occasional boss then move on to the next pretty level and do it all over again. See any similarities? The only difference is that Gauntlet never pretends to be anything other than what it is, while Dungeon Siege assumes this grandiose role as a groundbreaking RPG. The scary thing is that they actually fooled me for the first couple chapters.

Character development is pretty complex and you must decide how to develop each character early on in the game. While you could conceivably create a well-rounded character in skill level, the character attributes will restrict the important parts of class development. Each character has several skill levels that are upgraded as you use them. If you fight with a weapon all of the time your combat level will steadily increase. Use a bow and your range skill goes up, or use combat magic or nature magic and those skills will go up.

But regardless of the skill level you are still restricted by your stats. You may be a skillful spellcaster but your intelligence may limit you to low level spells. You might have a great range skill but lack the strength to draw the heavy crossbow. It’s a pretty complex system that makes you really think about how to develop your characters so they compliment each other in the overall party.

Control is intuitive for both characters and the 3D camera system. You can zoom down to where the game looks like Tomb Raider or zoom out to a typical RPG view. You can even play in a top-down map view that looks remarkably like their older Gauntlet games, although I wouldn’t recommend this view for anything more than checking your “fog of war” to explore uncharted territory.

You have full control over the formation of your party. Pick from several presets and you can even adjust the spacing of the formation allowing your team more swing room, or pull them in tight for a cluster of death. There are plenty of hotkeys available for selecting your party, choosing combat presets, and specialized targeting functions.

The NPC AI is pretty decent with good path finding if a character wanders off. Click on a treasure and the character nearest to that item will go get it. If everyone has a full pack except for one character, that person will go get the object.

As good as Ai is for the characters, the enemy AI is pretty lacking. Monsters will swarm you in a line-of-sight attack pattern. You will often be outnumbered 10 or 20 to one. In these cases you have to creep toward the swarm of monsters and try to tease a few of them into chasing you. Run away and kill them in private then return and draw a few more away. Repeat until they are all dead. If you storm into these overkill areas you will die quickly.

Thankfully there is no friendly fire, so you can send your heavy hitters in for physical attacks while keeping your archers and spellcasters back at a safe distance. Arrows, spells, and even explosions, will not harm your own team – unrealistic, yes – necessary, yes.

The camera system is handled with perfection. Items that would normally block your view become transparent as necessary, and you have quick and easy control over zoom, tilt, and rotation with simple mouse movements.

Animation is stunning and the battles are quite spectacular; especially if you zoom in and watch the highly detailed and textured characters and monsters engaged in combat. Collectible items are all conveniently labeled so you can choose what you want to grab or drag a window around them all for automated pick-up.

The interface is by far the best of any RPG I have ever played with only a few minor complaints. There was no onscreen display for remaining health for the enemy (like a bar above their head). Instead, you have to hover the mouse over the enemy then look at the bottom of the screen where the stats are displayed. It’s not hard to do, but if you have ten monsters in close proximity it can be hard to figure out who needs to be attacked next.

The character sheets and HUD interface are perfect. During the game you can quickly choose from the four various skill attacks. These icons serve a dual purpose as they also slowly fill-up as you increase in skill. This gives you instant access to everything you need to know about every skill for every character. Hover the mouse over any skill and a numeric value for that skill will appear. This value uses a decimal system to let you know how close you are to the next level.

Inventory items are color-coded. Red items cannot be used until certain stat requirements are met while blue items will enhance a particular attribute. This can create some unique chain reactions. You might find some gloves that raise your dexterity high enough to use that sword that raises your intelligence so you can cast certain spells, but if you lose the gloves you lose everything in that chain.

Sound effects are rich, lifelike, and of the highest quality. The ambient sounds of birds, wind, water, are always present and always accurate. Combined with the graphics, it creates a totally realistic experience and immerses you in the game.

The dialog ranges from acceptable to pretty bad. Some of the accents are exaggerated and just downright silly, while other characters are reasonably acted out, but certainly not noteworthy. Only certain dialog is spoken, normally if it is quest related. You will be reading the conversations for the most part.

There are all sorts of new quests and areas you can experience in the multiplayer portion of Dungeon Siege. It’s really easy to hook-up on ZoneMatch, or you can run your own server or join somebody else’s. Up to 8 players can play online or on a LAN, but dial-up users will be restricted to 1-4 players. This was the mode I tested and the game worked really well with hardly any noticeable lag.

NPC’s from the campaign are not available in the multiplayer game and treasure and items will respawn after a period of time. You can also customize your multiplayer experience by setting restrictions on character levels and the level of monsters you will encounter.

Dungeon Siege is fun at first, but quickly gets repetitive and even boring. If you can overlook the mindless hacking and slashing and succumb to the power of the perfect audio/visual presentation you will most likely enjoy this game. Otherwise, you might want to hang back and wait for something with a bit more substance.