Dungeon Siege 3

Previous entries in the franchise have never been regarded as massively story driven games and have instead focused on action and accessibility, Dungeon Siege 3 however is a product of Obsidian games and their influence is clear to see. There’s more focus on the story this time around (the story isn’t any special but the expected good vs evil with very little original or interesting to speak off) with heavy use of conversation tree’s with NPC’s and mini cut scenes, this is the first problem Dungeon siege 3 runs into.

Given the dungeon crawling nature of the gameplay the constant drawn out conversations with NPC’s bring the game to a halt and disrupt the gameplay and almost makes the dungeon crawling feel alienated. It also doesn’t help when the story tends to drag and become increasingly uninteresting as players progress through it. The characters within Dungeon Siege 3 do little to compliment the game, they tend to be paper thin and very unappealing as they ramble on about nothing very interesting and in some cases almost come off as mindless zombies. The story also fails to compel due to the poor voice acting and lack of facial animation which detracts any sense of emotion or worth. The conversation trees are quite in depth however conversations have little to no impact on the game ‘s world or story and for most part only seem to be present to fool the player into thinking there’s a sense of depth to each quest/story line.

Unfortunately the lack of originality continues through to the class selection with the likes of warrior, mage, rogue and shape shifter all of which don’t offer a whole lot in terms of gameplay. There is very flimsy back stories attached to each character class but these stories have zero impact on the game. The core combat is very simple and quite restricted with skills coming to players quite slowly which results in the constant use of the same skills for a level or two, this opens up the game to some extreme cases of repetition and player frustration. The world is deprived of anything original too with standard fantasy enemies and settings and making an appearance, this isn’t a problem in some titles but Dungeon Siege 3 doesn’t offer any kind of charm or charisma which leads to everything seeming dull. Questing within the world of Dungeon Siege 3 is mostly made up of go to point A and kill a mini boss an return to the quest giver, while these kind of quests are present in most role playing games Dungeon Siege 3 bog’s its version down with long journeys and more pointless conversations. The story line sections of the game follow a rather basic structure of travel to a location and slay a number of low level enemies (for example spiders) then progress to killing bigger spiders until you reach the boss spider, once this task is done return to quest giver and prepare for yet more lifeless and drawn out conversations. It’s fair to say that the majority of dungeon crawlers follow this structure however when you take into account Dungeon Siege 3’s lack of charisma and character and lack of originality or range of skills it becomes quite clear than the structure is quite hollow and lifeless. The environments tend to lack any real detail or range; paths tend to be extremely linear and repeating. The dungeons of Dungeon Siege 3 come off as under developed and almost copy and paste jobs which don’t do the game any favours in the slightest.

 From a visual perspective Dungeon Siege 3 is simply adequate, nothing stands out nor is anything well detailed, most of the textures appear to be smeared and blended. Other visual issues Dungeon Siege 3 suffers from is a poor lighting system as shadows are cast in a unrealistic manner and the light looks unnatural, all character models lack detail and the animation is ropey and limited at best resulting in characters looking almost like cheap action figures. Things are not helped by the camera angle which floats above the player looking down onto the environments; the camera tends to get stuck and requires the player to move the camera to see the environment around them (thus exposing the weak visuals and level design).

The real bulk of any Dungeon Crawler is the combat and Dungeon Siege 3 does a decent enough job in this regard. Each playable class has two stances (each stance allowing the player to take on single or multiple enemies) which gives a little bit of choice and a tiny bit of depth to the combat. Each class has a set of skills used to cut through the waves of enemies most of which range from area of effect skills to straight up single target attacks, there is a distinct lack of variety however which does leave the combat feeling somewhat limited. The only real learning curve of Dungeon Siege 3’s combat is to know when to charge in and when to retreat and heal up, other than that there is nothing to learn. Slashing through enemies does give off a feeling of satisfaction but the lack of skills does take away from the overall combat experience.

Killing enemies and completing quests results in experience points being rewarded to your character which earns level ups, with each level up comes to the chance to specialize in certain skills and buff characters abilities as well as unlocking new attacks. The RPG elements aren’t really that in depth but they do offer a sense of progression, be it a small sense, stats are further boosted by items and equipment found throughout the game though each item fails to really excite the player bar the odd pretty looking sword. The loot is a issue with most of the loot being nothing special and only a few stats different to your current weapon, the system is in need of a injection of creativity and flare.

Dungeon Siege 3’s jewel in its average crown is the four player co-op. What is a quite dull world filled with forgettable and repetitive quests are made considerably more bearable when playing with three friends via local or online co-op. Hacking away at wave after wave of enemies with friends offers a decent gameplay experience however it doesn’t change the game into something memorable. If anything the co-op papers over the many cracks that Dungeon Siege 3 has.

Overall Dungeon Siege 3 isn’t a particularly great single player experience, the lack of flare and originality and the repetitive nature of the game leaves the player feeling somewhat underwhelmed. The game lacks an engrossing story and engrossing characters which leaves the already hollow world feeling rather lifeless. Combat may decent enough but it lacks the depth of other titles in the genre. Co-op is a fun option but still suffers from the underlining issues of the game. Fans of the genre may find elements to enjoy in Dungeon Siege 3 but everyone else will end up frustrated and bored with it. While it’s not the worst game this year it’s certainly nothing memorable.