Pandemonium's Full Review: Dungeon Siege for Windows
My first review in quite sometime. At least I have plenty of new things to write about now though lol. Ok on with the review.
If you are involved in the game world at all then this was a game you heard a lot about during the final stages of development. Getting great ratings and reviews in all of the gaming magazines and online rating sites this was a must own for myself. The game was tagged with the nick name "The Diablo Killer" and I have found this was true to a point. The single player game in itself was definitely better and more entertaining than Diablo. However, the game as in a multi-player game online was not up in the ranks of Diablo. This does not mean that the multi-play in Dungeon Siege is not well put together. I will explain my views later on.
Although the style of play in Dungeon Siege is much like Diablo and your traditional Dungeons & Dragons games, you will find quite of few tweaks that are quite enjoyable. You are not thrown in a dungeon with total loss of memory, or are marked at birth to save the world as a lot of other games of this nature start. You are a simple farm boy (or girl) working in your fields when all hell breaks loose. You are placed in the Kingdom of Ehb when a horde of attacking Krug comes knocking on your door. With your town burned to the grown and no one left you decide to investigate what's going on. The story picks up from there with many changes and twists as you play the game. To say anymore would take from your enjoyment of the game.
Game Play You gain experience for your character in the same manner as all these types of games, killing creatures. However, you will have a choice of what you wish to learn. This is the first game of this nature. In other games like this you must pick what kind of character you wish to play with in the beginning. In Dungeon Siege your character can be a melee fighter, ranged marksman, or control nature or combat magic. The more you use one of these skills killing creatures the more levels you will gain in that category. If you use a blunt weapon to attack you will learn melee, if you choose a bow more often then your ranged skill will advance, if you cast the calm but deadly nature magic that skill will raise in time, and if you choose to through the devastating combat magic at your opponents then this skill will rise. You can switch throughout the game as you see fit learning a little of each or make a traditional fighter in one of these categories. This was very well thought out and a great new style of play. You will also have an option of playing the game in three different difficulty levels (regular, advanced, and elite). A little option I loved in this game was the ability to switch levels whenever you saw fit while playing the game. You don't have to choose your difficulty level at the start of the game and were stuck with it. Just move the level up to gain more experience or turn it down to get out of a no win situation. This is where the Diablo killer term was right on.
You will have plenty of hot keys (F1 - F8) to switch among characters or number keys (1-4) to switch which skill you wish to use. You can customize these keys of course to your liking. You will also be able to have formation changes (this being because you will get much more characters to join you at a time) and the ability to change your style of fighting. These features are also an excellent change and makes the game so much more fun to make into your style of play. There are plenty of other nice features in the game play such as being able to toggle seeing all of the items on the ground at once or only when you point your mouse over an item. Just to many to name them all but, to put in a condense version, the game controls are great and easy to master!
As you play you will find thousands of different items to use from weapons to amulets and rings. Each one with different affects depending on your level of play on luck. Unlike a lot of games (such as Diablo) there are no fixed items in this game. Each magical item as an enchantment level factor. This factor will limit the item to what add-ons it can have when you pick it up. Your luck will determine the rest. This adds nicely to the replay value of the game in single and multi-player modes.
Graphics: 9 Flat out awesome. The details of the world looks great and each character and monster look outstanding individually. You can even zoom in and out for close ups of your characters fighting adding to the enjoyment of graphics. The game is set in a 3rd person atmosphere but, with many option changes you can use. Put the view to look straight down on your characters, pull the view back and look behind your characters, pull in close and get the view from just above your characters shoulders seeing your opponents running towards you. You can lock these views in place or move freely as you play. I'm a gamer that loves options so the more the better. Microsoft did great job here giving you many graphic options .
A notable tweak are your items you find graphic wise. Instead if just picking up a sword and wheeling it at your foes if your sword is magical it will have some great graphic affects. With sparks shooting from it to glowing different colors. These graphics don't just come on when your fighting they are always on your weapons. Swords, bows, even staves will have these affects so your character class will not hold you from seeing some nice affects. The way your character looks will also change as you wear different armor, gloves, boots, helmets, and shields. These are done with great detail all the way down to having certain designs on your shields that you will not only see on the inventory screen but, on your characters shield as he fights. Just truly amazing here.
Characters You start the game as a simple farm boy (girl) in your home town. You have no experience or any skills as of yet. Before you start you can choose a few different options in creating your character. You can choose your head shape, what kind of hair you want, and the cloths you wish to wear, The cloth option is completely useless as soon as you find armor and helmets. An option they did not need. All you will ever see is you face while playing the game and in your portrait. As I stated before you do not need to choose a character class in this game. Whatever weapon type you choose to play with that particular skill will go up. Whether it be a sword, bow, or staff while casting spells. You will also be raising your strength, dexterity, and intelligence throughout the course of the game. This is one of the nice changes in the game. Instead of just distributing points to your strength, dexterity, or intelligence you will raise these depending on what weapon you are using also. The more hand to hand batter you do the higher and faster your strength will raise. The more you use a bow the faster your dexterity goes up. And of course, the more you use spells your intelligence will raise. The way your character advances is the game is the best feature of the game in my book. It adds a whole new level of game play and replay value.
Non-Playing Characters (NPC) These are the character that will fallow you into hell and back. Heck, even die for you. There are a total of 14 NPC's that you can have with you in your party throughout the game. Some of these people you will have to hire at a cost and some will join your cause for free. These characters come with their on skills and will progress in the game the exact same way you do. You can always progress them differently after they join your party if you wish. Having so many different type of characters to choose from you and how many can be in your party at once is a great change from other games of this nature such as Diablo (where you can only have 1 at a time). This gives you a lot of party options to choose from with formation, how they fight, and who you want with you.
There is also one more NPC you can have and that is a pack mule. Yep, a mule can go with and hold a lot of your stuff. This saving you tons of inventory space on your character and your other party members. This mule will also advance some as you do in the game and can fight if attacked. Of course the mule doesn't want to brawl if it can help it. This was a great idea and adds some more fun to the game.
Sound & Music Nothing wrong here. The music is just fine and changes often enough so you won't need to turn on the stereo unless you play for an extended amount of time at once. The character's voices are solid and the creatures sound great when you blow their body parts all over the screen. No complaints here.
Multi-Player This is where the game gets a little sticky. You may love the multi-player style of play the game gives you or you may dislike it immensely. Depending on what kind of online player you are. Some nice features are, being able to take your single player character and play online with him. This was were Diablo really missed the boat. Once you play with your single player character online however, you will not be able to take the experience you gained playing multi-player back to the single player game. Your character is now both at a level in single player and a level in multi-player being a complete separate character. This was a huge add-on that a lot of other games missed. There is also a whole new world to play with quests and side quests to finish. The single player game is also on the multi-player game but, only at the regular difficulty level not all three. You can trade with other online people of course, create your own game, or join someone else's.
There are some nice tweaks however. For example, being able to boot a character out of a game you make is a very nice feature. Someone bugging you just say "see ya" and there gone and can't come back to your game. You can play as teams, against each other, or on your own if you wish. The game does not get harder with more characters in the game. This is not needed as the game is plenty hard in the elite mode as you get late into the cities.
The server is very unstable however. You run rather choppy at times even with a cable modem or higher. As a dial up connection I'm not sure how exactly you will run I can only imagine. Not having set items in the game to find make the trading value of items much less and much less common as other games. You wont see people asking in rooms for items very much or in games. It does happen just not often. You manly just play the game not to hope for that really rare item to drop so you can get an item you want. Just find it yourself. The online game is fun but it probably wont catch your interest as Diablo has caught on and is still strong.
If you have played Diablo then you know about the moo moo cows. Microsoft did take the cow level from Diablo and insert it into Dungeon Siege with chickens instead of cows. It's squawk squawk instead of moo moo. This level is much harder to get to than Diablo as you need more then just 1 thing to open the level. Nevertheless it's as fun to kill chickens as it was to kill the cows.
MODS For those hard-core gamers this game is very mod ready. This is why the trade value for items is nil. There are sites everywhere with mods to tweak the game play. If you play for just fun this is a great thing, but if you play more seriously then this will kill ya unless you plan on making your own mods to enhance your game play. There is already a Dungeon Siege editor out (not working to well) to help change the game to your liking. I will place a URL to the best site in my opinion for Dungeon Siege mods, news, and other related things. http://www.dsnetguide.com/index.php
Final Opinion The game in the long haul is great. Maybe the reply value on multi-player is not to my liking as much as I had hoped but, the single player part just kicks butt. You will find yourself addicted to this game as soon as you start playing and wont want to put it down until you finish it. After that, it will depend on what type of gamer you are.
System Requirements When I purchase this game I ran an old Savage 4 sound blaster as my video card. This was a no go. The game would freeze all the time and I would need to reboot. This is not the games problem it was just time for me to spend a little coin and get a newer 3d card. I run a GeForce 4 now and the game runs flawless at any graphic level or resolution. The game also takes up more than 1GB of hard drive space so make sure you have plenty of room before installing. There are two CD's but, only 1 is used for game play. The other is only for the install. You will never need to switch CD's while playing the game.
I highly recommend this game to anyone (if you have a younger child playing turn the gore down a tad though)
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