Dungeon Siege

"A fast paced, great looking, and enjoyable action RPG."

Dungeon Siege is a game made by the all mighty Chris Taylor, who made the great game Total Annihilation. TA was a great real time strategy game so when I heard that he was going to make a Diablo like RPG I thought that was really interesting. Now that Dungeon Siege is finally out, I can say that it was worth the wait and that Chris Taylor is also great at designing RPGs as well.

Graphics - 10/10
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Duh. This game looks amazing, definitely the best looking action RPG ever. The amount of detail is simply amazing. The water looks so real. All the monsters look really cool. And the magic are really spectacular. And et cetera.

Sound - 8/10
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Sounds are pretty good. Nothing really new of outstanding here though. Music are mediocre and sounds like what you'd expect. The sound effects sound real enough, and the sounds the monsters make give them personality.

Gameplay - 7/10
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Have you ever played Diablo? Well, it's quite similar to that, and there is nothing wrong with that. Basically you go around a world and complete quests by usually just fighting waves and waves of monsters. After you kill monsters you get experience points which level you up. Dungeon Siege has lots of unique elements as well. The greatest one is simply that in single player you can control a party of up to 8. Much more fun then just controlling 1 person. Next, the leveling system is different, in which its simplified into 4 areas; melee, ranged, nature or combat magic. The more you fight in these areas the more experience you will gain in that area. This simplifies the game so that there are basically only 4 different character classes, so you character probably wont give you the sense of personality that other games might give. There is also a ''pack mule'' which is a mule that follows you around in single player who provides lots of inventory space, but other then that everything seems same old same old, and there is nothing wrong with that because it's still fun.

In the multiplayer mode though Dungeon Siege suffers a lot. First is the game-finding interface, which is TERRIBLE. Hopefully there will be a patch to fix that. Secondly, in multiplayer, you control only 1 character and have no pack mule, thus eliminating some of Dungeon Siege's strongest elements. But still, travelling with 7 other people fighting though monster and gaining levels is still fun.

Final Score: 8

Take Diablo II, add a twist, take a bit out, add great looking 3D graphics, and you got Dungeon Siege.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/27/02, Updated 05/27/02