Dungeon Siege

"A good-looking boring "RPG""

To be honest: I didn´t get through this game. After about 20 hours of gameplay I found out that I am wasting my time and started Divine Divinity.

General: This game is a mix of Baldur´s Gate (there is a party, you may pause the game all the time) and Diablo (hack-and slay). So I guess you know what I mean.

Graphics (9/10)
The graphics are really good. They are 3D and a lot more detailed than in Diablo 2. You can zoom and move the angle as you wish. The few cutscenes are in the game graphics which is not a bad idea. The environments look various, very well done.

Sound/Music (5/10)
There are not many places where music is played. But I don´t really missed it in the game, the music was not very good at all. The sound effects are okay, well most you will hear is slaying monsters.

Story (1/10)
This is the worst point of the game. There is no story, not any trace of a story. It is only: Well, you meet a dying old man who wants you to go to a town. Five hours gameplay later another man says that you must go to this town in the ice. On your way you meet a mage... I don´t want to spoiler you but I don´t think it is possible to spoiler anybody in this game. The map has the form of a half-moon. You start at the southwestern corner, move north, then east and then south to get to the very southeastern corner of the map. Even the Might-and-Magic maps have not been THAT linear!

Gameplay (7/10)
At first I liked the game very much. One heroine walks along and slays a lot of monsters. Later you get a party and have to fight stronger monsters. But even your fighters are not able to equip a good armor because they are too weak. But they must fight to become stronger. You see the problem? They always get unconscious at this point of the game. Frustrating somehow.

Later the environments are very, very huge. Big caverns, a big swamp. Although the graphics are good after some time these sections are boring. The monsters are very various, but there are too many of them. If you don´t watch out every second you are soon overrun.

Controls (9/10)
Here Gas powered games did a good job. The controls are easy and logical. You can pause the game by hitting the space-bar all the time to change commands. Very useful.

Overall (4/10)
At first I liked the game: The graphics, the atmosphere, the gameplay. But when I proceeded the weaknesses of the game showed up: Boring, very big sections with the same graphics, no story, very few not really rewarding cutscens, too many monsters, boring sub-quests, this linearity of the game. I like Divine Divinity much more, there you can explore the world as you like, you have a charakter who talks and his actions have influence for the game.

So don´t buy this game unless you don´t care for story and interesting levels. Dungeon Siege offers you hack-and-slay. Much of that, very much!

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 09/22/02, Updated 09/22/02