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| Source // Wikipedia |
"It's like Diablo, with a party."
"Great. I don't really like Diablo..."
I don't know anything about Dungeon Siege, so reading this isn't the best of starts. In truth, it's more than a Diablo clone. It's not even a clone, but it is a click and collect game. Lots of clicking. Lots of collecting.
Let's see how much.
Frustrations
Don't you just love it when the screenshot button is already mapped to something in-game? I'm sure the adventurer's handbook is quite useful, but right now, I want to capture Dungeon Siege's gameplay, not it's pop-up windows.
Let's try the ever-handy back up button, F11.
Oh, good Lord.
After rearranging some hotkeys, dungeons were ready to be sieged. Where were we, though? We were farming when an old man died in front of our eyes. An attack of some description. Sounds important. More interesting than farming too, so I suppose we should pick up a weapon and get our grand adventure going.
While the hotkey list was lengthy, the button you'll be using the most is the left mouse button, clicking where you want your character to move, what to pick up and interact with, and what to attack - though there seems to be an auto-attack option of some sort to reduce finger strain or something.
We seem to be suited to slashing things in the face. The animations are repetitive, and they don't care about making any sense - hit points drop when the game thinks they should, not when a dagger hits anything.
Despite being surrounded by these little brutes, there is barely a scratch on our person, and there's plenty of loot to... loot.
Gold, magic scrolls, weapons. There's nothing unexpected on these guys. I instinctively hoover it up, expecting it to come in handy later, even if it means selling it all. Besides, I've got a bit of space in my inventory.
After a few more skirmishes in the forest (I've no idea where I'm going, but this way seems to make the most sense), I need a health potion. Unlike other titles, chugging one doesn't remove it from your inventory. Characters sip an amount they need, and the bottle will stay there until it's empty. The same applies to your Mana for spellcasting, and quick buttons on the HUD allow you to chug without opening up your inventory.
I am quickly getting bored of clicking on the same enemies and watching a janky tussle take place before they fall over. The map screen wasn't what I expected, but it allows you to continue playing from this overhead view. With characters ready and able to attack on their own, I killed a few creatures here without being sure of what they even were from this distance.
The first house I'd seen since starting gave me a brief shot of interest. It wasn't full of stuff to take. Should I steal from the locals? I think the owner is out front, on his back, dead. If I use it to avenge his death, it'll be fine.
Final Word
Ah, perfect. Defeated because I charged into ten enemies without thinking. We'll count that as a tactical error on my part, then close the game and uninstall it because I have never been so bored in my life.
That's an exaggeration, but this game was not grabbing my attention at all. The opening cinematic sucked. The story sucks. The monsters, while varied, all had the same idea: potter about, notice me, charge, attack, die. Whether they had feet or wings, their entire lives revolved around whether I was in the area or not. And what do I do to defeat them? Pick a weapon, sit back and watch.
There is more to Dungeon Siege than that, of course there is. If I had switched to a ranged weapon to thin the herd before getting any closer, I'd have survived longer. If I had kept an eye on my health status, I'd have seen how stupid my strategy was. But after twenty little fights where nothing exciting happened, I didn't care that I died. I was glad to have the excuse to stop playing.
Dungeon Siege, when it gets going, allows you to manage a whole party of dungeon crawlers across an entire land devoid of loading screens. Set up your strategy, put your party in the right formation for the situation, then click a couple of times and watch the game play itself. Sweep up the loot you want, rinse and repeat.
Sometimes you want a game to be smart enough to play itself while you fiddle about with this and that to the side, but this takes it to the extreme. If that's what you want, a dungeon crawler that does it for you, great. Have fun. Dungeon Siege is undoubtedly approachable.
For me, this was gone from my life in half an hour. I don't know what I'm missing, and I don't want to know. If there's a positive to be found in this experience, it's that the game still looks alright. If there's another, it's that it made sense without me having to play through a tutorial or read a manual.
There's clearly something here, but it's not something I want to play.
Fun Facts
In an effort to strip the boring bits from RPGs and create an action-heavy title that anyone can jump into, the developers wrote a detailed backstory... for themselves. It was barely referenced in-game so that players didn't have so much to read. Reading is boring. Text is not action. Dungeon Siege is action.
Dungeon Siege, developed by Gas Powered Games, first released in 2002.
Version played: PC, 2002.