Dungeon Siege Review
Review - Chris Taylor's much-hyped dungeon crawler gets the once over
Version tested: PC
Here Be McGuffins

Banzai!
Falling somewhere between the party-based antics of Baldur's Gate and the rapid fire click-fest that is Diablo, Dungeon Siege is a role-playing game for people who don't like to think. Characters, controls, stats-crunching and storyline are all pared down to the bare minimum, making way for an endless succession of increasingly brutal fights. There is a token plot, but it comes in uneven lumps and dull tomes, serving merely to keep you moving along in the right general direction, pushing you from one battle to the next. As the game begins the lead character is just a humble peasant, but a hammy voice-over assures you that you will soon be changing history, saving your kingdom from ruin, and all that jazz. Along the way you can gather up to seven companions, and in a novel twist this number can include pack mules to help lug your loot around, as well as the more usual warriors, wizards and archers. In the early stages of the game you won't be needing much direction from the plot though, because most of the world of Dungeon Siege is made up of slopes which are just that little bit too steep to clamber up, with long narrow valleys and claustrophobia inducing mines keeping you locked on a linear path. Later on in the game there are a few open areas, and if you hunt around there are some small hidden areas to uncover, but most of the time you don't have any opportunities for sight seeing. Instead you are neatly shuffled along a conveyor belt of restrictive caves and canyons, punctuated by towns where you can offload some of your ill gotten gains and pick up fresh supplies and additional characters...
I See Trees Of Green

The lights are on but no-one's home
This rather simplistic game structure would be fine if there was a dramatic storyline and involving characters to pull you into the game. Unfortunately the characters are all cardboard cut-outs with barely a line of dialogue to their name, and the plot is thin on the ground at the best of times. What little voice acting there is ranges from poor to downright insulting - whoever provided the voices for the miners should be rounded up and strapped to an electric chair for his troubles. Instead the game world takes center stage, and what a wonderful world it is. Dense forests, snow-shrouded mountains, eerily lit caves, misty swamps, and of course the eponymous dungeons are all lovingly rendered in real-time 3D, along with the nicely detailed and often bizarre looking monsters which inhabit them. Most impressive of all is the fact that this world is virtually seamless. There are no loading screens, and although occasionally when you arrive at a town the game will lock up for a second as data is pulled from your hard drive, most of the time the loading is done in the background without interrupting the flow. This allows you to move smoothly across a forest clearing, down a flight of stairs and into the dank crypt below, with the ground fading from view as you descend into the darkness. It's a neat trick, and helps to suck you into the world. The bad news is that the camera doesn't really let you zoom far enough out to fully appreciate this splendour, but you can get right up close to the action to see each swing of your sword and every drop of arterial spray that results from it. Sometimes the scenery gets a little overwhelming as well, and you can't see the forest (let alone your enemies) for the trees, but the foliage does at least fade out when it gets between your characters and the camera. An ugly overhead map can also be used to direct the battle if you can't see what your men are fighting behind all that shrubbery.
Autopilot

Bloody typical - I go to make a cup of tea, and when I come back you've splattered green gore all over the place.
More often than not you won't need to do any directing though. Simply set all the AI options which govern how freely your characters should attack and chase enemies to maximum and the game will pretty much play itself. In the tougher battles you might want to switch your mages between healing and combat spells from time to time, while hammering on the H and M keys will order anyone in your party whose health or mana bar has dropped too low to quaff the appropriate potion. Otherwise you can cruise through 90% of the game on autopilot without having to actually do anything. You don't even need to spend your experience points, as Dungeon Siege uses a skill-based system whereby your characters get better at tasks as they carry them out. So if you spend all your time in melee, your melee combat and strength attributes rise automatically. Cast spells and your magic and intelligence stats gradually improve. While it's nice to see the developers automate tedious functions such as picking up loot and introduce decent AI and a novel character development system, in a game which is solely focused on combat this doesn't leave much for the player to do for themselves. Of course, you can manage your battles by hand, disabling the AI and pausing the game to give orders by hand, but this tends to be pretty futile and tactical possibilities are limited. Enemies run right through your men as if they were ghosts, so you can't defend your mages and archers by moving your heavy warriors up front. Instead battles tend to turn into chaotic brawls, with characters and monsters chasing each other around in circles and desperately healing their allies as enemies swarm over you, charging in from all directions.
Nice But Dim

Can't see the trees for the forest. Or vice versa in this case
It doesn't help that you can't split up your group. The camera is always locked on the character(s) you currently have selected, so if your party gets seperated you won't be able to see what they're all doing except via the hideous "megamap" view. Even this doesn't work properly though, judging which parts of the map you have uncovered by where the camera is placed. So again, if one character chases after a monster he can end up disappearing into the fog of war. All you can do then is select the errant character and give the camera a couple of seconds to move to him. This doesn't work while the game is paused, so in the meantime the rest of your party will decide that you have selected the wayward wanderer as their group leader, and drop whatever they were doing to run towards him. Not very clever. Multiplayer leaves you with just one character to keep track of, but this doesn't really hit the spot either. Thanks to the wonders of DirectPlay you can only have up to eight people in a game at once. Given that you're free to roam across a few square miles of terrain, even finding the rest of the players can take a couple of minutes if you join a game which is already underway. It doesn't help that you have no way of knowing exactly where they are until after you have chosen where to spawn into the game. Which is about par for the course really, as Dungeon Siege's online support is downright primitive. The server browser doesn't even list ping times, so joining a game is a bit like playing Russian Roulette - you have no way of knowing whether the game will be playable until after you have connected to the server. What a great idea that was.
Conclusion
Dungeon Siege can be fairly entertaining in short bursts, but given the total lack of plot and character development there's little to keep you playing in the long run except the promise of more pretty graphics, new trinkets and more powerful enemies to kill. That might be enough for some people, but given the repetitive and brutal nature of combat it wore thin for me after a while.
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Eye Candy
6 / 10
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Comments (67) Latest comment 10 years ago
Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
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oooo errrr ... Matron !
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Thats a bit low, I would have thought. One thing you could upgrade very cheaply, would be the graphics card. You could pick up a Geforce 2 MMX for next to nothing these days.
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Bring us a shrubbery...
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Admittedly, after this initial 10-15 hours I've lost some of my initial enthusiasm, but it still remains a very competent title and has a great deal of multiplayer potential.
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After playing the demo briefly, and discussing the full game with others, whose opinion I trust, the review seems to be a fair comment.
Yet another disappointment.
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And thats MX not MMX
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Actually the longer I spent playing the game the more time I spent on the megamap. It does make it much easier and quicker to control your characters and explore the map, but it looks hideously ugly and you miss all the beautiful 3D scenery, which is the game's main attraction really. If I wanted to stare at a dodgy top-down view of the world I might as well just go and play NetHack.
Dr Dave - "after this initial 10-15 hours I've lost some of my initial enthusiasm"
Yeah, it's fun at first and the scenery certainly wows you, but having played the game for 20 hours now I'm really sick of it. Good in short doses, but lacking long term appeal.
Dr Dave - "has a great deal of multiplayer potential"
Unfortunately we have to review the game based on what comes out of the box. It might have great potential, but at the moment the multiplayer support is frankly pants. It's laggy, you can only have up to eight players in a game, the server browser is virtually useless, and it's just not much fun TBH. Plus for some reason half the Dungeon Siege servers in the world seem to be in Hong Kong. Bizarre...
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I was really looking forward to this game, after having spent so many happy hours with Total Annihilation. Unfortunately, too much time seems to have been spent on the eye candy, and not enough on the gameplay.
The interface is excellent though. I hope other games start to emulate this style.
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Basically, the game is Progress Quest with a 3D engine. Or as someone on a newsgroup said, "a fantasy action screen saver"
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P.S. Tiiti - you are missing your points
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Frankly any game which gives me 15+ hours of fun is worth the money (£2 per hour), if I go down the pub tonight it will probably cost as much as this game. If I buy a DVD I might watch it twice, if I go to the cinema or theatre the cost adds up quickly. So for the guy who got bored after 20 hours, I think you got fair value.
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Two problems there. 1) Like I already said, we have to rate the game based on what comes out of the box, not what might appear several months down the line, and 2) They haven't actually released any of the mod tools yet.
Let's wait until we see how flexible the engine is and how good the tools are before talking about how great the mod community is. People always get overenthusiastic before a game is released and plan these great spectacular mods they're going to make, and then the game finally comes out and nothing happens.
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Slash, slash, slash.
Yawn, yawn, yawn.
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Actually I was playing it on medium.
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Microsoft compromised the game, same as they did with Mechwarrior 4. The "original" vision GPG had for dungeon siege was considerbly more exciting. EG, mutiplayer was for 32 people, and had modes such as capture the castle and dedicated servers. Eg. more of a "normal" online action game.
Microsoft enforced their principle that all their games utilise the zone for multiplayer, which appears to only support DirectPlays WANK 8 player maximum limit.
Been trying to find the article with Chris Taylor where he explained all this when the game was first announced... :/ shame really, cant find it.
That coupple with the fact the netcode is dump (directplay again :/). Just a pitty how shite standards are enforced on good game ideas though draconian measures of manopolistic control.
And yes, i know i cant spell
A fun game, a little tedious, but could have been so much more.
Roll on the NWN beta test
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Don't see what's wrong with that really, Gauntlet was fantastic.
It's so much more flexible and interesting than the on-rails Baldur's Gate with its do-this-do-that gameplay.
Well, I guess there's always going to be one 'Eurogamer Special' review the average person will disagree with - and this is mine.
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I can't see how anyone would describe any of the Baldur's Gate games (other than the PS2 Dark Alliance one which is still a lot of fun anyway) as being on rails.
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Oh my, could you have been more wrong?
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remember all these comments are opinions not absolute facts.
I found Baldur's gate restrictive and inflexible, while the world to me seemed dead and static. But then I generally despise anything based on any aspect of the AD&D universe.
Contrast that prejudice of mine to Gestalt's prejudice against any game that has suffered 'hype'.
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One thing the 'soulless' aspect of the game allowed me to do was to project myself onto the characters and feel like they were my characters rather than someone elses. In Baldur's Gate I felt from the start, where you have to pick a pre-made portrait for your character, that I was playing someone elses characters, and that I was just looking after them for a time. I got the impression that without me they could easily have completed the quest on their own, and that I was merely an observer. With Dungeon Siege I feel like I am leading the quest instead.
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There were characters?
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Anyway if you liked Diablo2 you'll like this too. If prefer Baldurs Gate (PC) you wont like it. If you liked Baldurs Gate (PS2) you'll like it.
PS the cheapest price is not the price above you can get it for £24.99 from www.play.com. they just started doing PC stuff. GTA3 (PC) for £19.99, yeh!
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I liked Baldur's Gate
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It does? Now this should have been mentioned in the review...
/me runs out to buy it
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"So again, if one character chases after a monster he can end up disappearing into the fog of war. All you can do then is select the errant character and give the camera a couple of seconds to move to him. This doesn't work while the game is paused, ..."
First of all my characters never ran away into the fog of war, just turn their AI to your liking (you can even order them not to move at all if you prefer micro managing fights), that's what the party AI menus are there for! As for re-centering the view, ever thought of selecting the character you want centered and quickly unpausing/pausing the game (just hit spacebar twice) quickly? The camera will then move to the newly selected character while in pause mode. Quite simple really...
"... so in the meantime the rest of your party will decide that you have selected the wayward wanderer as their group leader, and drop whatever they were doing to run towards him. Not very clever. "
Also an option that can easily be turned off in the on-screen party AI menu at the click of the mouse. Sorry but throughout the review it really seems as if the reviewer didn't even try to like the game.
Still, I can second many of the reviewers other thoughts abotu DS, like the lack of depth and so on. While I greatly enjoyed playing through the single player and look forward to met with some friends for some multiplayer fun one of the next weekends, the game MAJORLY lacks any kind of involving plot or interesting characters, apart from being ridiculously linear!
Also, it must be the first game ever, where I actually KICKED OUT my MAIN CHARACTER when someone better came along after 2/3rds of the game - its hard to really do any kind of role-playing in DS, I never could have parted with my main characters from other RPGs, no matter the stats. Although for some reason I must say its cool the game doesn't even mind you kicking out the "hero" for someone better, suits the rest of the gameplay mechanics.
What I also dislike is that there are no breaks or rewards during the game (except even more items). Towns are merely a place to pick up potions and sell stuff - and off you are again along that one long trail that is the "world" of Ehb. The NPCs are shallow and I couldn't care less for the fate of the people living in the kingdom, they were such a boring bunch anyway! One or two side Quests per town (I can only remember 2 throughout the entire game) and NPCs that actually MOVED AROUND a bit, instead of standing nailed to their place day and night, would have done a lot for the game too.
To sum it up, it lacks depth, story and interaction - but for some reason I didn't care, at least whilst I was playing! That is the brilliance of the game in contrast to all the obvious weaknesses.
Exploring just that tiny bit more of the map, getting just one more cool magical item, just raising that one stat to finally be able use the kickass weapon i just found - THAT is what drives this game, THAT is what the game is about, and it does it better than any game before. All combined in an incredibly easy and intuitive, yet powerfull interface, that finally puts an end to the days of swollen fingers from endless clicking (like in Diablo).
DS is something for gatherers and stat builders, not for RPG fans who like dramatic plots, but it doesn't want to be, so why blaim it?
I'd score it 7,5 out of 10, the reason is simple - never score a game based on what ITS NOT, score it on what it IS, and it is great fun for many people, at least for up to, and sometimes exceeding 20 hours, which seems to be the landmark these days.....
PS: I see the missing editor as a HUGE problem. Once played through, the single player replay value of DS is basically non-existent and only good add-ons and MODs could change that. With the tools still not released, good MODs are still months away though, and until then, chances are I already erased DS from my harddisk...
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Unfortunately I didn't notice that button at all, so it can't be that obvious, and it's not mentioned anywhere in the manual.
"Exploring just that tiny bit more of the map, getting just one more cool magical item, just raising that one stat to finally be able use the kickass weapon i just found - THAT is what drives this game, THAT is what the game is about, and it does it better than any game before"
Ah, so it's a single player action-RPG for Everquest fans.
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They jiffybag it and sends it to mouse.
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Excuse my ignorance/stupidity, but what does that mean?
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Great engine
Excellent party control (but not up to BG2 standard)
Battles good fun
Too linear (unlike BG2)
Story a pile of poo (unlike BG2)
So ... as long as Neverwinter Nights can up the graphics (looks at new video - check) it will erase Dungeon Siege from our lives
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It usually ends up in a big cardboard box in a dark corner of my bedroom, along with my Stupid Invaders toilet paper, Clusterball balls, all manner of dodgy gaming-related t-shirts and other stuff I wouldn't touch with a twenty foot clown pole if my life depended on it.
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By that definition an exquisitly well rendered dot in the centre of the screen would be a brilliant game if that's all the developers produced. I think not...
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In that case, perhaps you should have a competition every now and then to get rid of the box of shame.
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Anyway, I mentioned this before, but is there any chance of seeing some polls on this site? I'd really be interested as to what console ownership is planned by the readers.
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heh, what about a readers' survey à la Gamespot? Something for rauper to feed the marketing hounds, plus a good way to waste ten minutes. Prize for filling it in - entry in a tombola to win the contents of Gestalt's cardboard box. Results of the survey to be published on the site
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They are really fun to write too, but then again, I'm somewhat of a arse too.
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Bugger off!
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You actually got that far? Wow, you've got a lot of patience. I made it to the second mission (I didn't even do anything for the Beach Landing mission, I just somehow completed it - no joke - although I do recall my men killing themselves by throwing grenades right in front of themselves), moved my men about a bit and was so majorly unimpressed by the poor graphics, stupid animation and unoriginal gameplay, gave up.
I even went to the website to see what the response to it was. That's a great laugh too. It consists of posts on how rubbish the game is and "when will the patch be out".