Dungeon Siege is one pretty game. I found alot of the outdoor areas of Ehb to be total eye candy. You'll travel through cliffs overlooking waterfalls and valleys, and mountain paths covered in white snow. Even dark forests devoid of sunlight are nice to look at, and when I say forests, I don't mean a few of the same looking trees here and there, I mean a real forest with several hundred trees. Trees sway in the wind, snow and rain fall, water flows through streams, and in some caves, rays of light peer in through the ceiling, creating a very detailed world...A world that you'll probably start to miss every now and then, as alot of your time is spent beneath the earth, in dark dungeons and caves. I'd find myself tiring of the (intentionally) ugly, monster infested dungeons a little too much though, but all in all, Ehb is a dazzling sight to behold. It's also worth mentioning that as you move through the world, you'll not see a single loading screen. The game does it all behind the scenes, so you're constantly playing.

Before you begin, you're asked to create a character. You can change your sex, hair, skin color, clothing and face. You'll have the choice of recruiting up to 7 other characters whom you'll meet along the way, though I believe it's possible to go through the entire game alone. One thing that sets Dungeon Siege apart from other RPG-type games is it's class system. You don't select a class at the beginning of the game. Instead, as you play, you become more proficient in weapons or spells as you use them. Using swords and axes would boost your melee stats, while using fireballs and what not, would boost your combat magic stats. Yes, it's possible to make a character that can use two, three, or even all four classes within the game (melee/ranged/nature and combat magic), but they'll be nowhere near as strong as a character that specializes in just one.

I think, "A cross between Diablo and the combat of Baldur's Gate" would be a good way to describe Dungeon Siege. Movement and actions are carried out by simply pointing and clicking. The Baldur's Gate similarity here is the ability to pause the game at any time to assign actions to each party member, making micro-managing so much easier. The on-screen menus also allow you to quickly change formations, weapons, and rules of engagement, such as hold fire, attack on sight, attack the weakest enemy first, and so on. You can also assign different weapon combinations to hotkeys, allowing you to switch all eight members of your party from a more defensive setup, to all out offense or what not at the touch of a button. There's also a very useful overhead map, and another handy little feature that tells the selected characters to pick up any items laying on the ground. Just about everything has a remappable hotkey too.

By clicking on a character, you center the camera on them, which you can rotate and zoom in and out. When you zoom in, you can really appreciate how detailed the characters and enemies are. What you equip your characters with is also what you see on them. So if your armor has a design etched on it, you're gonna see the exact same design on your character. The suffix/prefix system that mixes and matches with base items (weapons/armor/etc.) was taken straight from Diablo. This means you get items like "Savage boots of savagery" or something, in addition to some exceptional items with more than 3 magical attributes. All items also have a minimum stat requirement to equip, requiring you to have a certain level of strength, dexterity, and/or intellience. As for spells, instead of having scrolls littered about your inventory, you're given a spellbook to store scrolls that you plan to use. Spells can only be used once you've reached a certain level in the applicable magic classes. Both nature and magic classes contain spells that range from plain offense, to summoning monsters, to temporary magical upgrades (buffs), and a few others, like healing.

It took me a good 47 hours to beat this game. You start alone and gather a party along the way, unless you want to be a loner about it. Aside from first recruiting your party members, or ejecting them from your party, there is unfortunately, zero interaction between them. As you progress through the game, you'll slowly begin to learn who's really behind all the chaos that's been sweeping the once secure land of Ehb. Basically, you and your party move from town to dungeon, to town, to dungeon, in a very linear fashion, recieving quests (most of which are story related) and fighting mob after mob of monsters. A few cool bosses are thrown in too. The game got repetative after awhile though, and some people will probably lose interest and not finish. The story isn't bad, but it's not gripping enough to be the main reason for playing, nor was there any attempt at making the characters feel like more than lifeless dolls. While there are a few side quests and dungeons, the game is linear and repetative enough for me to consider as a flaw. Such is the case with most Action-RPGs I believe.

There are a wide assortment of monsters, and I don't remember seeing half-assed 'monster variations'. Those being stronger monsters with the same model as a previous one, just with a different color and name. Speaking of monsters, another flaw of Dungeon Siege lies in the AI. You can run a character into a mob of monsters then have him run in circles, and they'll follow him while ignoring the onslaught of arrows and magic coming their way from your other characters. Though I won't hold it against the game too much, since some battles were so tough I didn't mind going up against stupid AI. Taking out a real tough mob of monsters can be a nice satisfying feeling though. The character's pathfinding can be a little funky too. Navigating through a hedgemaze was rather frustrating, since the formation kept getting split up, and characters kept ending up on opposite sides of the wall. All in all, pathfinding isn't a big problem, since it only happens in certain areas. The AI overall isn't anything to write home about, but it gets the job done.

At towns you can visit taverns, shops, buy a packmule, gather information from the townsfolk, and maybe even pick up a few party members (whom you can meet elsewhere as well). Very often you'll arrive in a town carrying a whole load of items to sell. If you're like me and absolutely need to have everything neat and your party at the best they can be, visiting a town can take awhile. Sorting through the inventory space of 8 characters and making sure you haven't missed any good items before you sell them takes longer than I'd think. Then there's deciding whether or not you want to buy that new, but expensive suit of armor or toughing it out until the next town. Anyway, you'll also probably want at least one packmule. They're basically defenseless, but have the inventory capacity of about three characters.

Sounds are done pretty well. Swords, arrows, and spells are convincing. Ambient sounds add to the atmosphere, such as running water, or the distant sound of wind blowing through dungeons. For the most part, the monsters sound great. It's just a few of them make real unconvincing growls. For example, one of the first enemies you fight, the Krug, come at you going "Kurr!". I couldn't believe they used that for a monster sound, but I'm just nitpicking, since only the Krug and Darklings sound bad enough to mention. The voice acting is a mixed bag. It works well enough, but they tend to overdo it. Except for when they die, your characters make no sounds at all. No "Hyah!" while swinging their swords or anything, and while it shouldn't bother you much, it just adds to the feeling that your characters are nothing more than dolls, as mentioned above. The music deserves mention though. Jeremy Soule, the one who did the soundtrack for Icewind Dale, composes Dungeon Siege's as well. I enjoy it quite a bit. It sets just the right mood for everything, from the secure feeling of a town, or the lonely feeling of an icy cavern. The theme song, and variations of it, are pretty catchy too. I just think it's a pity that the music fades out when the game is paused.

When you've conquered the single player campaign, you're given the choice to import a character from your saved game into multiplayer; items, money, and all. Or you can just start a new one. It allows up to 8 players a game, and supports TCP/IP, LAN, and has it's own gaming service, Zonematch. An interesting addition was that of the multiplayer only campaign set in another country, larger than Ehb. It has it's own difficulty modes for high level characters as well. Games start off in a chatroom, where the host has several options he can tweak before starting the game. A few include : what town the players start in, or if they can choose for themselves, whether or not they drop anything when they die, if other players can pause the game, and even if joining a game in progress is allowed. While it can be fun to run around dungeons with your friends (Or enemies. Player vs player is supported.), it takes away the ability to control a party, which was one thing that set Dungeon Siege apart for me. I tried Zonematch a few times, and it was a bit laggy even on my DSL, but maybe I just had bad hosts. LAN play is smooth, and lag free however.

And the last thing I want to mention is that Dungeon Siege was made to be very mod friendly. Gas Powered Games released the tools they used to create the game to let people create their own worlds. Because of this, and because characters are stored on your hard drive, as opposed to a Zonematch server, hacking characters and making them ridiculously powerful is probably pretty easy. Anyway, as of this writing, I haven't been able to find a user-made campaign, but I know of a few that are in development. When released, they'll be sure to add even more replayability to the game.

I would have had this review done alot sooner, but I got bored of the game and put it off for several months. Dungeon Siege is without a doubt one of the best Action-RPG titles out there, but like games of the same genre, suffers from repetative gameplay. It's also very linear, and if you're looking for an engaging story, you're better off looking elsewhere. The sound effects are good, but borders on average where voice is concerned. Also, while there's a climactic battle, there isn't much in the way of an ending. Dungeon Siege's strong points include it's gorgeous graphics, wonderful soundtrack, and it's rather simple gameplay, which will last you a long time. Dungeon Siege isn't here to innovate. It's goal is to take what's already there and take it further, and it does just that quite well.

-Shinji[tEs]
12/02/02