Review: Dungeon Siege 3

Dungeon Siege 3 (DS3) is a loot-based dungeon crawler that goes back to the roots of role-playing games (RPGs) - a strong story with interesting characters. Unfortunately, it fails as a result of poor gameplay dynamics and comes across as dated and ultimately unexceptional.

As with previous Dungeon Siege games, events take place in the land of Ehb. A gamer plays a member of the 10th legion, a group that has been exiled from Ehb and is hunted and slaughtered by the evil Jayne Kassyndre. The story focuses on restoring the honour of the legion, forming an army and taking back your land.

The gamer explores Ehb, as one of four characters, each with their own combat style: Lucas (swords), Anjali (fire), Katarina (guns), Reinhart (magic). The story adapts slightly based on character selection, which, in turn, is based on the combat style preferred. As the game progresses, the gamer meets the other characters and they are added to the party - but can only have one other character with at a time.

Dialogue options allow the gamer to gain influence over companions while performing specific deeds that give the team permanent stat bonuses. However, as with many other effects in the game, influence and deeds are poorly explained and the gamer ends up spamming the dialogues to get through them faster.

In DS3, characters can be customised along three dimensions: abilities, such as summoning a wolf to your side, their associated proficiencies, for example increasing the wolf's damage, and finally, more passive talents, such as regaining health when the wolf attacks.

Each character has nine abilities (excluding a standard resurrection spell and dodge move) and 10 talents. The player does not earn enough points to max out all proficiencies associated with the abilities, so it is a good idea to carefully select which skills to focus on based around a preferred style of combat.

Also, each character has two combat stances. For example, Katrina moves from duel wielding short-range weapons to a long-range rifle. Transition between the stances is quick and almost essential in adapting to a specific combat situation. For example, when surrounded by quick-moving enemies, I always used my dual pistols; when overwhelmed by huge numbers, I used a combination of rifle shots and dodging.

The combat dynamics are, however, skewed against close combat. Baddies, no matter their size, will always inflict massive amounts of damage close up, but almost no damage from afar. Even the largest boss battle can be won by doing a 'snipe and dodge' technique. It comes across as button spamming, but it's ultimately less frustrating than dying and having to wait for the AI to revive the gamer.

The actual game environment is miniscule compared to most RPGs. Towns and locations in Ehb are quite close together and sometimes travelling between two cities on foot can seem faster than using the magical transportation portals, called causeways.

The maps are constructed as a series of narrow corridors and make the entire game feel restricted - possibly the last thing a gamer wants to do in an RPG. Furthermore, the graphics, look and feel of the game were rather uninspiring.

In DS3, a player is able to use a glow trail much like Fable, but there is only a mini-map - no larger map. Even though this almost unthinkable in an RPG, the environment in DS3 is so small and the storyline is so linear, that it isn't too frustrating.

The environments are also littered with issues - invisible walls pop up randomly throughout the game, blocking the path in an area, forcing a player to walk in wide circles.

As with similar RPGs, looting is an important element to the game. One nifty function is that once inventory is filled, a player can 'transmute' equipment into gold without having to visit a local store. This is convenient if the player is too busy to barter but could be a loss for those who enjoy the merchant element in an RPG.

The biggest disappointment with the game was the multiplayer feature. Local drop-in drop-out multiplayer is available and the second player is able to choose and switch between any of the three other characters. In online multiplayer, players are allowed to have up to three other gamers in the game.

Unfortunately, players cannot earn any XP or keep any loot when they play in someone else's game. Even though this solves the pesky problem of joining someone's game and ending up with characters with different levels or strengths, it also means there is almost no motivation for people to play with the player, either locally or online.

The multiplayer is also fraught with other strange dynamics: gamers cannot bring their own character, skills or weapons into the game; the party shares gold which means the main player can easily be bankrupted; and even though they are allowed to vote on the dialogue options, it is ultimately the main player who decides what to say.

Finally, even in online multiplayer, a gamer is not allowed to move outside of the main player's circle. This makes sense in a local multiplayer game, but in four-man online multiplayer, it significantly affects the combat and camera dynamics making for frustrating play.

The game is flawed on a number of dimensions. The environments are small, the graphics feel dated, combat dynamics are boring and the campaign, which only takes about 12 hours to complete, is decidedly average. DS3 falls flat because it doesn't push the boundaries of the genre in the same way that games such as Dragon Age or Fable do.