by Jody - January 28, 2004

Dungeon Siege is one of those games that you can't truly understand or appreciate until you play your way into it. I had beta tested this game and I loved it! The day before the release of the game, it was shipped to my mailbox so I then started playing.

There is just something about this game that will pull you in.

After playing through the single player campaign and playing a hefty bit of multiplayer, I can say with some confidence that the image the talk had created in my mind was way off. Granted, not everything that people said was way off-the graphics are amazing, and this is one of the first things that struck me about the game. The incredible 3D models of each and every character or enemy in the game are simply amazing looking. Every piece of armor/weaponry that you equip changes your character's appearance. With the robust camera features, you can zoom in to the point that the game practically becomes a third-person shooter (if you so desire), and everything looks absolutely gorgeous even up at this intimate level. The environments range from good looking too breathtaking. There were times when playing the game that I would actually stop and sight see in the environments (hopefully I'll be able to capture some of these moments in screenshots). There is also a lot of variety as far as the environments go, deserts, tundra, forests, and of course various caverns and dungeons are all represented-these look noticeably diverse from one locale to another.

As far as the animations go, some of them are pretty damn impressive as well. Characters attacking melee style with a staff do some interesting maneuvers with the weapon. I find it a bit odd that the staff animations are the best looking (in my opinion of course), because most melee fighters won't use staves, and most wizards won't fight melee with the staves they use. Other weapon animations are certainly serviceable, but none of them captured my heart the way the twirling of the staff did. Spell effects were at times disappointing. They aren't particularly bad; they just don't reach the par of excellence set by the rest of the graphics. Of course, this varies from spell to spell, but overall I was a bit disappointed.

So the game is admittedly beautiful, but I must say that the gameplay didn't grab me right from the start. At the beginning of the campaign, your character is all-alone. The battles at this time are all rather small scale-your hero facing only a handful of opponents at once. These battles are simply not that interesting, and with the character AI in the game, there really isn't much to do (more on that AI soon). Needless to say, for the first two hours or so of the single player campaign, I began to wonder what all the fuss was about.

More enemies approached at a time, hordes of them sometimes even forcing tactical retreats-the battles basically got a lot more intense. Now it's time to mention that character AI, as it's really an instrumental part of the game. In this game, your characters can be set to have a certain amount of initiative-you can make them defend themselves, or even aggressively attack their foes-basically granting them freedom to act without your input. Before playing DS, I began to wonder why you would want such a feature, as you would end up watching the game. A legitimate worry with the concept, but the actual implementation in this situation is stellar-character's have just the perfect amount of freedom to make managing the entire party in real time possible, but not enough freedom to make the player unnecessary. The player still makes the call as to which weapon/spell a character uses (convenient for telling casters to start healing), and can also develop a bit of tactics-really the game becomes more of a real-time tactical game than an action-RPG.

I think a brief sidebar is necessary at this point, to address a concern that hit me about this time. In multiplayer, you only control one character per player-so isn't the problem going to resurface? I figured this because with the character AI, controlling one character is a bit boring, but controlling the entire party is a blast. After playing some multiplayer games though, I must say that the experience is still loads of fun, despite having only one character. This is because the battles are still as intense (actually they are more intense most of the time), and some sort of teamwork/tactics among the players is required to be effective. If you are the caster, you have to keep an eye on your party members' health bars, in case you need to switch to a healing spell. If you are a melee fighter, you have to keep an eye on your casters to make sure they aren't getting attacked, because they don't have the armor or the health to be a damage sponge.

Getting back to the single player experience, after that point the game really ups the intensity and fun level, and holds the bar high throughout. The default medium difficulty setting is tough, but certainly not impossible. About halfway through the game I started playing with the difficulties a bit, and there is a world of difference between each of the three settings. If you start getting frustrated, simply lower the setting for a bit and you will find things much easier-though even the easy setting can be a bit of a challenge at times. There is no "walk in the park" setting here.

Dungeon Siege is lush.

Dungeon Siege�s graphics are stunning, and probably the main reason why it�s so easy to spend hours playing the game, even with its linearity. The world is fully three dimensional and really does feel like a world. The rolling landscapes are detailed down to the last bush, weather effects cycle, and there are plenty of unique touches like pulsating magical weapons. Also, once past the initial load, the game never loads. Besides being impressive for its technical merits this feature does wonders for gameplay. Never having to wait for a load screen between areas really does add to the effect that you�re in a living world. Speaking of the world at first it�s just you against it. Over time you can collect other party members to help free the lands from evil, and pack mules to help carry all your well-earned booty. Party members either volunteer to join or must be hired. Like your character they really have no definition beyond what their best skill is, which in turns means that you won�t even be able to recall their names but you will be able to remember the fact that guy number three is really good with a sword�which brings up the fact that the skill system is another con of the game�s simplicity.

The sounds just bring out the beauty of the graphics.

Jeremy and Julian Soule composed the music in Dungeon Siege, and my hat flies off to both of them. Their awesome work made the perfect background music for Dungeon Siege, orchestra music that never gets annoying! This game would be a whole lot more �flat� if they left out music, so with music that is of a quality as high as the visuals you are truly in for a treat.

Professional voice-overs don�t exactly ruin the image of a great action RPG either. The most noteworthy in my opinion is the awesome ultra-Scottish voice of your dwarf party member. In fact, it made me laugh every single time he spoke. Besides him the other voices sound as if they actually came from the in-game characters.

Another important part of a successful action RPG is the sound-effects. Swords cling, skulls are bashed and fireballs are thrown and goblins scream. It sounds just right.

With so many ways to level up, how can this game not be fun?

While the game is certainly a blast, I do have a few complaints that I would like to address. First of all, there seems to be some issues with experience. If you play on one of the harder difficulty levels, you will need to have caster using healing spells practically constantly. Unfortunately, characters get much less experience for healing than for fighting, so your "healers" will be quickly left behind in levels. Second, simply as far as items goes, it is much, much easier to get beneficial items for melee warriors than it is for other characters. There are simply a lot more items that increase the melee skill or strength than there are items that increase the casting skills. The ratio is the same for staves too, so I found a lot of staves that increase the melee skill-which is practically a worthless item for pure casters. It seems that there should be a sort of division of probability, making items increase the correct attributes more often than not-items used by casters should increase casting attributes and items used by melee warriors should increase melee attributes. A related problem for pure ranged characters is that no items aside from ranged weapons require dexterity to use. The effect is that there is very little magical armor that can be worn by ranged units available at a given shop. These shops are usually stocked with armor that requires the strength of a pure melee warrior or the intellect of a pure caster-there's no armor requiring dexterity. The effect is that ranged characters end up with a lot of hand-me-down armor-I started calling my archers my "little sisters."

It took me probably around twenty hours to complete the single player campaign, but that's a very rough estimate-time has no meaning for me when playing a good game. Included also is a completely separate multiplayer campaign (which I haven't yet completed, but which seems to be significantly larger). The original campaign can also be played multiplayer as well. I am unsure how much of a shelf life the game is going to have in the long run though-there isn't any real diversity among characters, so playing through a few times will pretty much exhaust your skill options. The skill system is one of those "X skill improves as you use it" sorts of systems, and with only four skills (melee, ranged, combat magic, nature magic), that doesn't give much diversity or complexity to the character creation system.

Dungeon Siege is a must have for everyone.

Dungeon Siege finds itself firmly rooted in my Must-Have List this year, as it is really a fresh style of gaming. Featuring stellar graphics, addictive gameplay, and a lot of fun, it will certainly entertain you for some time-particularly after some well made campaigns come from the Siege Editor. RPG fans may scoff at its hack-n-slash nature, but they are missing out in this case, as Dungeon Siege provides spades of real-time tactical delight.