Yet another underrated Obsidian title.
I have never played a Dungeon Siege title before this with them being a PC franchise previously and me being a console only gamer. In fact, I had never even heard of them until the announcement of a third installment. That being said, I have played games by Obsidian who took up the task of the series in this installment. While by no means perfect their games have on the whole had some great ideas and always been fun which is exactly what I got with Dungeon Siege III.
The land of Ehb has seen great changes since the previous games (apparently). Thirty years ago the 10th Legion allegedly plotted to kill the king going against their oath. A young and charismatic woman named Jane Kassynder rallied the church and the people against them slaughtering the 10th legion and tearing down their chapter houses. Fast forward several years and the surviving 10th legion members are meeting to reform and rebuild.
You play as one of the surviving decedents of the 10th legion from a choice of four characters. Each character comes from vastly different backgrounds and although the story and plot never changes certain encounters with characters and dialogue are different depending on who you choose to play as in relation to their personal history which is a nice minor touch.
Gameplay wise Dungeon Siege 3 is, shockingly enough, essentially a dungeon crawler. Each character has a small but effective ability set to choose from starting off with only one and gaining more of your choice as the character gains experience and levels up. Abilities are separated into two categories, special and defensive. The latter being healing skills and damage or armour buffs while special abilities are all offensive and are completely different depending on the character in a mixture of long range and close range attacks.
The skill sets are excellent and provide a nice range for each character leaving them all fairly balanced except for perhaps Lucas who seems to have limited range abilities that also seem weaker then the others though his melee attacks are fairly strong. To counter the small ability set each character at level up also gets to choose in which direction an ability takes such as more damage or greater area of effect with two choices for each skill. There are also passive proficiencies to choose from that may increase healing effect, chance to get a critical hit among others allowing for each character to be grown how you see fit. It's not overly complicated but allows a decent amount of flexibility so works very well.
In between dungeons and sometimes in the middle of them there are plenty of side quests to partake in from various characters. These are sometimes just fetch quests or give you a specific enemy to kill but are never enough to get repetitive but give just enough to keep things interesting off the main story. These side quests often result in decent loot, experience and the occasional extra boss to boot.
The multiplayer is where things crumble a little though after having played the game several times and a fair bit of co-op I can see why it was done the way it was. The problem with playing co-op is that unless you are hosting you get nothing for playing, no equipment, loot, experience, nothing, you are simply playing as one of the hosts characters. All level up choices and equipment you equip to the character you play as stay with them for the host and for whoever may play as them next in their game, if you don't host, you don't gain anything. On the other side of things it means every game is balanced, you can't level up loads in a co-op game then use that character in your own single player campaign nor can a level 30 character jump into a hosts game who is only level 1, it makes sense though some form of reward for playing co-op would have been nice to at least give the feeling of progress.
The co-op itself is pretty fun though with up to four players (one for each character) available at any time and is especially fun on harder difficulty levels where players have to really work together to overcome enemies, especially certain boss fights. My favorite part of the co-op though strangely is the dialogue. During conversations options come up in how to replay and each player can choose what they think should be said though the host has the final say. It in no way impacts the game itself but is a nice way of getting everyone involved in conversations I have never seen before.
The presentation in Dungeon Siege 3 is excellent with some great spell effects, excellent voice acting giving believability to each character and a decent amount of detail in the world. Obsidian had a bit of a reputation for having fairly glitchy games as they use other peoples game engines but DS3 was created using their own engine Onyx which was created from the ground up not only for RPG's but also to stop any technical issues appearing and in the time it took me to platinum I can say with great confidence it worked.
The main story only lasts for about 20 hours give or take which is pretty short for an RPG but with multiple characters, co-op fun and quite a few trophies that rely on four player team work if you are a hunter of them gives Dungeon Siege 3 a good amount of value.
All in all Dungeon Siege 3 is a great game, the characters and history are great, the ability sets work well, it looks nice and the co-op though unrewarding is still a blast to play. I highly recommend giving this game a chance to any fantasy loving RPG enthusiast.
+ Small but great ability set.
+ Co-op dialogue is excellent.
+ Excellent characters and story.
+ Decent visuals and voice acting.
- Fun but unrewarding co-op play.
- Main story is a little short.
I have never played a Dungeon Siege title before this with them being a PC franchise previously and me being a console only gamer. In fact, I had never even heard of them until the announcement of a third installment. That being said, I have played games by Obsidian who took up the task of the series in this installment. While by no means perfect their games have on the whole had some great ideas and always been fun which is exactly what I got with Dungeon Siege III.
The land of Ehb has seen great changes since the previous games (apparently). Thirty years ago the 10th Legion allegedly plotted to kill the king going against their oath. A young and charismatic woman named Jane Kassynder rallied the church and the people against them slaughtering the 10th legion and tearing down their chapter houses. Fast forward several years and the surviving 10th legion members are meeting to reform and rebuild.
You play as one of the surviving decedents of the 10th legion from a choice of four characters. Each character comes from vastly different backgrounds and although the story and plot never changes certain encounters with characters and dialogue are different depending on who you choose to play as in relation to their personal history which is a nice minor touch.
Gameplay wise Dungeon Siege 3 is, shockingly enough, essentially a dungeon crawler. Each character has a small but effective ability set to choose from starting off with only one and gaining more of your choice as the character gains experience and levels up. Abilities are separated into two categories, special and defensive. The latter being healing skills and damage or armour buffs while special abilities are all offensive and are completely different depending on the character in a mixture of long range and close range attacks.
The skill sets are excellent and provide a nice range for each character leaving them all fairly balanced except for perhaps Lucas who seems to have limited range abilities that also seem weaker then the others though his melee attacks are fairly strong. To counter the small ability set each character at level up also gets to choose in which direction an ability takes such as more damage or greater area of effect with two choices for each skill. There are also passive proficiencies to choose from that may increase healing effect, chance to get a critical hit among others allowing for each character to be grown how you see fit. It's not overly complicated but allows a decent amount of flexibility so works very well.
In between dungeons and sometimes in the middle of them there are plenty of side quests to partake in from various characters. These are sometimes just fetch quests or give you a specific enemy to kill but are never enough to get repetitive but give just enough to keep things interesting off the main story. These side quests often result in decent loot, experience and the occasional extra boss to boot.
The multiplayer is where things crumble a little though after having played the game several times and a fair bit of co-op I can see why it was done the way it was. The problem with playing co-op is that unless you are hosting you get nothing for playing, no equipment, loot, experience, nothing, you are simply playing as one of the hosts characters. All level up choices and equipment you equip to the character you play as stay with them for the host and for whoever may play as them next in their game, if you don't host, you don't gain anything. On the other side of things it means every game is balanced, you can't level up loads in a co-op game then use that character in your own single player campaign nor can a level 30 character jump into a hosts game who is only level 1, it makes sense though some form of reward for playing co-op would have been nice to at least give the feeling of progress.
The co-op itself is pretty fun though with up to four players (one for each character) available at any time and is especially fun on harder difficulty levels where players have to really work together to overcome enemies, especially certain boss fights. My favorite part of the co-op though strangely is the dialogue. During conversations options come up in how to replay and each player can choose what they think should be said though the host has the final say. It in no way impacts the game itself but is a nice way of getting everyone involved in conversations I have never seen before.
The presentation in Dungeon Siege 3 is excellent with some great spell effects, excellent voice acting giving believability to each character and a decent amount of detail in the world. Obsidian had a bit of a reputation for having fairly glitchy games as they use other peoples game engines but DS3 was created using their own engine Onyx which was created from the ground up not only for RPG's but also to stop any technical issues appearing and in the time it took me to platinum I can say with great confidence it worked.
The main story only lasts for about 20 hours give or take which is pretty short for an RPG but with multiple characters, co-op fun and quite a few trophies that rely on four player team work if you are a hunter of them gives Dungeon Siege 3 a good amount of value.
All in all Dungeon Siege 3 is a great game, the characters and history are great, the ability sets work well, it looks nice and the co-op though unrewarding is still a blast to play. I highly recommend giving this game a chance to any fantasy loving RPG enthusiast.
+ Small but great ability set.
+ Co-op dialogue is excellent.
+ Excellent characters and story.
+ Decent visuals and voice acting.
- Fun but unrewarding co-op play.
- Main story is a little short.