Title: Dungeon Siege 3
Developer/Publisher: Obsidian Entertainment/Square Enix
Game Genre: Action RPG
Multi-player: 4 Player online Co-op, 2 player local Co-op
Age Rating: 16
Length: Medium (~10 hours for Game Completion)

My Impressions

I bought the original Dungeon Siege on the day it was released and enjoyed playing the game if finding it a bit too simplified for my liking. Now 10 years on I find myself playing a sequel to the game and having similar mixed feelings.

Before I start my complaints, I will say that I enjoyed playing through the single player campaign and while the game is linear it did not impact on my enjoyment of the game as the game flowed naturally. Some of the choices I made also felt like they mattered as it impacted on events later on in the game or in the epilogue. The game also tied back nicely to the first game with a lot of in game references to the events of the first game.

Even with the references to the original game, Dungeon Siege 3 felt like a reboot of the franchise and you don’t need to know anything about the earlier games to understand the plot. The references that are included as lore items, feel like a combination of easter eggs/ in jokes and normal background information and aside from a collection achievement and a few plot related ones can be missed entirely.

Sadly though Dungeon Siege 3 also comes off as a bit of a missed opportunity with the main issue being the games pitiful length for an RPG as it can be completed in 8-9 hours on casual mode and hardcore mode took me 12.5 hours. Who you choose to play as also seems to make little difference with only slight changes to dialogue, nor does your choice in companion (one of the 3 non chosen characters) though they each have some unique dialogue to bring.

I also thought that aside from attacks there was too little difference in character build/stats which was itself largely based on equipment as I found there was little difference in terms of HP between the melee based Lucas and the other characters when you would expect that Lucas should have a far superior level of HP in most circumstances and I found that this was not the case and he often had inferior HP to his companion when I was going for a HP heavy character build.

This beings me on to a slight complaint in that I thought that equipment played too great a role in deciding a characters stats (HP in particular) and that what impact the stats had was not explained enough even in the in game Help section making it difficult to judge how to build a character though. That being said the reliance on equipment rather than innate stats does make it easy to quickly change a character build if needed. While tutorial modes can be annoying I did feel that an optional tutorial explaining what the different stats meant in practice would have been a useful addition to the game.

Another annoyance was the camera angle which while it could be adjusted was at times too limited, as it was always above your character to some degree and there where a few points in the game where it needed to be level with your character so you can see ahead. There where also a few occasions where it jumped suddenly (normally in area limited boss fights) so I could not see what was going on. These are relatively minor things though and did not greatly impact my enjoyment of the game.

Moving on, the game is fairly easy even on hardcore mode with the only real issues being in boss fights. Some of the achievements are linked to not dying in boss battles and are not difficulty linked (though there is a complete the game in hardcore mode achievement), and on casual difficulty should not pose too much of a challenge.

Overall while I enjoyed playing Dungeon Siege 3, I found that it was too short for an RPG, and as such it may be worth holding off on a purchase until it comes down in price.

My Recommendation and Rating

CONSIDER

Enjoyable but too short for the price given that Dungeon Siege is an action RPG.