
Dungeon Siege III
Crawl through the clichés
Review Recently, I battled through Dragon Age 2, Two Worlds II and spent some serious time immersed in Witcher 2. Now here comes Dragon Siege III. All these sequels - summer must have come early, I thought.

Learn the mechanics
As back-stories go this is run-of-the-mill stuff with more than a few of the customary unpronounceable names thrown in. Thirty years ago, the Tenth Legion was almost completely destroyed by power-hungry Jeyne Kassynder, a real nasty witch bitch. Now, it's time to rebuild the legion, defeat Jeyne Kassynder and save the Kingdom of Ehb from civil war. This initial stage is where the game's dull production quality and boring narrative assures I that won't go back and run through it again with a different single-player character.
The strange choice of sepia montage for the intro and the cut scenes left me initially unimpressed with the look and feel of this game. Everything so far yells 'cheap!' But that's until I cast some spells - lucky it runs DirectX 11!
Once it appeared, I did like the look of the player menu, which seemed much more polished, pretty and clearly showed my inventory and stats. Along with the usual stats there is some new stuff - for me - I had to get my head around: Doom and Retribution had me trawling the help menus.

No place like bone
As I got further into the game, the graphics got a little better, and I warmed to the environments in Dungeon Siege III, which mostly looked detailed and textured but nothing I hadn't seen before. The dark and brooding forests in my starting zone quickly made way for towns, forges and even the odd haunted mansion. But there's nothing new here and you could say this gaming environment looks as antiquated as the narrative.
But attention to detail isn’t something to be sniffed at and it’s here in abundance.
Next page: Choose your shoes
COMMENTS
Title
I still have Diablo II until Diablo III comes out thanks.
RPGs...
these modern RPGs suck balls. They should get back to 2D. start over. I just want to explore environments, meet strange creatures and smash their faces with a hammer, and adorn my character with armor and jewels and crap. Stealing stuff and burning down villages is fun too.
I don't want to save a kingdom or talk to overly designed 3D characters with voice synced lips with storylines from kids TV.
How can you make an RPG that I find boring? Amazingly these big companies manage to do it again and again and again.
Dungeon Master
DM on the Atari ST was and still is one of the greatest RPG's, has anything else come close yet?
@NomNomNom
I have enjoyed some of the recent RPGs (notably Fallout3), but I think the RPG pinnacle was Baldur's Gate 1 & 2.
I am still waiting for a new RPG that is even close to those for sheer playability and enjoyment.
Story..
Story is usually the mainstay of any RPG (I was actually fond of the storylines in Guild Wars; I largely chose to play it as a single player RPG with henchmen).
DS3 was lacklustre in this, though not offensively so. An innocuous storyline of "fight the evil/misguided person"; you know what you're getting early on.
Then comes the ability to configure it to your play style. It tanked hard on that (no ability to remap keys.. In this day and age? You're kidding right??)..
Saving: This game uses Save Points.. You what? Really?? This is an evil spawn of the days when there weren't the resources to have regular saves when you thought you needed them (i.e. someone turned up at your door inviting you out for a beer; you don't want to have to say "Hang on for 20 minutes while I find a save point for my game").
Graphically.. About 5 years behind the curve. It's pedestrian at best, but hey, that's the icing on the cake stuff.. I can live with that as long as story, configuration comfort and the rest live up (which they don't).
Definitely agree that the looting is just rubbish. There's not the diversity of the high end gear (is there really any high end gear apart from the last purchase point, and to be honest, that's not that great).
It's a braincandy game that's not truly offensive (apart from the consolitis of the save points and lack of key binding config), but definitely not worth the "new game" price. Pitched at around £15, it'd be a fair(ish) deal, but at around £30? Not really.
