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Dungeon Siege v1.1.1Reviewed By: Erica Marceau Review Computer: 400MHz G4 (Gigabit Ethernet) with 768MB RAM, ATI Rage Pro 128, Mac OS X (v10.2.6) Review Date: June 30, 2003
Dungeon Siege pays the same attention to detail in how the characters look when they use one of the many items you'll pick up or buy. For example, if you equip a pink pair of gloves, then you will look as if you are wearing a pink pair of gloves. Some of the weapons glow or sparkle or have a green mist which does even more to separate the looks of the different weapons. I was more than a little surprised to see so many types of armor and weapons. Every time I found a new shop it had items I'd never seen before. Even though I mostly used items that I found in crates or picked up after killing a monster, there were plenty of times I found an item in a store that was better...somewhat of an oddity compared to other adventure games. The sound effects were okay, although a bit sparse aside from the spells. There seems to be one "hit the bad guy" sound and one "the bad guy died" sound. The "gulp a potion" sound seems to have too much gulp for my liking. The music is much better; nonintrusive when you need to focus on staying alive, ominous before you meet a boss, and even moving (such as in Fortress Kroth which reminded me of a child's music box). The music helps set the mood, and it does that job well.
The biggest problem in this system is the difficulty in selecting magic spells to use. You learn spells by adding spell pages to a spell book, and each book can hold only twelve spells. You can have two spells readily available in the weapons panel, and you have to select the character and press 3 or 4 to select the spell and then you can use it. If you want to use a spell that isn't in the weapons panel you have to hold the mouse button for a pop-up menu to appear, select the spell you want, and then use it. You can pause the game to do this, but it breaks up the action. I would prefer for there to be customizable hotkeys for all of the spells.
Since you can have so many people in your party, controlling them is of primary importance. The last thing you want is to have a person run into a group of bad guys since being surrounded usually means a quick death for your party. Each person can have different movement (move freely, engage, hold ground), attack (attack freely, defend, hold fire), and targeting (target closest, target weakest, target strongest) orders, and the party can be in one of several formations. his worked well for the most part. The automatic attacking is most useful since with ranged fighters; by the time the monsters gets within melee range, rangers are hurt badly and easy to kill. The pack mule deserves a paragraph all to itself because it's one of the best ideas I've seen in an adventure game. You can have up to three of them, and each can carry three times what a person can. They can't fight worth a darn, but, since most of the dungeons are so huge, the last thing you want is to have to go back to the nearest town if you're low on potions or have to leave items behind because you can't carry any more. They are also very good at staying out of battle and, although they can kick back, they can't defend themselves if surrounded.
Gas Powered Games has released many tools to create your own levels, modifications, total conversions, and add-ons to extend the life of Dungeon Siege. While all of these tools are only available for Windows, we can use the modifications without trouble. You can find a good list of them here. You can play Dungeon Siege over the Internet (via GameRanger) and Local Area Network in a new area and with new quests. You can team up with other people and even attack other players if the options are turned on. Unlike single player where the bad guys don't come back after you've cleared an area, they do respawn in multiplayer. This increases the danger, but also makes it easier to level up. There are also many guilds which bring together players. This is usually a lot more fun than playing with random people. The performance was good overall, although I did at one point experience unexpected slowdowns while hosting a LAN game with no other players which did seem unwarranted. Performance, for the most part, was very good except in large towns and when battles had too many bad guys. There were then slowdowns, which made me thankful I could attack automatically. I've seen many comparisons between Dungeon Siege and Diablo 2, while Kirk Hiner said in his Dungeon Siege preview that a comparison to Summoner is more accurate. I think that, while all three games do have a main focus on battle, Dungeon Siege doesn't have as much depth and complexity. There are no skill points to distribute, all weapon types work equally well, and there are no decisions to make aside from what item you want to wear or sell. This aside, if you want a game that has you fighting foes of all shapes and sizes in beautiful landscapes, then Dungeon Siege is the game for you.  [an error occurred while processing this directive]
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One of the best aspects of Dungeon Siege are the graphics and the attention to detail; from the waterfalls to the deep canyons to the tall, gently swaying trees and the moveable camera that lets you see it all—as close or far away as you want—with nary a pixel showing. Grassy hills, tall cliffs, snowy forests, foreboding swamps, underground tombs, cemeteries, deserts, and secret goblin laboratories provide plenty of areas to explore. I particularly like the flowing rivers, the bushes that rustle just before an ambush, and the elevators that have no walls so you can see where you're going to end up before you get there.
Also unique is how the characters develop in the four available skills: melee, ranged, nature magic, and combat magic. To get good at magic, all you need to do is use magic in battle for your level to increase, making the spells more powerful and letting you use more advanced spells. If you primarily use magic, then your intelligence goes up faster which gives you more magic points to cast spells. Likewise, if you use ranged weapons such as bows, crossbows, or guns, then your ranged skill will increase (giving you a longer range) and your dexterity will increase (improving your accuracy). If you want to use weapons such as swords and axes, then you will develop your melee skill, increasing the damage you can dish out and letting you wear better armor by giving you a high strength. There are even titles based on which of the skills you have developed, so if your melee skill level is between 50 and 99 then the character will have the title of Champion. Or, if your ranged and nature magic skill levels are between 20 and 49, then the character will be called a ranger.
You can have up to eight people and/or pack mules in your party who you can pick up throughout the game. Some will join your party for free, but most ask for gold before they will lend their support. However, they won't be stronger than the characters you've been using up until that point, so they are only useful if you want to change the composition of your party or if you have less than a full party. If you have a full party, you can dismiss as many people as you want as long as you have at least one person remaining. What I found amusing was that you can even dismiss the hero of the story with no apparent ramifications.
I left talking about the story until the end because there really isn't much of one. You start out as a farmer until a dying friend tells you that the Krug are attacking and that you should go to Stonebridge to give warning. From that point on, you're given quest after quest to go to one town after the next, and the story gets lost in the wayside. Dungeon Siege at first makes a big deal that a humble farmer will change the course of the Kingdom of Ehb, but that is quickly forgotten as there is nothing to differentiate the hero from the other members of the party. There are voiceovers in parts, but they don't do a good job in explaining why exactly you just killed everything that moved. The story is also extremely linear; you can only go in one route to get to your destination, and there is only one way to finish all of the quests. I haven't gotten to the end yet, but I've learned it does nothing to reward you for beating the game. Unfortunately, Dungeon Siege has been labeled a role-playing game. In my opinion, the label doesn't fit, which is why I've been calling it an adventure game instead.