The music is also well composed and changes with the game situation, a bit dark on the
long run and after 50 hours you tend to switch it off...but some themes, especially
the main one, are pretty good for game music...a bit depressive perhaps. Sounds are
different if you kill with an iron or a wood weapon...but that boring same sound that
a monster makes each time you hit it...leaves room for improvements.
A you perhaps noticed we leave now the praising part and enter what I miss in most
game reviews these days...talking about those game parts that are far
away from being perfect.
The game part most messed in Dungeon Siege..:) ..is multiplayer. You can choose between
LAN, Internet and ZoneMatch. In ZoneMatch information about running games is
all on a central server and you can join a game or host one yourself. Options include
player versus player, teams, or cooperation mode. Because there
seem to be no cheat checks for those who host a game...modding is even supported...many games are just hosted
as trap for newbies that made no backups...they are robbed and loose all collected
items. Even without that...the game supports a maximum of 8 players, which is...considering
that theoretically only mouseclicks and sync data had to be transmitted after joining...simply a
planning error... Also that the whole game stops for all when somebody just thinks about joining
is a sign for me that multiplayer was added later or at least bad planned... it could have been a
great MMORPG ...like it is you can join a game and don't find anyone for hours in the great area.
Sure, for 30 people on a screen you had to turn graphical features of: On a Athlon XP 1700+ GF3 Ti200
one player means around 70fps, 8 players 20-30fps
Another thing I don't like is that the singleplayer campaign is extremely linear,
with a storyline so small that you could also leave it completely away. Especially
the texts of NPCs often don't adapt to the situation. Example: A sidequest is that somebody
tells you to keep his lost magic hammer if you should stumble over it, so that it does not fall
into enemy hands. You find it...walk back to bring him his hammer...but this was not
planned as storyline and so nothing happens...the game is full of such situations. There is only
one character in the game you need to speak with...and after killing the final enemy
you get just a few text lines and that's it. A nice complex storyline like in
an old game like Albion or more to explore would have been a good idea.
Some bugs that do not really matter...to be complete: Monsters have no collission
detection and can melt with each other and the environment ...monsters that fly need bridges
to cross canyons...just the ones that can probably not be fixed by patches...or the list would be
too long...I know...I'm too critical..:)
Final words:
Even if it is a very onesided game...running through the landscapes, killing monsters...no doubt it provides lot's of fun...like you
can spend hours with a simple arcade game and enjoy it...Dungeon Siege can be sometimes pretty
addictive. I played more then 100 hours and still find it entertaining...and have
not explored the whole multiplayer map yet...will probably start it again from time to time...
Because screenshots can not really describe a 3D game, I would recommend to play part of the Demo to see what
makes the game so addictive...many other reviews/opinions can be found here.
Opinions about Dungeon Siege or this review are always welcome in this forum thread.
