Dungeon Siege 3 - Review Roundup

At least I have Diablo 3 and a couple of indie action-rpgs that will put this game to shame on the horizon. You have to give them credit for having a bug free game finally.
Its a decent game for what is but its a game you will forget after playing it.
 
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How is it 18 hours? I did all the quests and beat the game in 10 hours. Granted i beat games faster than most peopel but 18 hours is just no right.
 
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How is it 18 hours? I did all the quests and beat the game in 10 hours. Granted i beat games faster than most peopel but 18 hours is just no right.

Some people beat Mass Effect games in 8 hours and some people take 60. People play much differently.
 
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I like games that are fun too. Im just not easily amused.
 
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I don't have fun with every game out there, so I'm obviously the biggest snob in the world.
 
Proud of it! ;)

Then again, I can actually see myself having fun with DS3 on my XBox 360 - playing coop with the GF. The only thing missing that would make it a sure thing is the ability to take my character through 3 progressively harder difficulty modes - which is the genre default. It lends the game the kind of perspective I think it needs to make the investment of time worthwhile. There's just something wrong with investing in character builds and proper loot configuration, when you know the game will end after 12-15 hours - and they've balanced the end-game so all characters/builds can get through it. It's not enough.

I know many wil be able to just hack/slash their way through and forget about everything - but I grew up playing Nethack -> Diablo -> Diablo 2. I can't just ignore the best things about the genre like they're not important. To think how incredibly easy it would have been for Obsidian to spread out the loot and scale the encounters for such a thing… Makes me want to slap Feargus and force him to play the games establishing the genre.

I might buy it eventually, when it's cheaper.
 
I'd give it a 7-8ish as well, so the scores sound about right.

Glad to see it's getting decent scores despite the massacre related to the demo.
 
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I'd give it a 7-8ish as well, so the scores sound about right.

Glad to see it's getting decent scores despite the massacre related to the demo.

The demo was apparently too short to let us see that the controls, menus, combat, skill and equipment screens are not horribly designed.

Also, not scaling to the actual display resolution? In 2011?
No, this is definitely not a good PC game.
 
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Having played through the PC version of the game once, I'd say a score of 7 or 8 sounds about right to me.

As far as controls, the keybinding is sorely missed (and will be added in a patch). But other than that, I find it works very well as long as you get rid of your pre-conceived notions of how hack'n'slashers *should* control. Which you should because the core gameplay is far more directly in the hands of the player anyways, it's much more action-oriented and "twitchy" than Diablo or the old DS games. A bit into the game, the controls became second-nature for me at least. Even in the busier fights (and some are very busy indeed) I had little problems moving around, evading and killing.

My main areas of complaint personally would be that I had wished less linear levels as well as better loot. DArtagnan has a good point in that the loot just feels like it lacks "oomph" because you're sorta building your characters towards an end of the game, and the campaign is fairly short. The loot is plentiful enough (and I love the little animations/sounds when it pops out of chests) but you just don't care that much about it, though I found it more important on Hardcore definitely.

Everything taken into consideration, it's one of the better hack'n'slashers I've played in a really long time. The combat system is especially fun and challenging if you play on Hardcore and the characters are fun to play. That's the real highlight in my book and it is a lot better than I thought it would be.
The story and characters are lightweight but well made. The choices you get to make here and there are a small icing on the cake.

I have no real attachments to the older games though, I think they are absolute rubbish and some of the worst examples of how hack'n'slashers should not play. So I'm glad that DS3 moved away from them. If you really liked the older games then you'd probably be pissed at a lot of things in DS3.
 
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I find that a LOT of people totally dismiss Dungeon Siege 2, based on the first game. Especially because they look almost identical.

However, underneath, Dungeon Siege 2 is one of the best hack/slash games out there - and I think only Diablo 2 and Hellgate can top it.

Subjective, yes, but I sort of get the vibe that many players either completely missed DS2 - or didn't give it a fair chance.
 
I got both DS1 and 2 for free because I pre-ordered DS3 from Steam. I'll probably give them a whirl soon(ish).
 
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Funny enough DS1 is what got me into RPGs! I never played a single RPG before then as I was into RTS big time. Then one day I saw guy at work(!) playing it on his PC and asked about it. I like the graphics and I liked loot hoarding and killing mobs. So I made a copy (!!) of the game from him and spent a entire weekend playing and finishing it!

So I did purchase (not copy!) DS2 but for some reason I did not like it very much hence I did not finish it. I think when DS2 came out, I have played many other RPGs and my taste have changed.

I wasn't going to get DS3 at all, H&S does not interest me any more (plus lots of bad reviews after the demo) like it used to but I think I will buy it now after reading Maylander's review.
 
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Also, not scaling to the actual display resolution? In 2011?

What do you mean by "in 2011?" 16:9 only is a trend that started a few years ago and is getting more popular, not less. It being 2011 makes it more expected for a game to only use 16:9 aspect ratio, not less.

Also 16:10 and 4:3 are dead aspect ratios. Dead as Hoffa, whether we like it or not.
 
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There's no accounting for taste :)

Personally, I didn't care for DS1 because I felt it was too simplistic. The engine was great, and I suppose it was a decent real-time tactical game - but it just didn't work well as a character building/loot driven game.

DS2 had a good engaging story, much better character mechanics, much better loot diversity, all kinds of neat little sidequests/puzzles, wonderful locations, and more.
 
They just anounced a REAL hack and slash over at joystick aclled Realms of Ancient War, looks amazing. Check it out, mobs and hords and loot oh my.
 
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As a gamer who have played and finished first two Dungeon Siege games, I must say DS3 is quite different. While DS1 is a rather dull hack&slash with a little character customization, it has a great party based control system like we used to in Baldur's Gate (of course you have to turned off all this annoying auto attacks). DS2 is much more advanced in terms of story, characters, char customization and quests, but party control was changed with a more Diablo style gameplay.

The first shock I lived with DS3 is the controls. What I expected was a Diablo style gameplay, but it's more like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Actually much more thar BG: DA. DS3 is the most actiony game in the series. After cursing the controls a bit, I saw that it fits perfectly to the gameplay. With all the dodging, attacking, spinning I saw that I use every button in the keyboard mouse layout. Left mb attack, middle mb camera, right mb running, Q changing the combat stance, space for block/dodge. It all fits well, and there's no better way to put these buttons other than that I think. But, the one thing that sometimes drives me crazy is the camera. Camera zoom in and out to its mind and blocking your view to see the enemies. I think most of the people who have problem about the gameplay stems actually from this weird camera system.

The other thing that I dislike about the game is the corridor feeling. One of the most important feature of the first two games is to traverse different terrains without any loading time and Obsidian did that with DS3. But it's not only that, when you are in a forest in DS1/2 you fell yourself in a vast forest. Not in a corridor whose walls made of trees.

Graphics not impressed me. I hate this bloom thing. And they use that much. Like Two Worlds 2 and Fable 3 they overuse bloom in order to conceal the low resolution of the textures. While it might not be a problem in a console, I want to see sharp graphics in my PC. You can turn off that bloom in TW2 and F3, but I can't find an option in DS3. It's so bad that my character's face is shining like a lightbulb. I hope they will release a high res texture pack in the future with the option to turn off bloom. Another annoying thing for me is DS3 isn't support 4:3 in the game menu. You have to tweak the ini file to do that. But the position of the HUD doesn't change, but it's much better than seing black bars in the screen.

What Obsidian did right with the game is the characters and the story. While the story seems cliche, the presentation is perfect and the characters are believable. It's the best thing that Obsidian/Black Isle does since the time of Fallout 1.

I don't know the length of the game but I heard some comments in forums that it can be finished in 12 hours. If that's the case it's so short. I don't know. I'm still in the beginning of the game.

Overall a decent action RPG, which is more "action" RPG than Diablo style games. Try it and decide yourself. But give yourself some time to get used to controls.
 
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Ooh, this might be the first time ever, but I agree with DA about Dungeon Siege 2. That was a really fun game. It was quite deep and you needed to go back to earlier areas to learn some of its secrets. I played it through twice straight, and I can't say that about many games that aren't made by Bethesda or Jon Van Caneghem.
 
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What do you mean by "in 2011?" 16:9 only is a trend that started a few years ago and is getting more popular, not less. It being 2011 makes it more expected for a game to only use 16:9 aspect ratio, not less.

No. In 2011, one would expect that game developers know the magic of proper ratio scaling. Instead, they have chosen the most common ratio and used that. It's the same level of laziness we see in web development - on this very webpage. But instead of going with the popular, web developers have stayed in 1999, designing pages 800 pixels wide, ignoring at least half of the width of current displays.

But as I said before, DS3 is $20 cheaper on the PC, which makes up for these issues with imperfect port.
 
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