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During the Steam holiday sale I picked up Dungeon Siege 3 after having my eye on it for a long time.

The reason I felt so compelled to get this game is that others had said its very much akin to playing Diablo and it will satisfy your RPG needs.

Well people that recommended it to me…you were wrong. Sure, its kind of like Diablo…but its simply missing too much to come even close.

As the story goes, you play as one of four different characters that are descendants of the once mighty 10th Legion, a mystical group of warriors and mages that were held in very high esteem. Eventually an evil Archon Jeyne Kassynder gained access to powers beyond belief and stamped out the Legion to take control over the land of Ehb.

You join the story as a weak warrior destined to wrest control of the land from Jeyne and bring back the Legion to its former glory. Of course one cannot win battles through strength of arms alone, as such you will be required to win in combat, social settings and political battles…tricky stuff.

This game really keeps true to RPG gaming roots, you start as one of four predetermined characters and you build your small party using the other three (albeit you can only have one at a time). You go to place X and get quests Y and Z, completing them advances the story line. Of course you’re treated to a wealth of side quests to keep you entertained and to satisfy your lust for epic loot.

One thing that struck me as both great and extremely frustrating is that as far as I could tell there was no world map…you had the ability to create little Golden Orbs which would direct you to your next quest area but really the only way to get a grasp on where everything was located was to create a map in your head. For people good at doing this like myself its fantastic…but for people that don’t like or can’t visualise paths then this would be a horrific game element.

To be fair, through its frustrations it really added to the game as you had to remember the world you’re in…I dislike people that play RPGs and have no clue where they are or where they’ve been…the idea of an RPG is to role-play and get into the character etc.

While this game has very strong RPG roots, the developers decided to change one thing, the camera. Honestly, the only reason this game becomes near unplayable is because of the damned camera views…

As I now understand it, the previous titles featured no such problems but because the devs wanted to release this game to the console market, things had to change…naturally the trade off was more restrictions on PC players.

Once again, console players got the priority and because of it, a great game became a bad game.

Never once during my entire playthrough was I able to effectively use the camera and movement controls simultaneously…to move accurately a PC player must use the right mouse button and to combo this they must use the WASD keys for camera control. I hear you asking “Why is that a problem Dante?”…well…let me tell you:

ITS BECAUSE ITS THE WRONG FUCKING WAY AROUND!

Where I able to use the WASD keys to move my character and the mouse to quickly move the camera to where I needed it then the combat would be blissful…but alas…it was not the case…I’m stuck moving the camera at a snails pace because that’s how the console players operate.

Goddamnit.

Visually though the game is rather great, the areas you visit all have their own unique feel as you might expect. One small qualm is that you skip through these small areas relatively quickly instead of operating out of them as a central hub.

The combat visuals also make their mark with great effects exploding all around, occasionally fighting alongside the Mage Reinheart got a little confusing due to the sheer mass of colour but all in all it was good looking.

I didn’t particularly like the armour/weapon combos however as they seemed a little biased towards Lucas. Lucas was the warrior you can play as and his armour and weapons all shone brightly and he had wings and all sorts…whereas I played Arjani the Archon and all I had was a weird helmet that made my hair have red pony tails…it just seemed a little slack.

Even the enemy archons had cooler armour than I did…if I’m trying to conquer evil in the world I better damn well look good!

Removing the camera issue, the combat is rather simple, all is based on three things: Health, Focus and Defense.

Each of the three things brings a unique aspect to the fight, you can be a focus whore and spam nothing but offensive attacks, or you could be defensive specialist and buff yourself to kingdom come or you could be a bawss like me and spam both defense and health skills that make you near impossible to kill at the expense of doing damage.

The game also features two “stances” for each character that allow them to fight in different ways according to the situation. The warrior has a sword and shield combo as well as a two handed sword, the Archon has a flame mage form as well as a spear fighting form etc.

The skill trees are ludicrously simple, there are three levels of skills that unlock as you level up. Each skill set allows you to choose one offensive skill for each stance and one defensive skill for both, the fact that it gives you a choice is a little insulting as you’ll eventually end up with all of them anyway because it forces you to unlock them.

That being said however, the other parts of the skill tree involve customising each skill with different bonuses (i.e. a spear attack that either grants you life or sets enemy on fire) and you can also heavily customise your character with passive bonuses of your choice.

tl;dr? It means you can actually build your character with more than just your gear. Which by the way is AWESOME!

Finally its worth mentioning that while the soundtrack is great, the voice acting isn’t…every thing is repetitive and lacks emotion. If they had put a bit more effort into the voicing then the game would come out far better off, but I can’t really complain…there are always budget and skill constraints when it comes to game projects.

All in all though, the game is fun but only really for RPG fans. If you like the old school party RPG aspects then this is a game for you, it also features coop play but due to the camera being totally rubbish I quickly stopped playing it…it also doesn’t allow you to bring your own character to the fight, you simply take control of another players AI character.

Anyway, if you don’t like RPG games or you get bored easily then don’t get this game…otherwise if you’re looking for a cheap RPG to keep you entertained for 20-30 hours then grab it.

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