Rating: 
Summary: Completely linear game
Review: There is no doubt this game has a lot of great features. The way it handles inventory, the shopkeepers, and the pack mules are great. The main problems I found with the game was lack of interation with NPCs, and a completely linear storyline. You start at one end the land and march north until you get to the end. This makes for a game with no replay capability. I would skip this one unless it is in the bargain rack.
Rating: 
Summary: Starts out promising but disappoints in the end
Review: The shortest summary I can offer is, when the game was done, I was EXTREMELY disappointed. All you do in this game is fight monsters while walking down a fixed path (never so much as even a major crossroads for travel choices) and collecting way more items than you ever need. Oh, plus you kill a couple big monsters, including one at the end. The story is weak, and its lack of depth makes it pretty much impossible to immerse yourself for very long. Once you're done, there is no continued gameplay, which means there's no more use for your hard-earned characters or items. Finally, there is no satisfying movie or text story to wrap things up. Only you staring at the screen, with your characters standing at the end of a long, linear map you've already explored. The game didn't even make it clear to me that there was nothing left to do until I wasted a bunch of time running all the way back through the map, which was pointless. At least they could have had it shut it down automatically when it was completed and saved me the trouble. I felt like I'd gotten less than half the game I'd expected - basically a demo - and I haven't played it since. That was about a year ago. Some have complained that the interface was too easy, or that there were too many of certain types of monsters-- these weren't really issues for me. The interface & monsters would have been fine - wonderful, even - if the game had managed to make me feel like I was somewhere else. It didn't, and I'll tell you why. When I play a RPG, it's to:
1) get drawn into a fantasy world where there are problems that can be solved in multiple ways (whether they be "boss" encounters or complex retrieval quests),
2) build characters which grow & acquire items indefinitely and can be re-used in expansions or harder difficulty settings,
3) soak up plenty of pretty scenery I can get lost in along the way, and
4) enjoy a compelling story that ends in a fulfilling way. Dungeon Siege fails utterly as a true RPG because:
1) The only solution available when encountering Dungeon Siege bosses is to kill them. Retrieval quests are simplistic and uninteresting (there are no real side quests).
2) The characters have nothing to do once the "end boss" is dead, and the game doesn't even give you the mercy of exiting to an ending screen. You just... stand there...
3) Yes, the scenery is pretty - which is why I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 - but it was far too limited to get lost in.
4) The already poor story lacks any kind of enjoyable ending. I kept hoping - assuming, even - that the straight line was only a temporary thing, and that I would come to a place where there were multiple directions to go or multiple objectives to consider. Neither ever happened. Consider yourself warned. My only hope now is that mods - several of which are in the works - will be better than the original game. I just downloaded one called "Copperhead: Retaliation", and I'm keeping my fingers crossed. <==>
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