Rating: 
Summary: General Information
Review: Game scheduled for release Q3 of 2001--------------------------------------------------- Dungeon Siege pushes the envelope of role-playing games with fully animated 3D characters, over-the-top battles, intense special effects and awe-inspiring vertical landscapes. With true 3D environments, an advanced particle system for spells and dungeons that can extend in three dimensions, Dungeon Siege keeps the player focused on the action by providing tools that simplify party combat and management with a broad array of familiar game controls such as drag select, way points and formations. Players can customize their party to include up to eight characters. There are no rules or restrictions, and the player can have any combination of fighters, archers and magic users. Characters join your party as they journey throughout the world - some are hired, others are rescued, and some are brought back from beyond the grave. Lead your party into epic battles against a range of enemies - from marauding hordes to monsters of a scale never before seen in a fantasy role-playing game. Dungeon Siege is engaging yet easy to understand, action-packed yet easy to control, deep and involving yet quick to learn. The skill-based character system plunges you almost immediately into the action, where your skills develop real-time. If treasure is more your focus, grab a pack mule or two. Never again worry about passing on that armor you found because you didn't have enough space. Dungeon Siege will support up to eight players via a local area network (LAN) or through the built-in matchmaking server available inside the game. You can take part in both "short game" multiplayer experiences such as 'capture the castle' and the more traditional "campaign" style of play. The setting of Dungeon Siege is one gigantic, continuous world where you can seamlessly journey from the highest mountain to the deepest dungeon without ever having to see a loading screen. Discovering fantastic locations to explore - strange and mysterious dungeons, enormous castles and secret underground lairs - you become immersed in the fantasy of the surrounding world. The proprietary Siege Editor in Dungeon Siege gives you the freedom to rework nearly every aspect of the game, making Dungeon Siege not only a game, but also a role-playing platform for those who want to create their own characters, spells, dungeons and even entire worlds. You can post these user-created files to the Web, making them available for anyone to download and explore, or play as a multiplayer game. ---------------------------------------------------
Rating:
Summary: Exceeded my (already high) expectations
Review: I've played a lot of real-time RPGs (Diablo 1&2, Darkstone, Arcanum, Baldur's Gate 1&2, Torment, Icewind Dale, etc.), but in terms of overall fun, this game is definitely the best. A friend of mine said "Looks like Diablo 2." Then he played it. The only thing he's said about it since then is "This is so fun!"
Graphically, the game can be compared to Darkstone, the only other real-time RPG I've seen. The graphics are much better than Darkstone's graphics. Gameplay wise, this game is head-and-shoulders above Diablo 2 and Darkstone. Many not-fun parts of those games have been fixed in this game. For example, in those games, you can only control one or two characters. In Dungeon Siege, you have a personalized main character, can pick up a few characters for free during the game, hire characters to join your group, and even buy donkeys to carry extra loot too and from your battles and dungeon crawls. Another problem with other games is load times and other breaks between scenes. Dungeon Siege is continuous - the only loading screen you see is when you start the game. When you enter a dungeon or city, you just walk in - there is no break. This is a great benefit to the overall fun of the game. The skill system is very easy to use and makes sense. The skills you use, you improve on. It really works to develop your characters' abilities in a logical way according to what they do in the game. Overall, this and Red Alert 2 are the games I keep going back to no matter what else I start playing. I give this game 5 starts simply because that's the highest rating allowed, and this game deserves every star I can give it.
Rating:
Summary: Ultima 5-7 meets Asheron's Call
Review: I bought the game a few days ago and have been wailing away on the local krug population. The game reminds me very much of the more classic Ultima PC games (with classless char development and the ability to balance fighter with magi skills) with a very Asheron's Call (AC) feel graphics-wise. As with AC, you get to customize the look of your char (skin, hair, basic clothing) and you have to walk everywhere(!bummer! Get me a TP). But the game rocks...everyone compares it to Diablo and D2, but it goes beyond the basic click-n-slash game that D2 is -- it's the RPG that D2 could have been. It allows group and formation control, and when you decide to attack a mob - you just click once...yes, ONCE...no clicking until your finger falls off to strike your blows, allowing you to worry more about the game than simple combat - awesome. I'm really looking forward to trying the multi-play features of the game. My only complaint thus far is the inability to keep a in-game journal or mark the world map with notes (an ability many of the larger RPGs allow)...as it's easy to forget where that one small cave is. Although not a game that will overwhemingly appeal to RPGers or hard-core D2 click-n-slashers, it's a decent hybrid that fills that certain need to trim down the evil monster population without getting a sore mouse-finger.
Rating:
Summary: A terrifically thoughtful and well-done game
Review: This game is a truly impressive achievement. It's easy to understand, seemingly bug-free, with gorgeous graphics and tactical gameplay. Perhaps the best way to envision this game is to imagine Diablo 2 in three dimensions with Quake 3 level graphics and stellar animation. Trees sway in the wind, your packmule twitches its ears and shakes its head, little squirrels scuttle by and flocks of birds take flight at your passing. Animations, for fighting or walking, is natural and skeletal. The nice thing is, you don't need a top end machine to view this beauty. I actually have only played this game on my Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop, which features a Geforce 2 video card, 256 MB of memory, and a 800 Mhz Pentium III processor. Those are a decent stats, but they're not stellar, and yet the game flows with hardly a hitch. The big difference between Diablo 2 and this game, however, is the way in which battle is carried out. It sort of runs like Age of Empires or Starcraft, with the ability to pause the action to give further commands, like Hold Position, Engage, and so on. This gives the battle scenes -- which are numerous -- the same kind of tactical flair. Also, unlike Diablo 2, which in the end sort of degenerates into a sort of high-end Gauntlet, where millions of little foes pursue you ad nauseum, Dungeon Seige also features enormous foes, scaled to real size, in full 3d, with numerous powers, from casting spells to breathing ice or electricity. Figuring out how to kill these behomeths is a much more strategic enterprise. So far, it doesn't seem that the story is terribly deep. That may change as people make use of the Seige Editor, which allows owners of the game to create their own puzzles and dungeons. But for a more thoughtful, tactical version of Diablo, with gorgeous graphics, this is a great choice.
Rating:
Summary: Advances the genre; all other RPGs will learn from DS.
Review: Dungeon Siege is fun. Very fun. The music and atmosphere are not nearly as good as D2, the items are not nearly as cool, and the character development is not as deep, but actual gameplay is richer and more fun. Meaning, you have multiple characters. Each character has 4 basic item/action slots: melee, ranged, combat magic, nature magic. Switching between these slots is as fast and simple as clicking a button, so you can quickly react to the changing battlefield. Formations and AI for your characters are very easy to set. If things get too hectic (and the smart monster AI makes for hectic battles), you can pause the game to issue orders, swap out gear, plan, or drink potions. Speaking of drinking potions, the interface is not just user-friendly. It's user-obsessive. Characters only drink as much potion (Health or Mana) as they need. Clicking a single button will order your characters to pick up all the battlefield loot (no more hunting around, clicking on each and every individual pile of gold or piece of treasure). Magic Items are identified right from the start. Archers have unlimited arrows. If you run out of room in your inventory, you can hire a pack mule to carry your stuff. If that runs out of room, you can cast a simple spell and convert your excess inventory into gold. The tab key brings up a megamap of your surroundings, and you can navigate and play the game on the megamap if you wish. You can zoom in, pan, and alter the angle of the camera on the fly, depending on the situation. Once you click on a foe, your characters will attack that foe until it's dead or you give other orders; usually, you just move your party forward and your party members' individual AI will engage the enemy according to your settings (melee guy runs up to engage, but not too far; mages and archers attack from range). Dungeon Siege is not a click-fest. And it's really fun.
Rating:
Summary: What Dungeon Siege Really is
Review: I normally don't post reviews but some of these people I'm seeing dropping 1 star grades on this game are just nuts. They complain that Dungeon Siege is linear and not really an rpg. Guess what - it wasn't designed to be. Dungoen Seige is a hack-n-slash. It's designers wanted everyone who played the game to finish it. They wanted to take the guess work out of rpg's and make a product all could enjoy. And they did this quite nicely. This game could best be described as a diablo II - very linear, combat heavy game with team based combat and fighting system ala Baldur's Gate. The story is thin, very thin - by design. If these guys who flame a 1 star on this game would have done 30 minutes worth of reading, they would have known this wasn't an epic Baldur's Gate style game. This game is fighting, item collecting, killing and it's pure fun.
So if you want to kill in mass quantites w/ great graphics and a new twist on character creation, buy it. If you want a rich rpg with a gigantic plot and a world to wander about at your whim, don't. And if you don't want the latter, don't slam the game for failing to be that - b/c Dungeon Siege never tried.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, stable and a very good interface
Review: I'll say this upfront - I'm a huge, *huge* fan of RPG games, especially the single-player versions. I wasn't sure what to expect from Dungeon Siege, but I was completely blown away. The first time through, it gave me about 40 hours of game play (excluding times when I went back to a previously-saved game because I did something stupid that killed me,) and during the *entire* time I played this game, IT NEVER CRASHED! Not once! Not ever! This in itself was simply amazing to me. The game is totally customizable, from a character's appearance to his or her skills. There is an abundance of spells, weapons, armors, and sundry other stuffs to pick up, wear, and sell - perhaps even too many! The sets are astounding in color and design - everything is gorgeous, and the details have been meticulously crafted. There are indigenous wildlife in most areas that add a particularly nice touch, and the ambient sounds are very nice, too. The monsters throughout are fairly varied, and some are damned tough, depending on your party's skill levels. The packmules are a particularly nice touch - they can carry several times the amount of inventory a regular character can, but take up valuable slots in the team (one may only have 8 team members.) Throughout the game, one has the opportunity to add members to the party, and to disband others. Each new member brings different and perhaps valuable skills. One also has the ability to set the party's and each individual's attack and movement modes to several different settings. The voice work for the narrator and the NPCs one bumps into is outstanding, and adds a great touch - so often, game producers will throw together a bunch of really bad voice "talent" and just hope it flies. Here, though, the deep, melodic voices don't jolt one out of gameplay to smack one's forehead. Additionally, the musical score is lovely - not distracting, but not boring and redundant. Perfect, really. The game employs relatively intelligent ghosting logic, but sometimes gets a little wonky when the team is near a wall, and changes the camera's view to a suboptimal angle. One beef I do have with the game is the magic system - it's not terribly well-explained in the manual, and takes some bumbling about to figure out how it works. Further, each magician can only equip two spells at a time, and swapping others back and forth into the slots is tedious and time-consuming, usually requiring pausing the game. That really drove me nuts, and caused me not to use most of the spells that came my way. Further, the pop-up "tool tips" for each item pop up instantly, and often get in the way when trying to simply look through a spell book. The game would be nearly perfect with a better magic system. One other minor gripe is that the characters will often just stand there under a ranged attack, even with the "attack freely" and "move freely" options selected. Another excellent feature is that there are no map loads during the game as one switches regions - it's all pre-loaded, and once game play begins, everything is seamless. Even the cutscenes begin and end without any delays or loading time. Neat! As compared to some other RPG games, such as Summoner, there is no time-consuming, boring, tedious running back and forth between distant locations - the game mostly requires traveling in one direction, toward a distant goal. Only rarely does one have to backtrack to complete a quest, or to sell something. Outstanding. The game uses an autofight system, which is just dandy with me - with a team-based game, it'd be too difficult to individually control a character *and* keep track of what's going on around him or her.
There is a mega-map showing a larger portion of the region, which comes in very handy, and can also be zoomed in and out to certain levels. Each time I completed a quest, I wondered if the game was coming to an end, and was pleasantly surprised each time a new chapter was added to the game. When it finally did come to an end, I was a little surprised, because the build-up was lacking - one is fighting, and fighting, and runs into a major boss, and suddenly the game is over. Rats! However, the game does offer the option of "continuing to play," which is pretty much just running around the empty dungeon, and finding an occasional monster that got away the first time. The other option, after defeating the final boss, is to import the characters into a multiplayer game; however, one can't import the neato items gained from defeating the final boss! ARRRGH! Instead, the game goes back to the last saved game before that boss and uses the characters and their possessions at that point. *Very* disappointing and frustrating!! Even going back, switching things around, saving and defeating the final boss again doesn't change things - it will always be that same inventory from your first runthrough. Grrrr. But other than that, I really loved this game. It's not terribly cerebral - it's mostly just a kill/maim/rescue kind of thing that doesn't require much thought beyond battle strategy. I'll probably wait awhile before playing it again, but I'm sure I'll find myself back in the Kingdom of Ehb someday. I think anyone who generally likes computer-based RPGs will really enjoy Dungeon Siege - it's quite a treat. There will also be a sequel coming out, which I'll be anxious to try. Next is Morrowind - woohoo!
Rating: 
Summary: Great way to pass time
Review: It's pretty easy to describe Dungeon Siege. It's essentially Diablo with less clicking, a party of up to 8 characters, and better graphics, which means (#1) it doesn't take much intelligence to play it, and (#2) you'll play it until you realize you're wasting away from forgetting to eat. The biggest difference, aside from the obvious graphical edge, is the fact that the world is unchanging and absolutely gigantic. There are more places to explore than there are in Baldur's Gate, and some of the dungeons are so huge it'll take you an hour to walk from one exit to the other- even if the monsters are all dead. As noted previously, the graphics are top-notch 3-d and the engine in general is very streamlined and intuitive. I have noticed a few bugs here and there, but the game itself is very stable and runs well. As in Diablo, there aren't any tricks or puzzles to work though. If you explore everything, you'll probably find everything- pretty straightforward. Some battles are quite tough, however, and take a bit of fancy maneuvering to get by. About the only big (non-bug) complaint I have is that the AI is pretty stupid. If you send out one character, all the enemies in a certain radius will attack that character and will not stop until they are incapacitated. This makes is possible to wipe out a massively superior horde of monsters by getting a bunch of archers or wizards and having one warrior lead the goons in circles around them. I really expected better from the likes of Chris Taylor. AI stupidity aside, Dungeon Siege is definitely worth the money and worthy of the hype. For those who are tired of Diablo 2 and don't feel like waiting another decade for Diablo 3, go get this game!
Rating:
Summary: the BEST RPG ever
Review: Dungeon Siege matches and excels beyond that of other RPGs in the graphics department. The amazing attention to detail can be seen everywhere throughout this game. In the intense battles with swamp creatures, drakes, goblins, sorcerers, warriors, krug, and a myriad of other enemies. In the fantastic spell-casting to heal and enhance yourself or your allies. In the nature and enviornment around you, the trees, the desert, and the breath-taking scenery. Ask anyone who has played Dungeon Siege, the 3D graphics are beyond that of any other game.
Dungeon Siege is not a difficult game. Nor is it simple and not requiring of any thought or strategy. I would say it's perfect. Although it consists of a simple point-and-attack and/or point-and-cast spell methods of fighting, it's more involved than it sounds. There are more than 100 spells that you can cast, and even more weapons. Axes, bows, maces, staffs, crossbows, swords, and hammers, made into a variety by the enchantments on some. In Dungeon Siege, there are things called enchantments, which can affect your player's stats when equipped. Such as, a "Superior" Melee weapon has the effects of 1 Health stolen per hit, +1-4 Piercing damage, +5% chance to dodge ranged attack, +5% chance to hit enemy with a Melee weapon, and +2 to maximum damage. If a Ranged weapon is "Incredible", then it has +1 to Ranged skill, +1-4 piercing damage, magic damage reduced by 5%, +5% chance to dodge Melee attack, and +7% chance to hit enemy with a Ranged weapon. These Enchantments can make the difference between two similar weapons.
Unlike other RPGs, your character does not choose and pursue a certain class or certain skills throughout the entire course of the game. There are no penalties for being proficient in multiple skills, and you can take your character in a different skill direction at any point in the game. The four skills are Melee, Ranged, Combat Magic, and Nature Magic. There are three factors in helping build your character, strength, intelligence, and dexterity. Combat and Nature magic users need a high intelligence score, but also can be proficient with a Ranged weapon or Melee weapon. You advance levels by using a certain weapon. The more you use a Melee weapon, the better you will become with Melee weapons, and you will increase in strength. There are also five types of armor. Body armor, helms, gloves, boots, and shields. Each one has a defense rating that adds to your total defense rating. The higher defense rating you have, the more damage you can absorb. Melee characters generally have a higher defense rating than others.
There are two types of magic in Dungeon Siege, Nature and Combat. There is also five kinds of spells. Damage, curse, summoning, enhancement, and healing spells. Both kinds of magic have a variety of both. The 3D casting of the spells is really something unique. Bright colors, all kinds of shapes and sizes, and flame, ice, lightning and more make the spells come alive on your screen. Some spells arc lightning, some roll bombs, some summon skeletons, and some call upon the might powers of the sun to incinerate enemies.
Your party can consist of up to 8 players, and not including the starting character created by you, you can hire NPCs to join your party. Some call for a price, and some join for free. You have to choose who you will allow to join, and who you will decline. There are also dozens of areas in DS. You will travel through dungeons, caves, towns, caverns, forests, mountains, deserts, and more.
After you kill an enemy they might drop loot which you can pick if you have room in your inventory. You can pick up health or mana potions, gold, weapons, armor, rings, amulets, spell scrolls, and more. You can talk to just about any NPC in the game. Also among the items in DS are lore books, which are volumes of stories about the Kingdom of Ehb.
The multiplayer part about DS is great. It's almost like a whole other game. DS is great.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrible terrible terrible game
Review: I've got a lot of patience for games... I usually don't care if it's bad. However, this game transcended bad. This game is awful. The term "Role Playing Game" is rediculous. This game has no role playing whatsoever: Conversations are completely linear and players cannot respond. Even worse, the game offers no choice in the way the adventure. The path is completely linear, so much so that after an hour of playing, I could predict every attack the monsters made... they would always attack in a small clearing, with a similar spread of monsters. However, the use of a pack mule, the ability to only drink a small amount of a potion, and the different skill system interested me. While these are good ideas, they don't carry the game. Save however much money you would spend on this, and keep shopping.
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