Anybody got this? It looks good to me and I am thinking about trying it out. Seems to be a good way to stave off the Diablo 3 itch. Let me know what you think.

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/rpg/dungeon-siege-3/video/6320346/dungeon-siege-iii-video-review?tag=summary%3Bwatch-review

6/21/2011 9:33:22 PM

I got it. Just to give you some background... I never played Dungeon Siege, but I did play Dungeon Siege 2 and I liked it well enough.

I was hoping Dungeon Siege 3 would be a good game and continue on in the same vein as part 2. Boy was I wrong. They (Square Enix) turned the series into a console action game. It's supposedly in the action RPG genre, but the RPG elements of the game are nerfed to the point where I'd just call this an action game.

I noticed you posted a link to the 360 review, so maybe you never played the others. Don't get me wrong, it's an entertaining game, I'm just saying that loyal Dungeon Siege fans are probably going to be disappointed by this due to missed expectations. One thing I will say though, and again this is based on expectations - this game felt more like a $20 xbox live title than a true, full sequel in the Dungeon Siege series.

If I had to compare this game to others I's say that in terms of gameplay I found myself being reminded of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light (another Square Enix game) more than any other game out there. After that I'd compare it to the Marvel Ultimate Alliance series and maybe Alien Shooter.

General observations, most of which focus on where they fell short of making it at least as good as Dungeon Siege 2.
* The loot is terrible. Hardly any item variety at all.
* No stat point allocation. This carries over to the items as well. No stat or level requirements on the items.
* Four character classes. They are predefined, so no customization is offered. This really gets under some people's skin, but I don't mind so much.
* One CPU controlled party member. You may swap out party members at any time. The party members will be any one of the three remaining classes. Yo can level the party member, but you have no control over how they use their skills and how they fight. It's annoying to see a CPU controlled player spamming a short range skill over and over again when the enemies are all ranged.
* You level up enough to select every one of the 9 skills available to each character. That means there's no builds since you'll eventually get every skill the game has to offer on every new character you start.
* Each time you level you are allowed to select one of two bonuses for each skill. Each skill is limited to receiving 5 bonuses, and you can have any combination of bonuses. It may sound like this offers some customization and variety for each time you play, but the bonuses are lame and the base skill itself is always the same. There's no replay value driven by this feature because you're not going to do one character where you make a skill have 20% chance of burn and 30% chance of knockback and do the same character with 10% chance of burn and 40% chance of knockback.
* You can't horde/save skill points for later, the game stops and doesn't allow you to continue until you assign all skill points you gained from leveling. It can make it annoying if you want to save points for some of the skills that are locked off early game.
* For the character I played I found that they only had one or two useful skills anyway. The rest were worthless and went unused.
* Every time you level up you can also select passive bonuses, but they got lazy here as well. Some passive bonuses are things like get x% more gold (so you can buy crappy items from the vendors - I ended up with far too much gold, so why the passive bonus). Most passive bonuses revolve around the same things as the skill bonus - percentage chance to add burn, knockback, etc.
* There's no "New Game+" that allows you to use a character you leveled on a previous playthrough on a new game at a higher difficulty. You start over at ground zero every time you play the game.
* No potions. They went the Diablo 3 route and did health and mana orbs. One annoying thing that I found is that orbs disappear and you can't pick up orbs while dodging. That means you'll have to wade into the fray unprotected to pick up the orbs, which just makes you lose more health than you gain from the orb.
* DON'T play the game without a controller (for the PC people). From the controls to the HUD this game was designed for consoles. The PC version was a simple port and an afterthought. I feel like the designed for consoles aspect really limited what they could do. No skill trees, limited skills due to limitations with mapping their use to a controller, etc.
* The game lasts about 8-10 hours when doing all sidequests.
* Nothing, nothing, nothing but narrow corridors. No open space to explore, just long, narrow pathways. Also there's some backtracking and it's always painfully slow. No town portals, just walk back to town... down that narrow corridor.
* Kenny Rogers teleport.

I can see myself playing through the game twice and not too much beyond that. There are four classes, but I think I'll get my fill by playing one play through as one class with a party member and another play through using the two remaining classes as the main player and party member.

I may post more as I remember/think about it. Fire off any questions you may have. I'll try to not be too bias as a disappointed DS fan. My final verdict is that it's a fun, mindless action game, but a terrible action RPG game. It really depends on your mindset and expectations going in. Also, this game isn't worth $60. $30 at best. Like I said, when compared to Dungeon Siege 2 this feels like a xbox live game. Don't those typically go for $15-$20?

I'd expect to see the price for the PC game to drop to $40 or below here in the next month. If you are dead set on the game You may want to just pick up the PC version - but only if you have a 360 controller.

I hear they have plans on releasing Diablo 3 on the PS3. All I can say is that I hope they don't nerf Diablo 3 like they did Dungeon Siege. Of course Blizzard is a better dev team.

Edit: I just watched the video review. Pretty much spot on, except:

The loot sucks. Unique items, if you could even call them that, are often worse than magical and regular drops. The only differences between items are slight tweaks to stats like "doom" "retribution" and will, agility, etc. where most items are largely the same. You could say the same for Diablo, but at least in Diablo there was more than 5 or so stats and each item actually had base damage, which is completely absent here.

They overplayed the ability to drive the story. It's no big deal.

The only problem with the camera is the lack of the ability of lowering it. It's tightly locked in a top down fashion - like they were afraid, nay terrified of draw distance.

[Edited on June 22, 2011 at 8:04 AM. Reason : -]

6/22/2011 7:38:27 AM

Quote :

"I hear they have plans on releasing Diablo 3 on the PS3."

Link? I find this hard to believe.

6/22/2011 8:02:59 AM

That may have been a (cruel) rumor, but a quick google yielded:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Diablo-3-PlayStation-PS3-BlizzCon-Action-RPG,news-11420.html

And to be fair, it was just a job posting and I don't believe the job posting linked it to D3.

Still it makes me worry they'll (a) nerf the game to fit on a controller like they did this one and or (b) hold up the PC release so they can release on the console at the same time.


[Edited on June 22, 2011 at 8:10 AM. Reason : -]

6/22/2011 8:06:41 AM

I hope to Christ they don't do that. Or at least don't tie the PC and console version developments together.

6/22/2011 8:29:43 AM

There are a few rays of hope:

1) Blizzard
2) Dungeon Siege 3 was developed for consoles and ported to the PC. Diablo 3 was developed for PCs and (maybe) ported to consoles.

6/22/2011 8:42:15 AM

So should I just get DS 2 then? I need something new to play badly. I have not had a real itch to play to keep playing a game in a long time.

6/22/2011 8:43:07 AM

If you are looking for an action RPG that's similar to Diablo 2:

Titan Quest - it has an expansion, I believe it is called Immortal Throne. Probably the best of the Diablo clones.

Sacred 2 - Sacred 1 plus expansions was too buggy for me. Part 2 was more stable and decent enough.

Dungeon Siege 2 - Not quite on the same level as TQ and Sacred 2, but it's still better than part 3, and far cheaper.

Torchlight - I give this one a big meh. I got bored after one play through, but it was only $10. It just didn't have the variety or difficulty I was looking for. I hear part 2 is coming out here shortly, I have no idea what it's going to be like, but I'm interested... it's got to be a better aRPG than DS3.

Deathspank - Nothing too special here at all. It's another hack/slash game that might be worth picking up if you see it for $10.

Diablo 2 LOD full conversion mods are also quite fun, but usually involve reading lots of material to know how to play them.

6/22/2011 9:17:51 AM

Fuck you Square Enix. You've raped a loved franchise.

6/22/2011 9:22:16 AM

I got Sacred 2 and Torchlight and they are OK but run a little dry. I may try them again. II want to get this Titan Quest. Its pretty cheap at Amazon.

6/22/2011 9:29:11 AM

Yeah, that was my experience. Torchlight was mildly entertaining, but there is a reason they were selling it for $5 at one point.

Sacred 2 was good enough to finish with one character but I never really felt compelled to do all of them.

The only negative I really found with Titan Quest was that I felt some areas were kind of boring, making the game drag in some areas. But I felt the same way about act 3 in Diablo 2. I hated combing through those first three jungle areas.

6/22/2011 9:34:22 AM

Diablo 2 is just so damn good overall and you play though diffierent difficulties to get the better loot which drives the itch to keep playing it. I may reinstall it, hell I never played Diablo 1 so I may just give that a whirl.

*** If anyone here wants to sell DS3 (360 version) when they finish with it just holla at me. ***

[Edited on June 22, 2011 at 9:40 AM. Reason : /]

6/22/2011 9:39:45 AM

jbtilley said:

Quote :

"It's supposedly in the action RPG genre, but the RPG elements of the game are nerfed to the point where I'd just call this an action game."

I never played the second one, but that's how the first game and the first expansion were, so that doesn't bother me.

Quote :

"* The loot is terrible. Hardly any item variety at all."

This, however, does bother me. One of the biggest draws the first game had for me was Diablo-style randomized loot. I loved beating the shit out of some krug just to see what awesome new toys I'd get.

6/22/2011 9:48:07 AM

How much does gold mean in DS3, is it worth collecting? I know in Diablo 2 gold pretty much means nothing for the most part.

6/22/2011 9:50:19 AM

More details on loot:
* One thing the game does correctly. For the most part you get loot for the kind of character class you are playing. So you don't have to worry too much about getting loot you can't equip. You'll get fewer drops for the other character classes that can be put on your party members. You just have to pull the party members out one at a time to equip them.
* Only bosses and to a lesser extent mini-bosses drop loot. Standard enemies only drop health/mana orbs or gold. 95% of the loot will be found in chests.
* Here's an example. I'd get 12 new armor pieces and struggle to make a selection because there were too many trade offs. Every piece of armor had a significant tradeoff with no truly awesome piece of armor. Like you would have to take a hit to two or three stat upgrades just to pick up a small boost in another.
* Already mentioned - items don't have base damage, only stat enhancers. That alone limits variety since a gun is a gun is a gun. Diablo had many tiers where one sword would do 3-6 base damage with awesome bonuses, but another sword would do 7-11 damage with less bonuses. Which to chose? Well here there is just "sword" "shield" "hat" No types of swords, shields, and hats.
* Items just have fewer properties. You get the standard life leech - I have no idea how this works, since I had several items with life leech late game but it seemed to only work randomly. It's probably like magic find, where you just increase your chance to leech or something. No idea.

Other vague stat boost like "doom" and "warding" and stat boosts like +agility, + will, etc. So every item had a random sampling out of about a dozen available item bonuses.
* Small list of modifiers in Diablo 2 but not DS3: +life, +mana, +magic find, +skills (ha, skills don't even work like that here).
* No item sets
* Already mentioned. No stat or level requirements.
* No sockets, etc.

I guess some people will say there's lots of variety with items. I never felt there was. It just seemed like each item pulled an average of 4 random modifiers out of a pool of 12 or so possible modifiers. Three would relate to what I would consider stats (called str. dex. etc in other games), and you might get a 4th that added "doom" "retribution" or "vampirism" that only seemed to half work.

My main issue is that most items seemed the same and each were junky in their own way. I just got an item that does +70 doom! I have to take a -35 to attack and a -12 to will over the item I'm currently using. I'll just stick with what I've got. I found that occurring a lot. Every item is crappy in it's own way.

More details on gold:
I think I'm sitting on a pile of 250k that I collected like 50 pieces at a time. Vendor items aren't that good. Sure, early on you might see something you want to buy but can't afford since you just started playing, but gold quickly becomes meaningless.

The best vendor items will cost about 12k, and that's late game. Also by then you can easily justify not buying an item because it's a downgrade in two stats to have an upgrade in another. I think I bought like 4 items the entire game. And that was just to fill my amulet slot because I don't think I ever saw an amulet drop from a chest.

[Edited on June 22, 2011 at 10:25 AM. Reason : -]

6/22/2011 10:18:58 AM

I'm waiting on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Looks badass and reportedly has diablo-esque loot

6/22/2011 11:29:28 AM