STORY: 2/10
GAMEPLAY: 9/10
SOUND: 8/10
GRAPHICS: 10/10
VOICEACTING: 7/10
CONTROLS: 10/10
INTUITIVITY: 10/10
COMBAT: 10/10
FRUSTRATION LEVEL: 0
Dungeon Siege is a most entertaining game that has been lost in the dank, dusty halls of video game antiquity. No one I've talked to had heard of it, yet after reading ancient reviews of the game, I went out on a limb and purchased Legends of Aranna (definitely the way to go; Microsoft included Dungeon Siege with its expansion). I was delighted.
I received the game on a quiet weekend and ended up playing it for three days straight, every spare moment. I still didn't get a third of the way through the ORIGINAL game!
I cannot honestly say Dungeon Siege has a great story; it's recycled, it's simplistic, and it barely makes an appearance in the game. However, where Dungeon Siege really shines is its pure and unadulterated hacking and slashing. Dungeon Siege removes most of the frustrations that can occur in a hack-and-slash game, and strips down the genre to good, clean fun. There are far too many features aiding in making the experience simple and fun for me to go into here, but as a taste, Dungeon Siege includes packmules to carry extra loot, a spell called Transmute that turns the loot you still can't carry into gold (so you never lose any of your delightful items!) and one of the cleanest and simplest levelup systems I've ever seen.
When you're through with the original game, and Legends of Aranna, it's important to note that there are many siegelets (small games that are built on the dungeon siege engine) available; two from the company, and many available at random sites on the internet. These can add many dozens of hours of gameplay to an already turbo charged product.
In conclusion, for those who like hack and slash gameplay, Dungeon Siege delivers an incredible amount of value at an incredibly small cost. Dungeon Siege Legends Of Aranna
This is an action cRPG that came out after DIABLO II and just before NEVERWINTER NIGHTS. And it blew both of them out of the water!
Not as deep as NWN, yet the story engaged you enough to make it more than a hack'n'slash. Not as dark as DIABLO II, yet blood fever will take hold of you once in battle. A number of innovative ideas made DUNGEON SIEGE a unique experience: the cinematic perspective, the original characters (who thought up...machine-gun shooting medieval robots!), the fighting-back pack-mule...
At the same time, both the enemies' and your company members' AI is well above par.
Graphically, this is a 4 year game yet it plays much smoother and it has further horizons than most cRPGs today. Even if, to any true cRPG fun, graphics is not everything (otherwise DAWN OF MAGIC would have been considered a great game), DUNGEON SIEGE is found wanting in nothing when it comes to graphics. Not until TITAN QUEST got released could any cRPG hold a candle to DUNGEON SIEGE! Tress and grass move as you pass by, water ripples as you step into it and wakes as you walk through it. Everything worn or wielded appears on the character; whereas, magic spells are not shabby at all.
The game also sports a GREAT CAMERA PLACEMENT (zoom capable and totally customizable) and has one of the BEST SOUNDTRACKS - the theme music will stay with you as the appropriate theme for any epic battles in the future.
Those of you who were (rightfully) disappointed with the truly bad and much shorter DUNGEON SIEGE 2 (I still cannot fathom how they managed to botch that one!), keep in mind that it has only skin-deep similarities to its predecessor. This is the one to buy!
Combined with its expansion, this comes out...more expensive than buying them separately in jewel-cases - so, I would recommend shopping around first. Nevertheless, you will enjoy it more than most latest games!
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
I think there are enough reviews on this game to describe how fun it is, and addicting. Even though, lets face it, its very old school. But this is your typical, run-of-the-mill ARPG. No frills, just blood spills. I've played similar games such as Sacred, Sacred 2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance (1 and 2) and various others, and they all have the similar trappings and window dressing that makes a good ARPG fun.
I purchased this via Amazon through the vendor Select2Go. I almost didn't open the package to this game. The actual game packaging is completely different from the one shown in the picture. It isn't red. It doesn't include the tag line "Includes the original Dungeon Siege game" on the front of the box. And it also doesn't have 3 cd's. Mine was blue, from Ubisoft and contained only 1 DVD, with no mention anywhere on the packaging about it containing both the game and expansion. I had severe doubts, and almost returned this item.
However, after searching on the net, I felt assured that the game did indeed include both versions, so I popped it open, installed it, and low and behold, the original and expansion were on my desktop. There was a huge sigh of relief. However, why the seller or Amazon is using this older image or misplaced image is beyond me. So, if you get a blue package (that says Explosive Ubisoft), that doesn't mention the game including the original and expansion...don't worry. You've got it. If you get a red package with 3 cd's (which is the current place holder image last I checked)...I have no clue what you just purchased. Maybe you got it, but its just a different package and set up, thats perfectly feasible. But apparently the expansion that was released for this game did include the original game as a bonus. These old school games, when re-released....can just be confusing at times. Have fun!
I played the demo of this back when it first came out and was impressed but had other games I wanted to play. I wasn't really into the party gaming thing and enjoyed the solo romp of games like Diablo II and Morrowind.
Several years have gone by and I thought I'd buy this, with the expansion pack for cheap! So I've played and beat the original game, and just started on the expansion. It doesn't seem like you can import your character into the expansion, which makes it more like a new game than a true expansion, but that's how it goes. Anyway, it's not particularly wonderful, and definitely dated at this point, but it's a great time killer. And if you feel like being a casual gamer, the AI takes control of your character if you're not doing anything with it and will generally seek out enemies and defend itself. So if like me, you like to play games during dinner or snacking, this game is great, because it auto-plays itself :)
The story is typical, the AI is fairly well developed. The enemies are unique and bosses are big and scary. weapons are fairly cool. Lots of unique goodies. The average swords and bows, but there's also a chain-gun and flame-thrower, so you know, it's definitely pushing the boundaries of sword and shield fantasy.
I'm running a fairly decent gaming rig with Windows Vista, and despite the warnings of incompatibility, I was able to install and NO-CD patch the game and it plays flawlessly.
Definitely worth my money.'
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