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Review:

20th April 2002:
Dungeon Siege
Microsoft takes a stab at the role playing genre with Dungeon Siege, but do they get it in one, or is it just a near miss?
Posted by Marc Hull - PC - UK and Europe

Being mainly a console fan, and a player of action games, I have always had a bit of a problem when it comes to role playing games. While I find cinematic ones such as Final Fantasy or Skies of Arcadia brilliant, it's the more gritty, statistics-based, character building titles I can't stand. Put simply, before playing Dungeon Siege I hadn't ever played a PC role player that hadn't bored me to tears with battles that seemed to require minimal user interaction and ended up just showing a player hitting an enemy, and vice versa, again and again until one or the other copped it. However, with the promise of something different, I decided to play Dungeon Siege with an open mind; but did I end up sleeping on my keyboard, or enthralled by its detail?

Starting from the beginning, Dungeon Siege's story tells of a tribe, tormented by monsters called Krug, that fled to a peaceful land a long time ago but have since forgotten how to protect themselves. Once day, the monsters return, burning houses, wrecking villages and searching for magical artifacts; with little defences, the tribe are quickly overrun. However, it is one person's destiny to rise from a farmer to a great fighter and defeat the monsters, freeing the villagers forever. When you start a new single player quest the game presents you with a healthy set of character customisation options, allowing you to alter your avatar's gender, hair colour, body parts and clothes. However, Dungeon Siege doesn't work on 'classes' like other RPGs; you can only be a human character, who starts off with no special abilities in any area. Your character's abilities then grow from the weapons or spells you select for them to use, so if you use a lot of clubs or pitchforks early on, your character's melee combat skills will level up, which will allow you to use more powerful weapons and cause more damage with each hit. Similarly, if you use a lot of healing spells, your character will gain skills in Natural Magic, allowing you to use better healing spells and also summon demons.

Right from the start, the game's full 3D environments will have you captivated. Every tree, house, and even plant has been modelled with a good amount of detail, and little effects such as the shadows cast by your characters, or the inviting streams that run through the forests, help to add to the overall environment of the game. The introduction sequence, like all the story-advancing scenes to follow, is shown through a realtime 3D cut-scene, which shows off the engine well with lots of nice, cinematic camera angles. Meanwhile, the game itself allows you to take full control of the camera angle; by moving the mouse to the edge of the screen you can rotate your view, or by scrolling the mouse wheel you can zoom in or out, allowing you to get a good shot of the action at all times. The game also gets around the problem of walls, trees or various other objects obscuring your characters by making all things between the camera and your party semi-transparent, so moving your team through a forest packed with trees is easy.

You start playing Dungeon Siege where the introduction story finishes; you are ploughing a field on your farm when an injured friend informs you that the Krug are back, and that you must make your way to the village of Stonebridge. This is the first quest that advances the main story of the game, however along the way you'll pick up loads of mini-quests that are stored in a handy notebook, that will replay the quest's dialogue if you've forgotten what you're supposed to be doing. Unfortunately, while the graphics looked very promising, first impressions of the gameplay were not so good for me. After the novelty of the great landscape began to wear off, all the quest to Stonebridge seemed to consist of was endless wave of Krugs, insects and dogs to be killed, some of which would drop items that would be equipped before fighting more Krugs, insects and dogs. The fighting also didn't seem that interesting, since it was pretty much a case of clicking on an enemy and waiting, with the occasional tap of the health potion button to keep your character alive.

Fortunately, once you get to Stonebridge and start building up a party of characters the game begins to pick up. Having three characters in your team allows you to customise the abilities of each one, so one can master melee combat for close-range fighting, another can master combat spells for dealing with many enemies at once, and the final character can master healing spells, standing away from the battle and healing the other characters when necessary. Of course, with three characters there's three times as much to do in battles, and the battles can get pretty intense. Going down into dungeons below the forest reveals literally hundreds of skeleton soldiers and spiders that seem to emanate from all corners of the rooms. Fortunately, switching weapons is very easy to do, so if you suddenly find your team surrounded you can quickly switch all the characters to use melee weapons to fight their way out, or similarly if you want to hold back an army of skeleton soldiers that are closing in on you then range weapons such as bows and arrows can be selected with a single mouse click. The massive battles you can have also look great, with each character having a good variety of animations that make it look like a realistic, large-scale melee.

The game's sound also matches the quality of its graphics. Not only do you have the ever-present orchestral background music, which fades in and out to suit the current mood of the game, but each area is also bustling with background effects, from the noise of spiders scuttling in the dungeons to bushes rustling in the forests, the overall effect really is great, and at times quite eerie. During battles the background sounds are masked by noises of swords clashing, monsters wailing or spells being cast, with each creature, weapon and spell having its own sound to give that extra sense of realism.

Length is also not a problem; the game world is absolutely massive and seamlessly changes between indoor and outdoor environments, and from bright, open landscapes to the dingy confines of the underground dungeons. This is made all the more impressive by the lack of loading times; the world seems to be streamed in as you play, resulting in only one load at the start of the game and then continuous play! There are also loads of weapons, spells and items of clothing to collect, levels to be achived and quests to be completed, ensuring many hours of play. However, the much-vaunted Siege Editor is nowhere to be seen; instead of coming with the game it will be available for download later, so you'll have to wait a little while before being able to create your own maps, or download new ones made by other people. Even so, an online multiplayer mode is included, so you can still battle your mates or participate in cooperative missions.

Overall, Dungeon Siege is a pretty neat package. The presentation of the game is excellent, from a nice graphics engine to one of the best-looking menu systems I've seen in quite a while. The game world is both expansive and detailed, and along with some nice sound effects creates a great atmosphere. However, it does have its fair share of niggling problems that prevent it from being a perfect game. First of all, as I've mentioned before, the battles can get repetative after a while, and the initial parts of the game are pretty uninspiring. The movement system can also prove to be tricky in some environments, since although it works on a simple 'click where you want to go' routine it sometimes seems interprets clicks wrongly. For instance, if you're inside a building and you click where a wall is, the game will interpret that as moving your character outside the building, and it can be very frustrating when they're walking away from where you want them to go, and your frantic clicking to move them back has no effect. Finally, those expecting to be able to customise their game using the Siege Editor will be disappointed that it isn't available 'out-of-the-box', but then again you should only have to wait until next month before it is available free (hopefully) for download.

Note: We tested Dungeon Siege on a 950 Mhz Athlon system, and found the framerate to be a steady 30fps at 640x480 resolution with 32-bit colour mode.

Marc Hull

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Review Summary:

Dungeon Siege is a great RPG from Microsoft that features a massive 3D game world with no loading times between areas. While initially the battle system may seem a bit slow, requiring minimal interaction, when you build up a team of people and get into setting attack formations, specialising your characters in certain areas and participating in some massive battles you'll soon be hooked. Unfortunately, there are some flaws with the movement system that can be annoying, and the promised level editor isn't included with the game, but will be made available for download later this year.

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