Dungeon Seige

[Dis]

Does anyone have it?

Recommend it?

[Dis]

I played a little bit over my brother's house.

The graphics are unbelievable. What else can I say. But do graphics make a game?

The gameplay looks a little bit weak. And I'm not sure I like the skill system, I wish it was a bit more complex. 4 different areas seems to little.

The sound is excellent, although a little cluttered during combat. There is all sorts of things going on.

But the game looks amazing.

[General Ludd]

1) It's a hack'n'slash, don't get it if you are looking for an RPG with substance - heck, it's got less story then Diablo.

2) As you said, it has good graphics.

3) I didn't try multiplayer, but I personally think the single player game stinks, once you get more then one person combat becomes a real pain in the ass - there is next to no AI at all for your party members.

The combat can be fun when you only have one person to control, though.

[Dis]

well I do enjoy Diablo. So a game doesn't have to have that much story if it makes up for it in other areas.

combat did seem difficult to control. but the AI seemed pretty good actually. All my characters were healed when they reached 1/2 hit points, as long as I stayed within a tight group. but controlling combat yourself seemed silly. The best I could do is control one character and have the others on auto. They did a pretty good job dispatching the monsters. But then it seemed kind of boring, just watching your guys kill everything without lifting a finger. It is like a RTS in that regards. Not enough direct interaction. Multiplayer may be better in that regards.

I don't think I'll get it now, maybe if it gets discounted in a year or two.

[Grumbold]

Maybe I'm misremembering this, but wasn't Dungeon Seige supposed to emphasise dungeon construction, so you were supposed to be designing a place then in real time marshalling your defences as other players tried to break in and steal your riches? I.e. Dungeon Keeper done differently with the option of becoming the attackers of someone elses design? Now that its firmly focussing on attacking other peoples work and only promising a tool that will eventually allow you to design a new dungeon offline before anyone plays it, it sounds like the feature cutters have ripped its guts out in order to get anything releasable on the market.

[Grumbold]

Its getting great reviews but all the screenshots make it look like Gauntlet with masses of eye candy graphics for those with the hardware to support it. Anyone tried it yet?

[Dis]

yeah like I said I played it on my brother's computer. But only for about 15 minutes.

Amazingly the hardware recomendations on the box aren't all that high. The highest requirement is a 8 MG 3D video card. The processor req. was only like 300 MHZ. 1 Gig hard drive space and 128 megs of Ram. My brother's computer isn't all that impressive except he does have a Voodoo 5 video card. The game worked flawlessly on his system.

So that is a good testiment to the graphics. They designed the graphics so well that it doesn't take a high end computer to run.

But the depth didn't look all that great. And the combat wasn't all that interesting. Most of the characters had to be on auto for single player because you have like 6 characters. It really only seems feasible to control one mage (I use that term loosely as there are no classes in this game- but I mean combat magic caster).

Multiplayer could be more interesting, I didn't try it out. In fact multiplayer probably is the best thing about this game.

But again the graphics are amazing. The reviews don't give the ai high marks. But compared to other RPG's the ai is decent. They stage ambushes all the time, and sometimes they retreat and get more of their buddies to help them in battles.

I do love the pack mule though. I think that is a cool addition for a rpg. Too bad it doesn't make noises. Maybe have a donkey that kicks your characters . But the mule will kick to defend itself if it is cornered by monsters. But usually it will try to run away.

[Grumbold]

Is there anything to do except click'n'kill, loot, level, repeat? All these high review scores yet you and Jeff Morris seem to be the only Apolytoners to voice an opinion and neither seem impressed. Anyone else tried it?

I am quite a fan of the Majesty game where you only influence your heroes, never actively control them, but you are placing the buildings, hiring the troops and casting the sovereign spells so its still involving.

[Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS]

I haven't played single-player at all but I've played quite a bit of the multiplayer and I like it a lot. The multiplayer "campaign" doesn't work as well as a single-player campaign because when you quit out, it doesn't save the state of the world. Also, you can't have packmules in multiplayer which isn't so good. The experience point system is really well done. You gain experience in the skill you are using, so if you kill a monster with a sword, you gain melee experience. If you use a bow, you gain ranged experience. You don't choose a character class in the normal manner and instead grow into the class that suits your play-style. I like being able to mix a magic class with a fighter class. I also like the 3D interface. They did a good job making the camera control intuitive.

I believe the gameplay is quite similar to Diablo but I never played Diablo. And Dungeon Siege looks a lot nicer than Diablo.

[Dis]

unfortunately I didn't have time to get into the meat of the game and see how the quests were. I'll have to check on that. All I did was move around and fight monsters .

[Urban Ranger]

I imagine it'd kinda hard to have a multiplayer campaign as all those players must be present whether the campaign is restored.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I imagine it'd kinda hard to have a multiplayer campaign as all those players must be present whether the campaign is restored.

Nah, there's no roleplaying involved so you just go from game to game killing stuff, geting items, and gaining levels - like diablo.

I don't think there are any randomly generated levels, though.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I'm playing the demo.

It is like Diablo... but you control a party. That gets unwieldy and thankfully you can pause, but the combat has much less strategy than say Baldur's Gate.

It almost seems like an interactive movie, sometimes. A lot of the game (with a party) you watch the fighting until it is over. Some of it can be interesting, and there are some quests.

The graphics are great, and there is no loading between levels... which is utterly amazing.

All in all, enjoyable for a bit, but not worth $50.

[Urban Ranger]

Just like Diablo? I might as well go for a game of Quake instead.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Basically, UR.

Hell, it was a fun demo... but I'll wait until it falls to $20.00 (US) or something. Hopefully the demo of Jedi Knight II comes out soon. I've only bought 1 FPS (No One Lives Forever), but if JK2 is good, perhaps I'll get a 2nd one... er, maybe not (just though about Morrowind coming out ).