Dungeon Siege 3

Rating: 1 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)
Genre: Dungeon Crawler RPG
ESRB: T (for swinging swords and sparkles)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 12/10
Developer: Obsidian
Wiki page

Despite the fact that I've never been a fan of either Dungeon Siege or Obsidian, I had high hopes for this game. Mostly because I had played the demo, and it showed a potential for re-working dungeon crawler mechanics into a new era. Which was a bit surprising, since the franchise is basically a clone of Diablo, and Obsidian is a parody of a video game company. You know, since their games come with more glitches than gameplay. But I do notice they seem to try, but then stop trying at some point. Maybe every publisher pushes them to make games too fast... I have no idea. The end result is called "half-baked", and it regrettably shows its ugly head here, too.

Did you play this one? I did.

Stupidly, one strong point of this game is the amazing lack of bugs. Any bugs I ran into were generally nominal. In fact, they were so unnoticeable that I forgot what they were. I really just have to assume there must have been bugs because this is a damn Obsidian game. You know, the makers of "Fallout: New Glitchland" or whatever it was called. There were three things that stuck out, though, that may count more as "lack of polish" than bugs. Here they are:

1. Character freezes briefly between menus and dialogue. Every. Time.
2. After rolling, it is possible to accidentally roll a second time if you move the stick too quickly.
3. Level up menu arrives ONLY at end of combat. There seems to be no convenient or logical way to actually get to this screen otherwise.

Just a "normal" day in New Glitchland.

Talking about "lack of polish" brings me to my first major issue with the game, which is one that presents a large deal-breaker to many players: the shit-tacular multiplayer. The multiplayer in this game is so poorly designed they may as well have not included it at all! My God... it's unreal. I was playing as the warrior class, who relies a lot on dashing around the screen since he's obviously a melee guy. So immediately the camera became completely useless. Why? Because despite being an online multiplayer game, ALL PLAYERS SHARE THE SAME CAMERA. Holy shit! If you thought New Super Mario Brothers Wii was frustrating, try playing a top-down game where all players can move the camera individually. What the hell! So basically I was the world's most effective Player Killer just by playing my class normally because it completely fucked up the camera for everyone. Did... did they test this out? Like, ever? Do they know that each player has their own XBox (or another system, I guess) to render the graphics on? I don't understand!

Accidentally killing your friends: funny... until you actually try to play the game.

Also, the multiplayer is treated like a "drop in, drop out" style where new players can come and go as they please. BUT the save system in the game is restricted to specific save points rather than some manner of consistent saving system. It also does not feature "graveyards" like an MMO which would allow you to keep playing once you die. So what does this mean for a party wipe? Well, it breaks your fucking game. No joke. I think with time it might try to load players into the party leader's last save, but every game I played ended the same way: people looked at their fucked up screen and just quit the game. Again, I really can't believe they didn't notice this glaring lack of functionality. Really, Obsidian?

Imagine if wiping in WoW meant retarting the raid and re-forming all the parties. Fun!

And lastly, the game lets you have a companion when playing in single player. Well, actually it FORCES you to have a companion. This second character is always one of the other playable characters, which you unlock at various points during the story. For some strange reason, the game implants whoever the "second slot" of your multiplayer game is into your companion slot. Once that person leaves, you forever have a copy of that character for your companion. This means they can spend all the character's skills in ways you hate and screw up all the gear you have worked towards. This is pretty unbelievable, but that's not even the silliest thing. No, the silliest thing caused me to laugh out loud for real. Remember how I said companions unlock during the course of the story? Well, if the second player uses a character you haven't unlocked yet... that character is now unlocked! Furthermore, you can't switch your companion out. Forever, I think. I don't know because I quit my fighter in disgust.

Here's a game with a more sophisticated co-op system.

You can play the game with another controller on the same screen. I read something about the loot system being completely absurd. And since I already had enough bullshit from this game's multiplayer, I automatically decided I didn't want to bother any one with attempting the multiplayer with me.

My last complaint is the game's replay-ability: there is none. Yup, once you beat the game it just says "Good job, buddy!" and sends you to the title screen. Well, obviously there's a proper ending, but I expected some kind of new game+ mode or maybe a higher difficulty or infinite dungeon mode.... but no! Nothing! I tried loading that character and it simply sent me to the last boss fight. What! That's not how dungeon crawlers work! Son of a bitch!

There are worse endings. Here's the end of Mass Effect 3. I think. I'm remembering people's reactions, not the actual ending.

So is there anything good about this game? Quite a bit. No, really. If all you want is to play through an RPG once, this is rather nice. It uses dungeon crawler mechanics, but introduces a lot of new combat changes from the norm. And it doesn't just fling a bunch of useless abilities that look cool, unlike some other dungeon crawlers (wink, wink). It only gives each character nine. While not every ability is perfectly balanced, it can be easily said that there was some thought going into creating a playstyle for each class. And each class wants to juggle two stances to weave their abilities around in a given situation. For example, in my single player playthrough (where I did play through the whole game) I used the "gun lady" class. I don't remember what she was called. Whatever. Anyway, one stance was a long range rifle, and the other was dual-wielded shotguns. The shotguns were quick and allowed the player to frantically spray around at melee attackers, while the long range offered superior damage-per-second for when proper range could be acquired. See how those work in different situations instead of overlapping? Very nice. And every character can both block and dodge, giving more decisions and ways to avoid damage rather than simply walking away slowly.

Walking was just fine back in my day. All you kids and your fancy "running", bah!

The story is fine, too. Not too investing, but the dialogue is so matter-of-fact and the actors read it in a matter-of-fact manner so that holds it back. It would help if the characters were more interesting, although they try to be later on by having these things called "character flaws" show up. There's also a bunch of lore and politics thrown at the player, but by the end of the game I got the gist of it. Unfortunately,  there's no real difference in the story if you play as another character, which, again, hurts the re-playability.

Conclusion:
Something of a refreshing take on a dungeon crawler when played through single player once. But the game offers nothing more from a genre that is supposed to offer a lot more. Don't get this unless you really freaking love dungeon crawlers.

And don't watch the Uwe Boll movie. It's an Uwe Boll movie, for fuck's sake.