Dungeon Siege III

 An errant dungeon crawl.

A dungeon crawler without good loot, like Dungeon Siege III, is missing something essential. If the prizes that pop out don't feel valuable, there's no slot machine appeal of opening chests, busting apart wooden barrels or slicing up monsters. Dungeon Siege III's bits of loot come with all kinds of statistical bonuses, and a multitude of special effects like elemental damage or chance to stun. But it's rare to ever get a strong sense that swapping one item for another has a significant effect, many items have near identical visual designs, and no piece is moddable. After not too long, scooping up loot begins to feel like garbage collection instead of treasure hunting.

Obsidian Entertainment, which took over the franchise from creator Gas Powered Games, is more interested in offering satisfying combat mechanics than a tantalizing loot lottery. Each of the four character classes gets nine core abilities - three defensive, the other six offensive and split across two fighting stances. All the abilities can be evolved by gaining experience and leveling up, giving Anjali's area-of-effect firestorm a healing effect or Reinhart's glyph magic a chance to slow enemy movement speed.

Though the total number of abilities per class feels small and you're not forced to make significant either / or choices about which to acquire, you won't receive enough points to fully customize all of them, meaning by the game's end, another player's Lucas Montbarron build won't be the same as yours. The addition of ability mastery, whereby more powerful versions of abilities can be unleashed if you use them enough times, adds more variety to the system. More importantly, Obsidian did a good job of ensuring each ability serves a well-defined purpose, so there's minimal filler.

Movement around the battlefield is just as important as proper ability use. Stance shifting to access different abilities is quickly done with a single button press, and the waves of enemies that swarm into battlefields force you to make frequent use of your dodge ability to get out of tight spots and slip away from magical projectiles. There aren't any potions in Dungeon Siege III, so your survival isn't based on stocking up at shops and spamming them when necessary. Fighting flows naturally, feeling more like action game than a traditional dungeon crawler. For example, Anjali can spawn a field of fire and summon a demon dog to help in her ranged form, then switch to melee and perform a spinning heel kick over the flames before jumping into the sky and slamming down to devastate enemies. If any remain alive, she can dodge back and skewer them with a hurled spear, or swap back to fire form and conjure a column of flame. Using the abilities in concert like this helps to keep up interest in the combat where the loot system fails.

Due to the lack of potions, Dungeon Siege III also doesn't make it feel like you're wasting resources by using abilities. Every standard attack you land builds focus, the resource abilities consume. By constantly attacking you can quickly gather enough focus to often use your most powerful stuff. The fun doesn't last the whole game, however. Even though Dungeon Siege III regularly tosses new enemy types at you throughout a variety of environments, leveling up after you've unlocked a class' entire ability set doesn't feel nearly as rewarding. All you'll be able to do is tweak abilities and talents, adding higher percentages to critical hit damage or reducing the focus cost of special skills, which isn't exactly thrilling.

Games of this type typically don't offer much in the way of story, so it's certainly welcome to see how much attention it gets in Obsidian's version of Dungeon Siege. Characters interact in conversation with a Mass Effect-style interface and decisions made throughout the course of the game can actually affect events later on. Those used to bland bubbles of quest text will appreciate this, though it's tough to really care what happens because the personalities, even the main villain, have little depth. These characters exist solely to play flat, plot-necessary roles, not to entertain with their dynamic personalities. Dungeon Siege III does a better job than many other loot games to establish motivations for quests and make it feel as though your actions affect the story, but it's not a story worth remembering.

It's also worth forgetting this game has a multiplayer component because of the restrictions in Dungeon Siege III's online suite. The game plays out entirely in two-character co-operative mode with the partner class of your choosing controlled by a capable artificial intelligence that will make use of a variety of skills and revive you when necessary. You have full control over the skill development of the AI characters and can equip them with gear, but as soon as you go to play online, none of this matters. By hopping into the game of another through the game's online browser you can't import your main character. Instead, you're forced to select from whichever character classes aren't already active in the game (two of the same class are not allowed), and won't have any control over skill development while you're disconnected. While this might work if you want to play with close friends, it makes Dungeon Siege III's online mode near useless if you're looking for a random partner to pair up with and make progress.

The rules of online play also aren't appropriately customizable either, since if you open up your single-player game for another to join, that random person can speed over to a vendor and sell off all your inventory items before bailing out. Such behavior isn't the fault of Obsidian, but failing to put in safeguards against this kind of thing is. Though four-player online play is possible, it's also a chaotic mess. The camera incessantly jitters as it struggles to follow the action, the spell effects, as bright and colorful as they are, make it overly difficult to discern what's actually happening onscreen, and the arenas of combat feel far too small to accommodate more than two.

Two can play the game offline with a drop-in co-op system, which can be good for a little while, but the inability to transfer your character, items and progress out of another's game for your own individual use is still frustrating. Dungeon Siege III also features no unlockable new game+ mode and swiftly funnels you through what amounts to one long corridor until you reach the end. It's not the type of loot game meant to be played over and over, does little to encourage exploration, and while it can be decent fun as you toy with the combat system, there's no long-term incentive to continue hacking away.

Though the PC version is by far the best-looking of the three with the appropriate hardware to run it, it does have downsides. The camera requires constant micromanagement to position properly, and for some reason you can't scoop up items or interact with NPCs with mouse clicks. Using the mouse and keyboard introduces a slew of irritations that don't need to be there. The issue is solved by using a gamepad, but that's not the best option if you're looking forward to taking advantage of the platform's traditional controls.

Closing Comments
Obsidian Entertainment's take on the Dungeon Siege franchise has some merit. The core combat system is well-designed, offering a small but useful set of abilities for each character class. The varied enemy encounters encourage the frequent use of abilities and the dodge mechanic, which makes the basic gameplay – whittling down the health bars of enemies – satisfying. But the rest of the game mostly falters, unfortunately, to a degree that overshadows its achievements. Dungeon Siege III is a dungeon crawler with a boring loot table, poorly implemented multiplayer, and little lasting incentive to continue running around the world once the tedious story ends. ign.com