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after being a HUGE Diablo2 LoD fan plus an avid player of the Baldur's Gate series of games, I tried out dungeon siege to see how it would stack up. My final thoughts? Dungeon siege plays like a watered down Diablo2 for combat and skill development and like a watered down Baldur's Gate for RPG aspects. This game has attempted to be a hybrid of action and role play, but has failed in that it is not up to par for either. The combat and action is far more lacking than Diablo2 and the story and role playing are inferior to BG2 as well. In attempting to make a game that encompasses both types, Micro$oft has fallen short of the mark for both. DS's character development simply stinks in either case

Conclusion: if you like an action fantasy game, get the somewhat dated but still highly playable Diablo2, and RPG nuts, get your hands on Baldur's Gate 2. Siege just doesn't have what it takes to play with the big boys. Nice try though, very pretty graphics. cute. for about 15 minutes before the novelty wears off anyway.

Let us see what Neverwinter Nights will bring to this table shall we?

Dungeon siege plays like a watered down Diablo2 for combat and skill development

What are you talking about?!? True, I haven't played D2 for a while now, but as far as I can remember, the skill development in D2 is pretty basic compared to Dungeon Siege's system. In Diablo 2, you are restricted to a base class (no dual- or multi-classing), and you gain skill points based on experience. Because of being restricted to getting 1 point per level up (except in special cases -- ie quests), you are restricted to how powerful abilities become, as well as the range of abilities you have. As well, the prerequesites make for wasted skill points. In DS, you can take any route you want, as well as changing your route at any time. Spells accumulation is not dependent on experience points (though spell damage is, but that is standard in RPGs) or on prerequesites. If anything, D2 is a watered down skill system from Dungeon Siege!

Concerning Dungeon Siege vs. Diablo in terms of combat, I think DS prevails here as well. Whereas in Diablo you have to continuously click, click, click in order to vanquish your enemies, DS takes a better approach in giving the user the opportunity to have the game take care of battling for you (in other words, you can tell your party to start attacking, and let the game attack subsequent enemies rather than sitting around) or set the AI options to Hold Ground and Hold Fire, and control everything manually. Secondly, Dungeon Siege's monsters are not all repaints of previous baddies, which is a big problem in D2, as it makes the game boring. As well, there is a larger selection of weapons and armor in DS. There is one thing, however, that I like in Diablo that was left out of DS. In Diablo, you can press Shift + click, which allows you to attack without moving, as well as casting spells without moving (even if there are no baddies in the immediate area).

a watered down Baldur's Gate for RPG aspects

In this regard, I tend to agree with you. The BG series is probably my favorite series of games, and I can't wait for the next one to come out (I did see in the BG2 section that a third one is coming, right? ) Anyways, Dungeon Siege is seriously lacking in terms of story and character development, and is not even comparable with BG. Luckily, with many people starting to develop mods for DS, we will soon see DS hybrids that are closer to BG in terms of classic RPG elements.

However, I don't think that it is fair to compare two different types of game, even within the same genre. BG is a classic RPG game, whereas DS is an action RPG, based on hack and slash. It is more appropriate to make a comparisson between DS and D2.

Concerning Dungeon Siege vs. Diablo in terms of combat, I think DS prevails here as well. Whereas in Diablo you have to continuously click, click, click in order to vanquish your enemies, DS takes a better approach in giving the user the opportunity to have the game take care of battling for you (in other words, you can tell your party to start attacking, and let the game attack subsequent enemies rather than sitting around) or set the AI options to Hold Ground and Hold Fire, and control everything manually. Secondly, Dungeon Siege's monsters are not all repaints of previous baddies, which is a big problem in D2, as it makes the game boring. As well, there is a larger selection of weapons and armor in DS.

this is where I think your argument takes a wrong turn. You call it click, click, click, I call it taking an active part in combat instead of letting computer AI fight for you. I hate that. (plus you don't have to click repeatedly anyway, you just hold down the mouse button for repeating blows).
Also, for character development, you are also mistaken. One must simply take a look at all of the game stat calculators all over the place to deal with the complexities of creating a D2 char. you have to factor in damage reduction, attack speed, run speed, elemental resistances, wpn speeds, critical strikes, class-based attack skills, and way way way more. Just take a look at all of the magical prefix and suffixes for the thousands of items in the D2 world!! You can also hotkey through 3 entire skill trees worth of skills during the course of a combat encounter as opposed to DS's 2 weapons and 2 spells. Let's also not forget that with DS, everyone starts out as the same, and you try to make a unique setup of the skills that are available to create your own class. BUT.... the skills available to choose from are available to EVERYONE and there are no unique and distinctive classes with unique skills to call their own like there are in D2 and BG2 as well. In this regard, DS has regressed back to the days of Diablo1 where all of the classes used the same spells with differing levels of skill.

There is a larger selection of weapons and armour? no there isn't, and the stats on DS's items are quite a bit more mundane than D2's.

Having said all that, regrettably, D2 is ancient history now, I've dried up any replayability interest in the game and I'm just disappointed that a good replacement hasn't come along yet.

Krymus: If you right click on a spot with your respected character their range weapon will fire as long as it is within your weapons range. This works especially well with spells.

Pooburglar: If your holding down the mouse key for repeated blows then what exactly is your "active" part? Like clicking the mouse key faster actually makes your character a better fighter. This is a concept that Diablo fans just look ludicrous on. It just makes for tedious fighting. If you had more fun playing Diablo, so be it. Just leave it at that.

I like to totally control my char's actions and movement in a suposedly action oriented game (let's face it, this game is more action than RPG). in that sense D2 was better. But I'm bored of D2 now and disappointed with DS as a potential replacement.

Why can't people take each game for what it is. I don't remember GPG saying that DS was going to be a D2 killer. The media, to me, are the ones who crowned DS the killer app to replace D2.

Hell, I have not heard/read anything about how DS has the look and feel of Throne of Darkness. Multiple characters to control, with one being the leader and the others following along behind.

I don't know how anyone can compare DS to the BG series. They are two completely different styles of games. BG was a deeply convoluted plot with alot of quests to do. DS is linear. One quest leads to another quest. Very little RPG involved.

I do agree that DS is more action than rpg, but that was what it was billed as from day one. A game that anyone could pick up and play without a steep learning curve in order to get started.

Bottom line, it is not really fair to compare one game to the other, unless it is a complete ripoff of another one.

Darkstone anyone???

How bout you guys compare it to a game that it actually has something in common with. Try this one... Darkstone. I beat it twice and have yet to look back on it. But I downloaded the DS demo today, and played through twice on easy just to check out the gameplay. The graphics were remarkably similar, as was the engine. But there's just something much better about it that I can't quite place. I think it's the inventory and interface, it's much easier to use. And I instinctively hit SPACE from playing BG and IWD for the past two years on a laptop, and viola it's pause! That's definately a plus for me. So I think I'll buy it when the price goes down a bit, or possibly even sooner.

And I instinctively hit SPACE from playing BG and IWD for the past two years on a laptop, and viola it's pause!

I can't tell you how many times after playing Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale I would hit SPACE in a game, expecting a pause

No Comparison

There certainly is no comparing the Baldur's Gate series with Dungeon Siege. They are two totally different games in most aspects, other than they take place in a fantasy setting. I personally don't care much for the action RPGs, but as far as they go, Dungeon Siege is a pretty good game. I've been playing it for a few days now, and other than the hack and slash, it's actually kind of fun. The graphics are wonderful, and the interface is intuitive and easy to use. I also like the soundtrack, especially when you're traveling through the Ice Caverns - the drums are pretty cool.

I don't even begin to think BG when I play it. I played the original Diablo when it was first released, and so I liken it more to that. I didn't really like Diablo either, but then it's simply a matter of what one likes and doesn't like. Me, I'm a D&D fan. That's why I'm not enamored with DS, but I recognize a good game when I see one. DS is pretty decent.