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The good side of Dungeonsiege is, that one can learn how to play it in five minutes. On the other hand, it doesn't stay on the harddrive not even for more than five minutes...

Originally posted by Chris Boney
The good side of Dungeonsiege is, that one can learn how to play it in five minutes. On the other hand, it doesn't stay on the harddrive not even for more than five minutes...

That's a waste of money!!!!!!!!!
I don't know, i'll get the game later this day from a friend who can't run it on his PC

I don't like to sound like i'm supporting DS but it a fairly good game with great graphics and sound but it just not good for those gamers that love RPGs. I as well got bored after a couple of hours in the game.

I think the real strength of DS has not come into play yet. This game is designed to be modified. GPG made some remarkable efforts to give the players the possibility to create their own game using the DS engine. The possibilities are endless.

Looking at DS as the game we know so far, my points would be:

Good:

1. Fantastic graphics
2. Great usability / gameplay
3. Relatively low computer specs needed (compared to graphics)
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   Not good
   1. Lack of story / complexity
   2. Lack of NPC interaction
   3. No real character development / specialization possible
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      I think this game beats Diablo for sheer hack'n'slay fun but cannot be compared to the Bioware CRPGS, except it's few similarities with IWD. I would even go so far to say that DS is not a role playing game, there are no decisions to be made about your role in the game world and only few about character development. Anyway, this game can be real fun if you're into it's strenghts and the question is what all the mods and GPG come up with next. Give this game better stories and more interaction and it will live for a long time.

I really like DS. The seamless environment, the detail, not being stuck in a class, having "combat mages" that can wear armor, and not having to have 12 charts, 15 graphs, and a statistics degree to figure out whether I should give my 1 lousy experience point after 40 hours of play to one handed swords or two handed swords and then regretting it later either way anyway... Great stuff to me.

And as far as plot. I detest the idea of being the offspring of a demon (Baulders Gate). And, in IWD YOU had to explain (or not) why your band of characters were together meaning group dynamics were practically irrelevant.

I've been playing computer RPGs since Mega Traveller and I have yet to find an RPG that makes good use of NPC dialog. Recently, I've played Icewind Dale, BG II, Final Fantasy X, and Dragon Warrior VIII (I think its 8) and I thought most of the NPC interaction was a waste of time. In IWD in particular, once you've played through a section you could replay it with a different party and skip most of the dialog altogether and not be any worse for it. So, until you can type in your own dialog and the computer can recoginize what you are saying and react accordingly, the less NPCs there are to walk up to and get the same stupid dialog with the better IMHO.

Additional (albeit, lengthy) thoughts on DS -

Pros:

Interface - a thing of beauty. Controlling the camera and moving about the world takes no thought at all...it's intuitive in it's simplicity. This is a significant, not a trivial point, especially in a 3D world. Being a veteran of 3D games of various genres (Homeworld, Half-life, Dark Reign, Earth 2150, among them) and find the DS UI the best to date.

No Load Screens - a point seemingly overlooked by DS detractors. Prior to DS, I most recently played Wizardry8, and while I enjoyed the game, one of several complaints I had was the many load screens and the interruptions to the gaming experience they caused. There are no such interruptions in DS, one of several reasons I find it so immersive.

Character development - admittedly, while I am familiar with D&D character development, I do not come to DS with an extensive D&D background. So it's not surprising then, when I say I don't miss the process of allocating experience points among various skills and attributes. I have, however, spent countless hours with Diablo II, Wizardry8 and the like, and I find the DS character development system refreshing. Isn't it logical that a character who accumulates experience using a melee weapon (for example) would have that experience applied to his/her melee skill level and those attributes associated with melee? You still control your character's development, but by deciding how your character behaves during combat (primarily), rather than by allocating experience points at your discretion after the character has leveled up. In this respect, I find DS more realistic than its predecessors.

Graphics - not much to be said here, other than DS is graphically, the most impressive game I've played.

Sound - very sophisticated use of sound effects and scoring. DS rates up there with Homeworld in the music's contribution to the overall game experience. As a classically trained musician, I'm impressed with the polish and seamlessness of the musical score.

Cons:

Active spells - the inability to hot-key more than two spells is a bit annoying. Granted, it's relatively easy to drag through a spellbook's contents to swap spells, but in the heat of combat, mistakes can be made. I'd rather be monitoring the battle, than making sure I selected "Summon Black Wolf" and not "Transmute"! Pausing the game to swap out spells merely detracts from the immersive, flowing experience GPG as worked so hard to create.

Unfolding of story line (unfolding being the keyword) - actually, the content is there. Perhaps not to the degree of Baldur's Gate, but there is a rather deep, involved story line to DS. The problem is, for the most part, it's hidden within the 16 lore books distributed throughout the game. For my part, I would prefer watching videos (a la Diablo II) to reading lore books. If I want to read a book, I'll sit back in a comfortable chair with a cappuccino and read "Lord of the Rings", not stare at my monitor. Why not double click on a "Tales of Dragon's Rathe" and let Bink Video do its thing?

Overall, I have found DS to be a genuine pleasure to play that indeed, sets the mark in many areas for games of this genre and others.

Originally posted by Paxtang Dutihl
Interface - a thing of beauty. Controlling the camera and moving about the world takes no thought at all...it's intuitive in it's simplicity. This is a significant, not a trivial point, especially in a 3D world. Being a veteran of 3D games of various genres (Homeworld, Half-life, Dark Reign, Earth 2150, among them) and find the DS UI the best to date.

I agree to that but i would like to add a little flaw with the camera control. Not being able to see higher that your height is really frustrating especially when you are on a lower level from the one of your enemies. And sometimes you can't even enjoy the view

I enjoyed playing DS... SP was enjoyable, and MP even more so... I enjoy a good slash and hack, no major thinking or puzzle solving, just creature after creature...

I never expected DS to be very stat orientated, like BG, and Morrowind are...

A very pleasing game with incredilbe sights and effects to gaze upon at every turn...

Yes, great hack and slash game. I normally don't like 3D games but DS is a good game. Controls are easy to master.

The only thing that annoys me is the spell casting. Only 2 active spells at a time.

Paxtung has an excellent pro vs. con post there. I can't really argue with it except to say that somehow, the game just got boring. The graphics and score are still amazing, and I love how your character develops depending exactly on what you decide to develop and how you fight, but somehow it just got old fairly quickly. I think one of the big draws for me in Baldur's Gate II and Diablo II was wondering what was around the next corner, wondering what kind of really cool new weapons I'd pick up and looking forward to playing around with my new abilities after a level up. DS I think is lacking in exactly these areas, and I think it is for that reason that personally, although for the first 20 hours of gameplay or so I was convinced I'd found the best game ever, it quickly lost my interest.

Originally posted by Andrinor
I think one of the big draws for me in Baldur's Gate II and Diablo II was wondering what was around the next corner, wondering what kind of really cool new weapons I'd pick up and looking forward to playing around with my new abilities after a level up. DS I think is lacking in exactly these areas, and I think it is for that reason that personally, although for the first 20 hours of gameplay or so I was convinced I'd found the best game ever, it quickly lost my interest.

I loved DiabloII. D2 is a faster pace comparing to DS. I might be a slow player. After 20 hours of playing for me, my levels are still pretty low which means I still can't do much. But after I got my NPCs developed with decent skills, I have found this game is very similar to D2. I was always hoping to find special magical items, many that I can't even use yet. This helped me to move on and trying to raise my levels. Monsters are definitely more complex than D2. D2 simply changed thier colors. I would encourage you to play a little longer to get the better flavour of DS

Since people love to do a DS vs. Diablo vs. Baldur's Gate comparisson, I'll jump on the bandwagon. Having played all 3 (actually all 5 if you count D1, D2, BG1, and BG2 ), I personally would rank them BG->DS->Diablo. Here's why:

Dungeon Siege vs. Diablo:

• Graphics - Dungeon Siege is obviously superior graphically. Even in Diablo 2, where the graphics are a large improvement over their predecessors, I found characters to be slightly pixelated and items on the ground all looking basically the same. Character models are pretty much static within ranges of weapons and armor. Monsters are generally reskins of previous monsters, which became pretty monotonous after a while. Spell effects are nice, but nothing great. The buildings were rendered nicely, but we must remember that Diablo 1 and 2 were NOT 3D games, but rather 2D characters walking over a 2D bitmap world. In DS, on the other hand, character models are very nice, and completely dynamic. Weapons models are also nicely rendered, and they look on the ground the same as they look in your character's hand. Spells are pretty cool, and the use of SiegeFX on spells, weapons, characters is done well, and visually appealing. Buildings (indoors and out), landscapes, and backgrounds are all beautiful, and the use of the Siege Engine for camera control and fading is excellent. My only problem with the DS camera is not being able to look in a real first person view (ie. directly ahead), but you've got a lot more camera control than in Diablo.
• Interface - Both games interfaces were good, but I think Dungeon Siege's was superior. Diablo's interface is more obtrusive, being bigger, and doesn't allow you to see every facet of it (character, spells, inventory, etc.) at the same time, while still being able to play. In Diablo, you could be killed while checking your different stat pages, because the entire screen would be covered. In DS, however, the UI takes up very little space, and windows are translucent, so you can see behind them, if necessary. As well, the DS UI is very expandable, allowing transfer of items between characters, and allowing you to see every facet of the UI at the same time, if wanted.
• Sound and Music - Both games are excellent in this regard. I liked the sound tracks on both, and sound effects are also very good. DS obviously has options to use more advanced sound technology than Diablo, but this is not a fair comparisson.
• Plot and Character Development - In my opinion, both games were pretty bad in this regard, but since I'm doing a Diablo vs. DS comparisson, I'd pick Dungeon Siege over Diablo once again. Although DS's plot was advanced slowly, I found it to be a more immersive plot than Diablo. Both plots were extents of the standard RPG plot - basically, find the evil master and kill him to save the world. However, I didn't really see why, in Diablo 2, I was going to these 4 cities and their surrounding areas. In Dungeon Siege, you are taken through a large amount of different areas, and the plot is driven by conversations with many people. I feel that the DS plot is more interesting than Diablo. As well, subquests in Diablo weren't really sub, if you know what I mean. The subquests in Diablo were a necessary part of the game, for example the one to get the Horadric Cube. Without the Horadric Cube, you couldn't do other parts of the main backbone quest. In Dungeon Siege, however, the subquests really are optional, and if you don't feel like doing them, then you don't have to.
  In terms of character development, I think that Dungeon Siege wins again . The DS character development is not based on levelling up experience, which is a nice change from the standard RPG model. With Dungeon Siege, you are not limited to what weapons and armor and spells you use from the beginning of the game, like Diablo. If you find a weapon midway through the game that you want to use, you can alter your character to advance the stats necessary to use that weapon. You can potentially use every single spell in the game, if you want to. Or, you can stick to one stat, and power-level it. I like that this aspect of the game is completely up to you. In Diablo, however, whichever class you choose to start with is what you are stuck in. If you are a Sorceress, and you find a Barbarian-only weapon, you can't use it, even if you wanted to. This limits the available spells you have. The way Diablo works, you only get a limited amount of spell "points", so unlike Dungeon Siege, your spell levelling is capped quickly. Another downside is the spell prereqs, which makes you spend valuable spell points in a spell that you don't want in order to get a higher-level one.
• Gameplay - Hands down, Dungeon Siege wins . Dungeon Siege is a more immersive, fun game than I found Diablo to be. There is one major difference that set Dungeon Siege apart from every other game on the face of the planet... no loading times!!! This is an ingenious advancement on the part of GPG. What every other programming company couldn't do, GPG did, and it is a huge benefit to the gamer. Eliminating loading times makes for a faster game, with less interruptions in gameplay. Dungeon Siege is also superior, in my opinion, in terms of the combat system. First of all, the allowance of having a party of up to eight characters makes for a more fun game, as huge battles can ensue. This causes a lot less running away than in Diablo, as there you would have to bail if overwhelmed by a large mob. With eight characters (including packmules, which I'll get to in a second) you can bring up your tanks to melee, and provide coverage with archers and spellcasters. Of course, if you want to solo, you can, and it's still lots of fun, but there you have more running. As well, you don't have to sit there and wear out your mouse buttons by repeatedly clicking, as opposed to Diablo. Dungeon Siege has some advanced AI for controlling both your characters and the monsters. You can set up each character -- individually -- to run into a battle and attack the strongest character there, or to hold back and fire only when provoked, for example. There are three different toggles to control what each character will do in a battle, so you can decide to control an archer, and let your tanks run up and fight on their own, if you so desire. In Diablo, of course, if you didn't actively attack, your character would just sit there. You can let your Dungeon Siege game just sit around while you go have a coffee -- though you will probably not end up with a desired outcome . In terms of monster AI, Diablo's was pretty weak, as mobs of monsters would just charge up to you, and occasionaly retreat. In Dungeon Siege, each monster can have a different AI than its friends, in order to retreat, to be affected by morale -- did his friends die? -- etc. There are three other advantages DS has over Diablo. The first is the ability to pause the game. I don't remember if you could pause in D2, but you definitely couldn't in D1. Pausing the game is a great advantage, as it lets you regroup, lets you take a break from the game. The second is the packmule. As every RPGer knows, you always end up finding way more cool items than you have space to hold. This is where the packmule comes in. With three times the inventory space as a character, a packmule can literally hold a ton of stuff, and you won't have to worry about leaving something behind anymore (my party has 5 characters and 3 packmules ). The packmule AI is also well done, so that it will try to escape from a fray, but will defend itself by kicking if cornered. The third advantage is saving. In Diablo, saving your game would take you back to the last waypoint you were in, because of the random nature of the levels (of course they could have done something about this, but whatever). This means that if you had played for an hour, and were 3 minutes away from the next waypoint, but your game crashed or you had to leave or your character died, or whatever, you would have to go through that entire area again, with respawned baddies, when you reloaded. In Dungeon Siege, you can same anywhere, any time, and you would reload exactly where you were. Diablo does have two plusses, though. The first is the randomness of the levels. This leads to high replayability, as it's different each time you play. To counter this, Dungeon Siege ships with two huge worlds to play in, so it will take a while to go through all that. The second thing is the spell hotkeys. Diablo gives you four, Dungeon Siege gives you two. This makes a big difference, as it means you have to spend time changing around your active spells to find the one you want.
• Multiplayer - I can't really comment on Dungeon Siege multiplayer, because I haven't played it yet. I liked playing Diablo mutliplayer, but there were some problems with it. The first was the large amount of hacking and cheating that went on. Cheaters would player kill people instantly, and have very hacked characters. As far as I know, though Dungeon Siege doesn't offer a closed server, like Diablo does (that one can't be hacked, but you can't use your SP characters), it is harder to cheat, as people playing together have to have the same mods installed.
• Modability - Dungeon is probably the game with the easiest modability. GPG made it very easy to mod their game; in fact, they released it as a game to be modded. With the Siege Editor and the Siege University tutorials, as well as tons of user-run modding sites, many mods and siegelet are being produced. Though there were some mods for Diablo, most "mods" were just trainers to use to hack your character, which, from experience, just ruins the fun in the game.

So that's my long comparisson of Diablo vs. Dungeon Siege (can you tell which one I like better? ) I'll get my DS vs. BG one done soon, but this took a long time, so I'm taking a break

Nicely said Krynus

Thanks I'll try to do my other half tonite or tomorrow...

Sorry for the delay, I've been busy setting up the new site for my mod (which you obviously have seen, right?

Dungeon Siege vs. Baldur's Gate:

• Graphics - Like Diablo, Baldur's Gate is a 2D game, where you control 2D characters over a pre-rendered 2D bitmap. The graphics are very good, but in general, a 2D game cannot compare with a 3D game graphics-wise. However, I don't know if I would have wanted Baldur's Gate graphics to NOT be how they were. For example, I feel more comfortable with the GTA2 graphics (ie static overhead shot) than the new GTA3 improved camera control (not to say that I don't like the new). Concerning spell effects, I really liked the BG ones and I think that they are superior to Dungeon Siege's (not that DS's spell effects are bad at all).
• Interface - The Baldur's Gate UI is much more controlled than Diablo, taking up much less space. However, being opaque, and bordering three sides of the screen, lots of precious screen space gets taken up. A good feature in BG (and in DS too) is the ability to get rid of parts of the interface in order to expand the playable space. The problem with the BG UI is similar to that of the Diablo UI. Each "page" (Inventory, Journal, Spells) takes up the entire screen and thereby brings gameplay to a screeching halt. Most pages pause the game when activated, which is an improvement over Diablo, but for the sake of realism, BG unpauses when accessing the Inventory. This can cause death, without even being able to see what's going on. Another advantage of DS over BG (and Diablo) is the map. Diablo's map is just an overlay, that is hard to use to any purpose. BG's map is extensive, but does not allow movement or combat (though it doesn't pause the game). You can just watch your characters triangles move across the map. In Dungeon Siege, the map is an extension of the game, and therefore completely playable.
• Sound and Music - I really liked the BG sound/music tracks. They were done really well, and convey the feelings that they were supposed to. Baldur's Gate has better voice acting, and a lot more of it, than Dungeon Siege, which is a definite advantage (listening is much, much better than reading).
• Plot and Character Development - Dungeon Siege cannot compare to the RPG elements of Baldur's Gate. Whereas DS is a so-called "action-RPG", Baldur's Gate is a classic RPG, based on TSR's Dungeons & Dragons strict rules. Character development is emmense, but the strictness does not allow for as much change as Dungeon Siege's character freedom, though you can dual- or multi-class your characters.
  In terms of plot development, DS pales in comparisson. Not only does BG have a solid backbone quest, and well-developed side quests, but it also has diverse interactions between characters, some of which act as catalysts for future quests (for example, how you talk to someone might lead to them attacking you rather than giving you a quest), strongholds, romances and much more. Baldur's Gate does extremely well in RPG aspects, which sadly cannot be said for Dungeon Siege.
• Gameplay - Again, being a true RPG, Baldur's Gate is much more immensive as a game. Dungeon Siege is very linear, allowing you to basically just go through the world in the order the designers want you to, and choose whether or not to do the quests thrown your way. In Baldur's Gate, you have many choices about where to go, and when. You don't have to do any quests that you don't want to (other than the backbone, of course). There are also a lot of added things that make the game real. Theivery, drinking, sleeping, and reputation are all part of the game. If you don't like a merchant's prices, you could pick-pocket him, or try to steal his inventory, or just kill him and raid his shelves (of course all three could lead to the guards coming for you ). If you see a squirrel or a chicken on the ground, you could kill it if you want. If an NPC wants to join your party, and you'd rather just take his equipment, you could kill him. Dungeon Siege places lots of limits on what you can and can't do, so you can only attack enemies, not "friendlies". In Baldur's Gate, you could even cause a whole city to turn against you (if you so desire). In terms of combat, there are AI options to control your NPCs, and the enemies are very diverse. You have multiple quick-weapon and quick-spell slots, as well as quick-skills, depending on what character class you take. Rather than using the standard mana system, which many games do, Baldur's Gate spells work by memorization, and then instant casting. This could be a bad thing, ie. running out of spells when you most need them, but also makes the game more realistic, IMO. As I mentioned before, there are a ton of interactions in BG, which make the game a lot more than just the hack-n-slash of DS. All in all, though Dungeon Siege is a fun game, Baldur's Gate takes the cake .
• Multiplayer - I only tried BG multiplayer once, and not for a very long time, so I can't comment on it. As I said before, I haven't played DS multiplayer yet, either.
• Modability - As I said before, Dungeon Siege is the most moddable game I have ever seen (*cough,cough*Asylum*cough* ). I don't know for sure, but I don't think that Baldur's Gate is modable, or at least easily modable.

That's part two. I just got Morrowind, so you might see a Dungeon Siege vs. Morrowind post in the near future Enjoy!

Originally posted by AngusThermopole

Nicely said Krynus

I second that! having got bored of Diablo II ages ago, leaving it unfinished and probably never retried. I bought DS a couple of days ago and I must say was greatly impressed by the graphics especially. I am yet to get far enough to compare it to BG in any detail, but to compare it to Diablo, well it wins hands down in all areas IMO Maybe I was looking for a stop gap to Morrowind or NWN in the UK (incidentally, my brother in law works for Sony and was at the E3 conference, rumours have a release date for September in the States for NWN) but this is proving more than a stop gap. If I can compare it to anything, it is probably the Baldur's Gate Playstation II game, I think - only no loading screens or maybe even Final Fantasy, but without the limitations in graphics when it comes to battle scenes...

Good stuff: The graphics are nice. The box art was good. I have no problems running the game. The music is fairly good. Bad stuff: I get totally bored after twenty minutes or so playing the game. There just isn't much to it. Extreemly repetitive. I'm very dissapointed after spending 50 hard earned dollars on it. I know alot of people like it and thats fine, I respect that. But I found it dull and very boring. I felt like I was standing on an assembly line in a factory watching the same pieces go by on the assembly line one after another, un-ending.

Deacon, if you only played for 20 minutes, what do you expect? Give the game a chance... there is a lot more than the same thing over and over again... you must have mixed up Dungeon Siege with Diablo, or something

Play for a couple hours or so and you'll see... it's good

Hi Krynus, Actually I did play longer into the game but in about 20 min. to half hour playing each time. Got to the part where I was in the sencond or third dungeon where the giant black spider is guarding the passageway. Picked my three guys off like flys time after time after time, so I basicaly gave up on it. Cheers ,Deacon