Dungeon Seige was Microsoft’s first real attempt in the Hack and Slash rpg arena. The game is visually stunning, and goes on to impress further in the way that they added a natural motion to the trees in the environment, as well as incorporating fantastic visual weather effects during gameplay. Quite often, you’ll be walking a path making your way to a town or dungeon, when you’ll see a disturbance in a bush or shrub followed by some creature coming out to attack you. The effect works quite well. The view is easily changeable as you can zoom in and out during gameplay with minimal effort. The controls are quite similar to Diablo and games of this genre. Overall the game delivers, and considering that it’s now 6 years old ( released in 2002 ) this was an impressive first effort. There are various plusses and minus’s to this game, so Iet’s get to it…

The Good…

• lan multiplay feature
• excellent visuals
• ease of play
• variable game difficulty settings
• nice variety in monsters and towns

The Bad…

• No Voiceovers during story telling. This to me is a big problem with the game itself and if this had been added to the game, we might be talking about the heir to the throne in the hack n slash rpg genre. Quests are delivered in text boxes without much ado, which takes away from the overall experience.
• battles can become generic and repetitive
• Purchasing items in towns is quite expensive and you find yourself using gear that’s been found while battling monsters in dungeons and towns. A better balance here would have been a plus.
• You always start out in town and must make your way back to the point you left previously via a teleporter. This is very similar to the way Diablo works, but at times this can be frustrating as you lose a sense of continuity in the gameplay, not to mention that it can take a bit of time just getting back to where you left off.

These comments have to be kept in perspective. We’re talking about a game that was released in 2002, and has since had a sequel ( Dungeon Siege II ) which has corrected a lot of these issues from all I’ve read. I’m currently embroiled in a multiplayer campaign and will update this post when I beat the game. All in all, its’ a fun ride. This is no Morrowind or Oblivion, and I’m totally OK with that. If you want to spend hours searching for a specific combination of herbs to present to a character, then play Morrowind. If you just want to kick ass and take names.. this might be the game for you.

Sally D