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Not THAT hack and slash dungeon crawler

While the rest of the world waits eagerly for the release of Diablo 3 next week I am indulging in a bit of Dungeon Siege 3 courtesy of a Get Games sale this weekend.

The game got very mixed reviews when it was released so I am pleasantly surprised at how much I am enjoying it so far. I can see how it annoyed fans of the Dungeon Siege series - it eschews many standard elements of a standard dungeon crawler with very limited set of skills and no control over party members. In many ways it plays more like a third party action adventure than a dungeon crawler and indeed a game pad is strongly recommended even for the PC version. Moving quickly and accurately is  is all important especially in the regular challenging boss fights.

To be honest I think I prefer this formula to the repetitive combat of a more traditional dungeon crawler. While I have never played Diablo 1 or 2 I did get sufficiently bored of Titan Quest not to finished the game. I finished Torchlight but I came to hate the procedurally generated dungeons by the end of the game. Even the original Dungeon Siege took me over two years to complete because I could only stomach it for short stretches.  Dungeon Siege 3 seems to have a more tightly scripted story line with more meaningful combat. So far I like it.

Comments

Jayedub said…
I love Dungeon Siege 3. I finished with three of the four characters before getting a tad burnt out. I believe it's a highly underrated game that had too many expectations put upon it.
mbp said…
JD after playing a for a couple of days I entirely agree with you. I think it is a great game that might have been better received if folks were just looking for "another Dungeon Siege".

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