1. Dungeon Siege 3 Anjali Build

Dungeon Siege 3Developed By: Obsidian EntertainmentPublished By: Square EnixRelease Date: June 21st, 2011Genre: Action RPGSingle/MultiplayerESRB Rating: TeenThank you for giving us this game to review!It has been six years since Dungeon Siege 2 was released by Gas Powered Games. The torch has been passed on to Obsidian Entertainment and they have completely changed the tried and true game play formula of this beloved dungeon crawler.

With a strong single player campaign and a weak multiplayer offering, I believe this game is an exact opposite of the original Dungeon Siege series. But is it still worthy of the Dungeon Siege title?As I alluded to, the story line is great and the choices you make will affect the boss battles and the ending sequence you will see. The character development is well done and you can choose one of four characters to play and gather the rest as friends during your adventure. Unlike the original games, you’re limited to having one companion at a time. Fortunately, the AI is smart enough to handle their own. In fact, they revived me more than I had to revive them.Each character has their own unique fighting style. Lucas is your typical warrior that can wield one or two swords.

Katarina is a gunslinger who is also Lucas’ illegitimate half-sister. Reinheart is the intellectual mage who likes to talk over everyone’s heads. Lastly, I played as Anjali who is a fire slinging archon that can change into a human spear throwing warrior. Archons are a servant race to the creator gods that play a big part in the story. Strengths: Fun single player; multiple choices affect your ending and game play.Weaknesses: Wacky controls and camera issues; crippled multiplayer compared to the original Dungeon Siege games.Moral Warnings: Plenty of violence and magic use; references to various gods and some female characters are naked with painted bodies.Along with unique fighting tactics comes custom abilities and equipment.

As you slay various monsters, giant spiders, witches, and evil archons, they will drop all kinds of loot. Although characters have items specific to them, accessories like rings and necklaces are universal can be worn by anyone. The items you collect will alter various attributes such as attack, armor, block, stamina, and will power. Some items have an additional offensive bonus like fire, lightning or poison.

You can either sell unwanted items at a merchant or transmute them into gold at your leisure, the better the item the more money it is worth.Fighting involves clicking and stretching your fingers into unnatural positions to press numerous keys. The PC version is an obvious console port that plays better with a controller than with a keyboard. Since I have beaten the game a patch has been released that lets gamers change the key mappings. The default controls required a right-click to walk and a left-click to attack. Using special moves requires you to press the number keys and striking multiple foes involves holding the left shift key. As you can imagine, your fingers can get a little sore playing this. The E key is your action key which is used to interact with objects (opening chests and doors) and reviving fallen party members.

When gathering loot you have to press E to pick it up. I wish walking over it would suffice since that is all that it takes to pick up gold.The fighting scenes are fun to watch with all the beautiful magic and fire filling up the screen. The graphics are gorgeous and there’s lots of eye candy to be seen.

The enemies are nicely detailed and there’s a decent amount of variety there. When you talk to key NPCs, the camera will zoom in and they appear lifelike. The camera works for the most part, but there were some moments where it was frustrating. Game Score - 78%Game Play: 13/20Graphics: 10/10Sound: 8/10Stability: 5/5Controls/Interface: 3/5Morality Score - 61%Violence: 7/10Language: 8/10Sexual Content: 3.5/10Occult/Supernatural: 2/10Cultural/Moral/Ethical: 10/10I loved the original Dungeon Siege music and while the music found here was nice, it wasn’t memorable. The voice acting is superb and when you talk to storyline characters, the decisions you make will impact boss battles and the ending sequence of the game.

Whatever party member you have with you will gain influence/respect if they agree with your actions. Since this is a Steam-based game, there are achievements and fully gaining a party member’s influence is one of the achievements you can earn.While the beginning and ending sequences change based on the character, the bulk of the game is the same. You can try to unlock various achievements or try the game at various difficulties. I like how you can change the difficulty on the fly. It took me twenty hours to beat the single-player campaign and I have no intention of playing it again for achievements.Having very fond memories of the multiplayer experiences of the original Dungeon Siege games, I was extremely disappointed in the crippled multiplayer offered by Obsidian. This game disgraces the Dungeon Siege name.

Don’t get me wrong, the single-player campaign is fun and I enjoyed the characters and story, but Dungeon Siege has always been more about the multiplayer than the single-player campaigns. Dungeons Siege 3’s multiplayer is merely a cooperative play mode where people can join a server and play as an unused character in the game. Only the host gets experience and nobody gets to keep or transfer over any of the loot. Other than a cooperative experience, what is the point? This is a dungeon crawler; people want to get loot and keep it!

I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t see any open servers to join.For Christians the moral issues may be another let down. Violence and magic use is a given.

Fortunately the gore isn’t gratuitous. There are references to many gods and the undead. Towards the end of the game there are some evil archons with four arms that resemble the Hindu goddess Kali. Many of the female characters have tight clothing or just painted skin and no clothes at all! While there are no sex scenes, there are more illegitimate children in this game than some soap operas. Lastly, there are a couple of minor swear words but nothing warranting a Mature rating.If you don’t mind these moral issues and lacking multiplayer there’s a solid single player campaign here.

Since it’s only twenty hours long, I don’t recommend paying full price for this game. It’s obviously a console port so consider grabbing a controller or just go for the console version if improved PC graphics aren't important to you.

Dungeon Siege 3 Anjali Build

I haven't tried the new patch, so that may help somewhat. It looks like there will be downloadable content available for it. Depending on the price I may check that out.