Review [Quickie Nr. 002]: Jools and Dungeon Siege III

I'd write a review, but I don't consider DS3 a RPG and it wouldn't make sense reviewing a non-RPG for a RPG site. I'd write one for a BEUCodex. But still no need since this is the best two-sentence review.

Fixed by a patch. I was slightly wrong before, it was released a little over two weeks later.

I took some really small screenshots just to address this:




Do those look like they're addressed specifically to you as opposed to just being journal entries by various people?

Odo tells you that most of them had never handled a weapon in their life and the Lescanzi had the advantage of surprise.

Likewise I'd say never listen to the bitter rants of angry Dungeon Siege fanboys who've admitted they actually liked how it could play itself. Death to passive gaming.

Short correction. He tells you that most of them had basically no actual battle experience before. Its still viable of course since we can assume the Lescanzi actually fought multiple times before.

As for your hero party

Anjali = Was always close to Odo and trained by him personally
Lucas/Katarina = Both had extensive training and grew up in foster families
Reinhart = Genius Mage FTW

We can assume on all three occassions that they got battle experience somewhere during their life.

Like the one we got from Jools? Yeah, we're already there even without any motivation, so let's keep staying there.

Wheres the Lucas/Katarina porn.

Theres Katarina/Johnny Cage (MK) porn

Wow, this game really deserves to be forgotten or something. I mean, yeah it was slashable for small doses. But there's very little driving me onward, I burned through Torchlight content with more zeal than I did in DS3. And that's just terrible, because DSIII had writers attempting to enhance the lore, but failed to grab any attention from the player.

I'll try to be kind but really, I didn't feel like I got my money worth. It was very, very bland.

People complain of cameras and controls, I accept it, adapted to it, and have no complaint for the rest of 80% length it offered me. Which was 8 hours. I worked longer hours in two days than finishing a DSIII session.

And re-playability is very, very poor.

I had choices, yes. But I didn't feel rewarded nor punished when carrying it out. Worse still, people who chose to be cruel weren't even rewarded with a graphical depiction of the outcome.

Seriously, a black screen? Am I playing a PG13 game? OK, maybe I'm immature for wanting bloody pixels, but man, I wasn't asking for exploding bodies or rape. There's no satisfaction in carrying out the execution of villains if none is depicted.

A black screen with post-game narrated slide-shows isn't sufficient. There's a reason why Fallout was blasted for its lackluster combat yet praised for its death animations.

Imagine getting a black screen when you execute Gizmo in Junktown. Or shooting the Vault Overseer at the finale? It made no fucking sense. Even Mask of the Betrayer had memorable scenes. So why not Dungeon Siege III? It's an action game for fuck sake, stop pretending otherwise.

I'm very sad for Obsidian's choice of IP. Hack and slash isn't their forte, and it shows. Let's hope they're wiser from this and don't attempt another hack and slash.