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Dungeon Siege II Busts Out Trailer
Thanks to RPGDot for pointing out there's a trailer for Microsoft/Gas Powered Games' Dungeon Siege II available from the official DSII site, as well as via Gamers Hell, showcasing a lush cinematic-style teaser (using the in-game engine) for this PC RPG sequel, which is simply listed as "coming 2004". The original Dungeon Siege was largely well-received, but sparked some complaints about repetitiveness/linearity, so it'll be interesting to see how the sequel develops the gameplay.
Some things I liked about the original Dungeon Siege:
- No load time between levels!
- the pack mule is very convenient for hording loot from the dungeons.
- cool variety of weapons and spells like the goblin flamethrower or railgun.
- the group/party feature
Some things I didn't like:
- repetitiveness of a hack and slash type game
- not enough unique items
- multiplayer online was laggy at times and wasn't fun
I got DS the day it came out, and got a little bit past the Dwarf Mines (for those of you who have never played it, thats maybe 2-3 hours into the game, IIRC).
:)
The graphics were outstanding, you really feel like you're in a fantasy setting.
However, as PA put it around the time of the games release, you dont really play the game. Your character pretty much auto attacks whatever is in sight (handy for multiple character parties, but since you can (IIRC) pause a la baldurs gate to issue orders somewhat unneccesary), and it seemed to me that experience was only given to the character who got the deathblow. I know for a fact that my swordsman advanced hella fast compared to the mage (guess who usually killed stuff...) who was getting almost 0 Xp. The real killer was the lack of character depth. At least Diablo 2 your character was sorta different (unless you're the same class, and even then, they COULD still be different, not so with DS)...
I will probably take a look into DS 2, if they fix the XP system to be more DnDish (ie, equal shares of XP, with maybe a small *kill* bonus), because DS 1 was a good idea, just needs some polish.
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Dungeon Siege was pretty fricking boring.. looked great ran well, easy to play... wait no I didn't really have to play it.. the toons played the game itself. Other than a few special abilites it felt like the game was on auto pilot.
Way to linear as well, follow the path kill monsters get stronger follow path monsters get harder kill monsters..
Lets hope the 2nd incarnation will add some meat to this potato.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
I just hope they fix the multiplayer features a bit. To start with, the multiplyer campaign in the first one really seemed like an afterthought. Basically no story, you just fight your way from place to place. To make matters worse the game scaled horribly for multiplayer. All it did was give the eneimies more hit points, and a rather lot of them at that. My group had a couple of LAN parties where DS was the game we played, but we quickly lost interest in it. Why? Well, it got kinda boring just running around, and then spending 20 minutes hacking down 2 or 3 creatures, and with the non-interactive combat system it was like watching someone chop down a tree, not exactly fun. It got so bad a one point that one of the players, playing a fighter type character, got up in the middle of a battle, got sodas for everyone, and then watched over my sholder as I blasted off spells in a vain attempt to kill something. Which brings up the other problem I had with it, since the monsters HP went up dramatically, but the mage's ability to do damage stayed the same, the mage was pretty worthless, you would have to expend all of your mana to bring down one creature, the whole time running around like a bitch hopping it didn't squish you. At least it was interactive, but it sucked never getting to actually be of much use in the battles.
For me, if a game is going to have multiplyer in it, it had better be good. I hate forking out the money for a game, to use at a LAN party, only to have the multiplayer suck. And these days, that's about the only way I like to play RPG/Adventure games.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Best thing about DS was the mule. Setup you party with the ranged weapons and hit stop. Then send in the mule! Monsters chase the mule, so just run it back to your charachters and watch the monsters get mowed. Other then that it was boring as crap, and despite the many interesting names the magic items had each seemed completely interchangeable. Other great parts: spending an hour at the stores trying to optimize your charachters, and having two charachters die at a time so you then had to figure out who had each item. A tremendous waste of time. Technically competent but uterly boring.
I dont do meaning of life questions.
Actually you don't need to kill a monster in DS to get experience. Just hitting the monster or casting a spell was enough to get some experience. In fact, I don't think there was any bonus at all for delivering a death blow.
Yet, in my experience, melee characters always advanced far more quickly than all my other characters. I tried going through the single-player campaign multiple times with various party configurations and strategies, but nothing seemed to help (exception: if you can get everyone in your party to a certain critical level, probably around 30-40, it becomes much easier to advance them at the same pace). Even tried making it through as a solo nature mage once :)
The problem is that melee characters just do a ton more damage than other classes, even when at the same character level. Granted, there are a few powerful spells that will allow your mages to keep up, but you would have to spend 90% of your gold on mana potions in order to use them often enough. Meanwhile, your mindless grunts just hack, hack, hack and slash, slash, slash their way to the top.
Mages just plain suck for 90% of the game! For the first dozen hours of gameplay, every spell you've got does LESS damage than a single hit from a decent sword... AND you have to pay mana to cast the thing.
And once a few characters in your party gain a slight experience advantage, it becomes even more difficult for the others to catch up.
I really would have preferred that all experience be equally divided among the party...