Dungeon Siege
Description official descriptions
Located in the corner of the Aranna continent, the Kingdom of Ehb has recently gained independence following a prolonged war. One day, a small farming community is attacked by a band of wild creatures known as Krug. One of the farmers has to venture to the neighboring town of Stonebridge to seek help. During his travels he finds out that an even greater peril is threatening the land, and must find a way to stop it.
Dungeon Siege is a role-playing game sharing many similarities with Diablo. It is heavily combat-oriented and emphasizes item-gathering and gradual building up of the protagonist for purely battle-related purposes. The game's linear progression is determined by quests that send the protagonist to newer areas. Combat is handled in a point-and-click fashion; when the player character fights alone, it resembles the action-based fights of Diablo. However, other characters may join the party as well, at which point combat flows in real time, somewhat similarly to the semi-automated party battles of Ultima VII. It is possible to build formations and assign basic tactics to the party as well. When a character's health drops to zero, it becomes unconscious, and if left alone it will regenerate back to life. Other party members can speed up the healing process with spells. On the other hand if the enemies keep attacking the character will eventually die, and only resurrection spells can bring it back from the dead.
Unlike other role-playing games, there are no classes, but characters can improve up to four skills: melee, ranged, nature magic and combat magic. Advancing in a skill is done by simply using it. The characters become better at melee attacks if they fight with melee weapons, they can master nature magic if they cast nature spells, and so on. Using a skill will automatically improve one of three attributes: strength (necessary for melee), dexterity (ranged) or intelligence (magic).
Spellings
- マイクロソフト ダンジョンシージ - Japanese spelling
- 地牢围攻 - Simplified Chinese spelling
- 末日危城 - Traditional Chinese spelling
- 던전 시즈 - Korean spelling
Groups +
- Diablo variants
- Dungeon Siege series
- Fantasy creatures: Dragons
- Fantasy creatures: Dwarves
- Fantasy creatures: Goblins
- Fantasy creatures: Trolls
- Gameplay feature: Armor / weapon sets
- Games made into comics
- Games made into movies
- Middleware: Bink Video
- Protagonist: Female (option)
- Software Pyramide releases
- Sound engine: AIL/Miles Sound System
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Credits (Windows version)
220 People (179 developers, 41 thanks) · View all
Designer and Project Leader | |
Producer and Designer | |
Technical Lead | |
Art Director | |
Engineering | |
Network Admin. and Assistant Producer | |
Concept Artist | |
Terrain and World Modelling | |
Animation, Modelling and Texturing | |
[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 84% (based on 52 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 112 ratings with 11 reviews)
Hack and slash RPG brilliance but at a cost.
The Good
I love RPG's. But I hate turn based, or as I like to call them, luck based RPG's. Many would say that I'm not a true RPG fan if I don't enjoy the fundamental elements of 12 sided dice, pen and paper battles and didn't spend my school lunch times hunched over a table surrounded by statistics but so what? I like my action realtime and my fighting furious and as such games like Dungeon Siege were made for RPG fans like me. An epic quest played out in realtime with beautiful lush graphics and a stirring orchestral score sounds like a dream come true, and in many ways it is.
I'm a big fan of Diablo but the thing that always bugged me about it was that I never really felt like I was going anywhere. Even in the sequel, the different locations were more like several separate versions of Diablo 1. Dungeon Siege has the answer to this because the journey is all there is. Going from place to place you really feel like you're in a huge world and with over 40 hours of game time there's no question that you are abiet a virtual one.
The outdoor areas are stunning to look at. Light filters through the trees, bushes rustle and critters scamper. Of course there are loads of dungeons as well which also look very nice but it's the outdoor areas which really shine.
Game play is very Diablo-esque. Controlled primarily with the mouse and a smattering of hotkeys you guide yourself and up to seven companion characters through the world hacking, shooting and blasting every enemy in sight. Every now and again you'll encounter a boss creature that takes a lot of hacking to kill and there are items and weapons etc to find along the way in droves. Characters can be leveled up however you see fit so anyone can become an archer, warrior or magician if you train them in that direction. This is done as simply as using a character in the profession you'd like them to choose making stats and so on very easy to manage.
Towns are of course here too and contain all the expected places to buy equipment, listen to gossip or recruit more companions. You can even buy a pack mule to carry all your stuff, adding even further to the adventurous feel of the game.
The Bad
The story is basic and horribly under-developed. Your characters have no character. They just are, while any vague story elements are usually conveyed in books which makes the whole world seem almost optional.
The traveling element has been over done I must admit. You never find yourself stopping for more than a few moments and once you leave somewhere you never return making it impossible to form any kind of attachment to the world and its inhabitants.
Control at times can be awkward thanks to the lack of any kind of running keys to control your characters. You have to click on the ground where you want your party to go and you can't just hold the button to keep them running ala Summoner. This often leads you to click on the wrong thing and have half your party go the wrong way.
The Bottom Line
A very good hack and slash RPG but with little more than consistent fighting involved. Old school hardcore RPG'ers may find it a bit basic.
Windows · by Sycada (177) · 2002
The Good
Well where to start? The environments are beautiful and colorful. When you walk into a town you actually feel like your in this town. And the armor and weapons are in one word,wonderful. Awesome design and texture and cool names. The ability to gain followers is awesome and the sure fact it supports multiplayer is amazing. Play online and just show how much you rock. And the most fun I had was buying a donkey and overloading him.
The Bad
The things I thought could be better are that the shops sell armor so expensive that you have to kill for hours just to get armor to learn you can't even wear it. And sometimes they put high leveled enemies for when your only low level.
The Bottom Line
An overall awesome gaming experience. All fans of these kind of RPGs should definitely try it. Though I found it a little time consuming and not fun enough.
Windows · by Lord Dayin (9) · 2007
Diablo hack and slash fun - for a while
The Good
DS is good hack and slash fun. The graphics are done very well; pathing is reasonable; sounds and music are done well. I like the 'classless' system, whereby any character can become strong in any skill just by using it.
The Bad
...but after a while, this game just gets really repetitious and boring. Yeah, Diablo did as well... but Diablo (1) was breaking new ground, and this isn't. Perhaps my tolerance for this sort of thing is just lower now.
An additional problem is that after playing MMPORGs like EverQuest, the monsters in DS seem like automatons. In EQ terms, everything is a static spawn with a fixed aggro radius. This means that the monsters just stand there until you get within a certain distance or attack them, then they come after you. This makes it easy to inch forward and kill them a few at a time... but is inching through a huge dungeon for hours on end really fun?
The Bottom Line
Diablo with improved graphics, a better character development system, and the same repetitious gameplay.
Windows · by Doug Walker (35) · 2002
Trivia
1001 Video Games
Dungeon Siege appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Awards
- GameSpy
- 2002 – Tech W'd Like To See More Of Award (for its missing loading times)
Online servers
The game's online servers (which were hosted on MSN Gaming Zone) were shut down on 19 June 2006 in the wake of MSN Games' shift from "CD-ROM matchmaking service" to casual online games.
For unknown reasons, the Steam and GOG.com releases of the game has the multiplayer menu entirely disabled, despite LAN functionality not being affected. Running the game with the zonematch=true command-line argument bypasses this.
Analytics
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Related Sites +
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Building a Better RPG
An Apple Games article about the Mac version of Dungeon Siege, with commentary provided by Writer Neal Hallford (March, 2003). -
Dungeon Siege Planet
English fansite. -
Hints for Dungeon Siege
Designed to give you just as much information as you need, these hints will help you solve the game without spoiling it. -
Planet Dungeon Siege
All things Dungeon Siege.
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by phlux.
Macintosh added by Corn Popper.
Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Apogee IV, Dave Mednick, Zeppin, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Plok, FatherJack, Zhuzha.
Game added March 31, 2002. Last modified March 6, 2024.