Review of the game dungeon siege 3. Dungeon Siege III - review of the game. With crooked kind hands

It is a little strange to see today the continuation of the not most popular, albeit rather well-known role-playing series, about which nothing has been heard for almost five years. Especially considering that Chris Taylor, the author of the original dilogy Dungeon siege, has no direct relation to the third part - the game was created by Obsidian Entertainment (Alpha protocol, Fallout: New Vegas).

It's strange not even because the series has already been forgotten, but because Dungeon Siege is a typical representative of the old school of hardcore computer games, that is, complex, sophisticated and partly therefore not very convenient to use. In the modern world, such games will be quickly forgotten, and their creators will face multimillion-dollar losses. The surprise was that it’s not such a game at all.

They killed the donkey!

For those who are familiar with the original and waited breathlessly for the third part, the surprise turned out, of course, unpleasant. They hoped that they could again, as in the good old days, take on up to six heroes at the same time, babysit them, select each outfit from thousands of "strong chain mails of courage" and "hardened cowards of rage", painfully think about what the ability to learn better. And of course, spend a long time fiddling with your beloved donkey, which in the first two parts provided invaluable assistance in transporting a strategic stock of potions and mountains of looted prey. It's only in one of the episodes of Dungeon Siege 3 that we find that very donkey dead on the road and we understand: the same thing happened with the classic Dungeon Siege. He died, and if he ever returns, it will only be in the form of a rotten, bad-smelling zombie.

In an amicable way, the game should not have been called Dungeon Siege 3 at all, thus avoiding the anger of loyal fans of the series. The third part is completely different from the previous two, and it sets completely different tasks for itself. Therefore, we will consider Dungeon Siege 3 as a standalone game, which it essentially is.

Although during the passage you will constantly come across references to the previous parts, the main plot has practically nothing to do with them. The DS3 script is about the Tenth Legion. This warrior order was once one of the most influential forces in the Eb kingdom. But then the legionnaires were accused of killing the monarch and almost completely destroyed. The remnants of the order dispersed to the secret monasteries, where they continued to be searched for and destroyed for decades. But it was not possible to kill everyone: you have to play for one of the four descendants of the Legion and return the order to its former greatness.

No matter how much donkey you hit

The plot in an action RPG has never been particularly important, but Obsidian Entertainment thought otherwise and tried to diversify the endless processing of enemies into mince with an atypical amount of dialogue for the genre. The beginning is laudable, but implemented slipshod: chatter too much a lot, and besides, the dialogues are written in the most boring and banal language. So, when a conversation begins, there is only one desire - that it ends quickly. Even the ability to make decisions in dialogues that will affect the ending of the story does not save.

In general, the game serves itself very badly: dozens of notes with Eba's story are simply not interesting to read, during conversations the camera is absolutely motionless and proudly demonstrates your hero's courageous right shoulder, and the characters themselves have the grace of wooden chocks. Controls from the keyboard and mouse are damn inconvenient, you have to get used to it for almost half of the game. There is, however, a way out: connect a gamepad. The game, oddly enough, was created primarily for consoles, and that's where the controls are perfect.

The locations, although quite beautiful, are narrow corridors with small branches. The game is completely linear, aside from a few large side quests. For example, one day you will be asked to explore a haunted house, and another time - a crypt with rotted heroes of Eba, but these locations are as linear as the main ones. Even the large mechanized city of Stonebridge with stone pavements and medieval robots looks like a large rectum with traders in the blind appendages.

Siege Showdown

But all these shortcomings fade into the background when the actual fight begins. The four heroes available to us turned out to be really different: a stern young man named Lucas wields a sword and shield in close combat, sexy gypsy Katarina prefers rifles, pistols and shotguns, gray-haired magician Reinhart spills enemies with spells, and the heavenly creature Ajani knows a little bit of everything - and a staff will drop in, and will arrange a fire bath for enemies, and the technique of a kick from a roundabout is no worse than Chuck Norris.

The combat system is a bit atypical for an action RPG: it is a cross between the banal snapping of enemies and a full-fledged slasher. To block enemy attacks, a separate button is provided, the hero can roll, avoiding the blow, and instead of mana, "concentration" is spent on abilities, the scale of which fills up quite quickly if you just mutuz opponents with ordinary attacks. Even potions have been completely abolished - health is restored by protective skills and special bonuses that fall out of some enemies. A fully combat system reveals itself during boss battles - this is where both reaction and the ability to competently use the strengths of your character come in handy.

Playing as magicians in Dungeon Siege 3 is much more interesting than veterans of manual labor.

As a result, the brawls turned out to be dynamic, spectacular and very fun, especially when played with a friend. The game, in fact, is designed for joint passage: Dungeon Siege 3 is not so simple as to get bored quickly, and not so difficult that you are stuck somewhere for a long time in a company with a friend.

It is also interesting for one to play - in this case, the computer takes over the role of a partner, and he copes with it perfectly: he cuts enemies, does not get stuck in three pines and regularly revives you in the event of an untimely death. In addition, in solitude, you can calmly and without haste to understand the character development system. Again, it is not very difficult, but it gives some room for experimentation. Each hero can learn nine active skills. They, in turn, can be additionally pumped using the specialization system. For example, an area attack can be made more powerful or its range can be increased. In total, no more than five specialization points can be pumped into each ability, so you have to think which one is more dear to you.

After a while, enhanced options for skills appear. You also have about a dozen passive talents available to you, and numerous equipment that settles in piles in your backpack allows you to tailor the characteristics of the hero to specific needs. In addition to the standard increments to the parameters, some kind of "bloody corset of luck" can give you additional skills: the ability to absorb the enemy's health, poison or stun him, weaken, set fire, and so on - more than a dozen additional abilities in total.

With a little thought and planning the development of the hero, you can achieve impressive results and make your ward almost immortal. But if the spirit of munchkinism in you is completely undeveloped, you do not have to do all this - it is enough to dress the characters in the most expensive things. It's just that you have to maneuver more in boss fights.

* * *

Dungeon Siege 3 successfully balances on the thinnest line between good and bad play. At some moments (usually when the heroes open their mouths) it may seem boring, but it is very interesting to fight in it. Locations are narrow and linear, but beautiful. The character development system is not too deep, but well thought out.

And so in everything: the drawbacks of the game are balanced by its merits to the nearest gram. Even Dungeon Siege 3 ends before it gets bored: it takes an average of 12 hours to complete, which is not a lot for this genre.

Video games have instances where you can fall asleep in the process. A 24-hour marathon or prison torture comes to mind. By the way, there is something in common between these two things - this is that the player has a much greater goal in mind (to get to the finish line and not faint, respectively). Now imagine that you are playing a rather mediocre game like Dungeon Siege 3, and your “grand goal” is simple enjoyment. Well, seven hours will be enough for you, no more. But don't be a hero; if you need a break, go to bed. Dungeon Siege 3 - a game with a risky few dungeons - can serve as an excellent sleeping aid.

There is a lot to be learned from this "sort of RPG" to be honest, but that's only if you like games with the same climax. The game is based on a Diablo clone with a loot collection system and a "stringy" character construction. Dungeon Siege 3 was apparently designed for console players. There is nothing wrong with that if done correctly, but certain design decisions give the impression that the game is "undercooked" and tasteless. So, the core of the game is Diablo, but for a knowledgeable audience it is, rather, Diablo in combination with Fable and a pinch of Mass Effect, and not the best elements from all three games are presented here. Dungeon Siege 3 is an overly linear RPG game tainted with odd omissions in standard aspects and boring, repetitive battles. Oh yes, there is also an online mode of cooperation, but more on that later.

Like previous games, Dungeon Siege 3 takes place in the fantasy world of Ehb, where your hero - a representative of one of four classes - is a descendant of the 10th Legion, which is practically the equivalent of the Jedi. As it turns out, more than 30 years before the game takes place, the Legion was crushed by military commander Jane Cassinder and presumed to be extinct. As a descendant of the Legion's old guard, your task is to rebuild the ranks by repaying Cassinder and his minions. In the course of the game, which has not been invented more directly yet, you meet and recruit three more characters who cannot be selected at the beginning, as well as take on serious tasks to improve the possibilities and interact with various NPCs through a series of dialogue trees in the BioWare style.

All of the above turned out to be the best aspects of the game, albeit a little "underdeveloped". If the characters themselves are typical, then the game provides at least two options for waging combat for each character: the first is for the crowd, the second is one-on-one. For example, Anjali uses her spear for wide sweeps that overtake enemies at a fairly decent distance, but when she is alone with the boss, one press of the button turns her into a creature with the nature of elements, shooting fireballs. Most of the fun comes from getting the right distribution and changing combat styles to deal maximum damage. Each position can unlock three abilities at a time, as well as three defensive abilities for healing or attack / defense. Points can be spent on upgrades, as well as on strengthening passive abilities, such as maximum attack or quick healing.

The problem here is that there are 9 abilities in total in the game, which is just awful little. By the time they are all available towards the end of the game, the experimental stage is over, and you already know what works and what doesn't. More abilities handed out at intervals would do it better, and even though you can spend points building up abilities in different ways, they are still the same special moves that have stuck to you since the beginning of the game. This makes the battle boring. And that's when a PC game with a console aspect comes to mind. On the console, your normal attacks are controlled by the A or X buttons, and the three remaining buttons are responsible for abilities. Usually in games like Torchlight, which has been more successful on the console, you are given more special hitting options, and you can choose which buttons to bind to which actions. But in Dungeon Siege 3 there are only nine abilities, and you only have to fill them with a few buttons.

The game is also stiflingly linear, with the mini-map showing narrow passages leading to most targets with only a few tweaks, and pressing the d-pad will reveal a golden path to follow so you don't have to do any research. Most of the game takes place in such scenery as forests and mountain roads, from which the eyes do not climb with admiration on the forehead. And the very dungeons in the game (after which it is, in fact, named), again very few of them, are just some of the areas where the game really shines. While they are not original or even difficult, places like the haunted house and abandoned factories are a great game changer in between battles with groups of enemies on the way to a particular city.

Cities and other locations can slow the game down a lot. NPCs begin dialogue the same way as in Dragon Age and Mass Effect: after explaining what's what, there are opportunities for expansion that can increase the influence on your "artificial" companions, as well as help make decisions in this world. It's funny at first. But towards the end of the game, you will most likely be skipping dialogues, since the decisions you make do not greatly affect the world around you. The influence gained over your companions is never fully explained, which leads to the impression that achievements / trophies are the main thing here, and decisions made during the course of the story only slightly change the storyline of the game.

Cooperative mode is a similar mixture of unfinished plans. A player's campaign can include up to four players (two off and up to four online) to fight enemies together. Four people on the screen can create chaos. When everything is in one place, the game can get pretty easy. But in most cases, the more players there are, the more chaotic the game is. The camera follows the main player. Others will have to stay close and cannot leave the range of the player's camera. In off, this makes sense, since two players use the same screen. But in the online game it is strange why everyone cannot have their own screen. Instead, the whole action starts to slow down, everyone fights for their place on the screen, and from this the camera begins to get confused, and the players lose their temper. What's even stranger is that players cannot bring their created character into multiplayer, and they have to rely only on what the main player made his allies, which they could not control during the main campaign.

Party politics also play an important role. Everyone shares the main player's amount of money, but everyone can shop for themselves whenever they want. Each player can go to the store and buy whatever he wants, which means that if you don't communicate, then one player can make your team bankrupt in a matter of seconds. The NPC dialogue trees are also at the mercy of the main character, who makes all the decisions. Other players can vote to turn the conversation, but that's about it.

On the plus side, it is very easy to find and accept games. You can set up a campaign so that players are free to join and leave the game, and entering the game from the main screen is as easy as choosing from the lists. One very nice aspect of multiplayer is the "break" option in the main menu. Since the team cannot move on until everyone joins, you can put artificial intelligence in place of yourself if you suddenly need to go to the toilet or drink. Of course, you shouldn't trust him in a boss fight, but it's a nice addition to online games.

As a developer, Obsidian is quite heterogeneous in terms of how their games perform on a technical level. And while Dungeon Siege 3 isn't as messy as their recent products, it still has some minor issues. For example, the brightness and textures on the PS3 version look "dirtier" than on the 360. While many won't even notice, the 360 ​​version also has its drawbacks and drawbacks. On PS3, entire walls can disappear in dungeons. However, the camera rotates more slowly on the Xbox than on the PlayStation. There was also a case when a camera in multiplayer followed a character whose player left and left behind artificial intelligence. Of course, it's strange, especially considering that you may not even meet this character for half the game.

In general, the game itself does not seem to be able to catch up with itself. You will automatically be transferred to the talent tree after leveling up, but first you will need to complete the battle. Sometimes it happens right away, and sometimes it happens that the battle is over, and you still stare at a blank screen for 30 seconds. Saving a game is just as weird - you can't save it until the battle is over, but sometimes there is no even enemy corpses. This and several omissions of aspects traditional for this genre - the absence of a map in the game except for the mini-map, the inability to establish the behavior of the enemy artificial intelligence and the lack of a team of more than two adequate people, as in previous Dungeon Siege games - all this suggests that DS 3 pulled out of the oven too early.

Output

Dungeon Siege 3 is a game not to be hated, but there aren't enough aspects to be loved for. By the end of the campaign, you will likely be satisfied with a more or less average story, but the worn-out battles and chaotic multiplayer that should have sold this game are not well thought out. There were worse games, but there were also much better games.

You'll like it:
✓ different fighting styles
✓ many options for choosing dialogs
✓ boss fight is great

You won't like:
✓ a limited number of abilities can make the battle boring
✓ it is unclear whether this is a dungeon or an exploration RPG
✓ multiplayer mode for four people can be a real thorn in ...

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A little less than a year has passed since Square enix pleased us with the news about the development of Dungeon Siege 3. To return us to the world of the Kingdom of Eb, where we once began our journey as an ordinary farmer, I set out Obsidian, which has more than one successful and not very successful sequel.
New old

The experience of recent years has suggested that not everything goes smoothly with the multi-platform sequels of the old series. By an evil irony or an evil pattern, this is exactly what happened. The console version of the game is sick with "ladders" and "soap", and the computer has inherited from it an inconvenient interface and a deranged camera.
We cannot underestimate the attempts to make the gaming universe familiar and interesting for those who have already played the previous Dungeon Siege games and for those who visit Eb for the first time. So, the new old kingdom of Eb, apart from plot references and common names, is nothing like the previously familiar world. In opposition to the new world, the writers filled the bookshelves of the forts and dungeons with books on the history of the world, families, kingdom and everything else. (For especially curious and simple collectors, a couple of achievements are required for collecting all volumes).
Atypical heroes

The game begins with a dark introduction, the last of the surviving legionnaires will tell how thirty years ago the king died under mysterious circumstances, how Jane Kasinder gathered an army of fanatics and destroyed the entire Tenth Legion, and as a hero, quite by accident, turned out to be a descendant of those very legionaries.

The same Jane.

The descendants of legionnaires, they are also playable characters, came out curious and became one of the highlights of the game. V Dungeon siege 3 there was no place for banal magicians and archers. A lover of firearms and also an attractive witch Katarina. Archon Anjali, in the form of a man wielding a spear, and in a fiery form, burning enemies. And more familiar characters. Technomage Reinkart, who, in addition to ball lightning, can “creatively destroy” his enemies. And the warrior Lucas Montbarron, wielding both two-handed and one-handed weapons, depending on the chosen stance.
The stands have a special role in the game. By and large, all combat mechanics fall on them. Will we beat those who are near, or those who are far away, depends on the choice of the rack. In total, each character has three: melee, ranged and protective spells. (An exception is Lucas Montbarron, for him ranged combat is replaced by skills that reduce the distance to enemies). The magic is scattered neatly on the appropriate stances and thus form the style of the character's play.
The battles themselves seem dynamic at first, but later turn out to be monotonous. Opponents always attack in a bunch and crush with numbers, but this lasts exactly until the study of powerful massive spells. And the boss fight always turns into a technical dance, consisting of endless strafe and magic bullets. Players who like "harder" can try to play on a difficult level, since the settings can be easily changed during the game in the menu. Then the bosses will become exactly twice as strong, and mistakes in battle can turn into "one-shots" (As the developers pointed out in the description of the difficulty: "Not recommended for players who like to throw joysticks").


Even the undead flee from the graveyard.
Dungeon corridors

After each big boss we are entitled to debriefing, dotting the "i" and a fresh portion of the plot. Sometimes, we will make decisions that will subsequently affect the final. Whether we decide to pity or execute the defeated enemy, save or give up the old mansion, the end of the game will be the same, except that in the final we will be told a slightly different story.
The plot itself is not tightened, for 10 hours of play we constantly run forward along the "corridors", do what we must, and act according to our conscience. It is simply impossible to get lost in the kingdom. Therefore, just in case, the developers not provided a map of the world and free travel on it. The only way to get quickly from one place to another is to use the portals, in which we still have to run on foot along a long corridor.


This is how the passage through the portal looks like.

Here it is worth paying tribute to the beauties of the game. The same transitions between the worlds and the mines of the gnomes enchant the eye with a riot of colors and the unusual surroundings. And the battle with the last bad guy deserves special praise. The only thing that can spoil the impression here is the ubiquitous camera, which you just want to move further away to admire the landscape.


The camera just wants to move away.
Not heroes alone

Particularly pleasing is the sense of humor of the inhabitants of the kingdom. In the heat of battle, the party members will not fail to complain about the death of the character and ask them not to do this anymore. And while traveling the world, sarcastic remarks are often made. Goblins in Stony Bridge complain about laws against practicing cat reading. And the epitaphs on the tombstones are traditionally amused by the nominees for the Darwin Prize.
If the gameplay and combat can be problematic, the work on the world has been brilliant. The tramps of Lescanzi speak exactly like tramps, the villagers from Vranov Yar as simple villagers, and the mechanical guards in Kamenomost demonstrate the wonders of machine logic, and the city of techno-magic itself looks like a real stronghold of magic and technology. All this is neatly put into the framework of one plot and kingdom, and in the end gives us a sense of the integrity of the world.


Tower. Rain. Boss. The epicnometer went off scale.
Another sequel

It's hard to say if Obsidian overestimated her strength, or vice versa, underestimated. Let's write off the camera, interface and controls for the difference in platforms, and even then it feels that little work has been done on something anyway. A strong storyline and a well-developed world, along with a good manner of storytelling, barely covers the monotonous battles, weak role-playing system and endless corridors. But the main thing is that returning to Eb is worth turning a blind eye to trifles. Discarding a bunch of minor and not very shortcomings, we get a decent game, for which it is not a pity to while away another evening. Well, at the very end, a hint of an early return to the Kingdom of Eb awaits us.

Rating game: 7.5 out of 10

It would seem that Obsidian Entertainment operates under the control of real luminaries of the gaming industry - Fergus Urquhart, Chris Parker, Darren Monaghan, Chris Avellone and Chris Jones, the legendary founding fathers of the great Black Isle Studios, but so far the studio has not released a single one hundred percent of its own project. not counting the failed Alpha Protocol.

Dungeon siege iii

Platforms PC / PS3 / X360

genre action / RPG

The developer Obsidian Entertainment

Publisher Square enix

About the developer

Obsidian Entertainment
The company was founded in 2003 after the collapse of Interplay Entertainment and the closure of Black Isle Studios by industry veterans Fergus Urquhart, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan, Chris Avellone and Chris Jones. All RPG or action / RPG studio products over someone else's IP.

Grade

Idea Change Dungeon Siege, but keep it recognizable

Graphics Interesting character design and setting

Sound Somewhere there

The game This is not the Dungeon Siege we've been waiting for

Outcome 3/5

It seems that the owners of Obsidian are begging to the graveyard of old ideas, picking up certain franchises that are no longer interesting to the creators of the original concept. Sometimes, as in the case of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords or Fallout: New Vegas, it turns out well, but even from successful games there is a spirit of secondary. Obsidian's latest creation is the Dungeon Siege triquel, which is now owned by Square Enix.

150 years have passed since the events of the first part of Dungeon Siege. The Kingdom of Eb, which for many years lived under the protectorate of the Tenth Legion, is torn apart by civil strife. The beauty and religious fanatic Jane Kassender, a kind of Jeanne d'Arc of the world of Aranna, blamed the legionnaires for the death of the old king and, taking advantage of the wave of popular anger, destroyed almost all the elite warriors of the state, who simply could not raise weapons against civilians. Thirty years have passed, but Jane's troops are still roaming Eb, looking for the last of the legionnaires. And the descendants of the soldiers and officers of the Tenth Legion secretly gather in the estate of Montbarron, a family that traces its history from the same farmer who became the heroine of the first series of Dungeon Siege, in order to revive its greatness.

Multiplayer is somewhat chaotic

Pale youth with a burning gaze

Combat acrobatics ... and pyrotechnics

Goblins Pyromancers

Some kind of wrong unicorns

It is pleasant to fight with such opponents

Again caves

I must say that Obsidian definitely succeeded - these are the main characters of the game. We are given four characters to choose from, two of each gender, and with the exception of the straightforward Lucas Montbarron, who fights with a two-handed sword or sword and shield, they are all very original. Ajali is a girl-archon, demonically beautiful in a fiery dance, fights in human form like an Amazon - with a spear, and in the divine she turns into a pyromancer magician. Catherine, the red-haired illegitimate daughter of one of the lords of Montbarron and the Liscan witch, is armed with a long-range rifle and a pair of pistols for close combat, however, if necessary, she can curse enemies. Well, Richard, a gray-haired electrician magician, an obvious follower of Nikola Tesla, is able to use an energy fist and set a trap.

All heroes have two combat stances, relatively speaking, for melee and ranged combat. For each of them, there are three special abilities obtained during the development of the character. Plus, there is also an unobvious defensive stance that allows you to almost completely block damage, including magic, from ordinary opponents. In it, you can also use your spells, as a rule, healing or defense. The need to block attacks or leave the line of attack somewhat changes the gameplay familiar from previous games in the series, on the one hand, making it more strategic, on the other, more boring. A fight with superior forces of the enemy (and they are almost always superior) often consists of breaking the distance with the enemy, firing with conventional weapons, accumulating energy for special abilities and their methodical use. The boss fights are even longer and just as monotonous.

It is allowed to take one of the companions on the trip, which can be changed at any time. In a multiplayer game, you can continue the single-player campaign by inviting three more friends to play cooperatively. But according to the console law, you will be limited to one screen, which sometimes turns Dungeon siege iii into an interactive illustration for Krylov's fable, when all the players try to run in different directions, but resting against the edge, they do not move anywhere. Well, the fights themselves in multiplayer are traditionally very chaotic, and it is sometimes quite difficult to understand what is happening on the screen.

The role-playing system is still based on the development of the character's individual abilities and is extremely simplified. You can choose in which order to learn skills, and each of them is allowed to add five upgrades of two types. In addition, there are passive abilities. Some of the skills are clearly duplicated for different characters under different names, some are completely unclaimed, and some characteristics do not really affect anything. In short, the role-playing system is definitely not the strongest point. Dungeon siege iii.

But the graphics and visual style of the authors were a success. Over the past 150 years, the Eb kingdom has stepped into the era of industrialization, and now we have a pretty cute steampunk here. With muskets and pistols, induction coils instead of magic amulets, siege artillery, steam robot police, goblin technicians and ladies in Victorian dresses. In general, it is nice, but, as it seems to me, the potential of the setting is not fully revealed. In addition, you will not be allowed to study the same Stone Bridge. The whole game is one long corridor, with a small number of branches, there is no talk about exploring the world of speech as such.

Obsidian also did well in the dialogues and text documents revealing the history of the Tenth Legion. Conversations go without the emotional clues familiar from the latest RPGs, and your choice influences the course of events. How - you will find out at the end of the game.

And now a couple of fly in the ointment. The first is a terrible, console-oriented, extremely awkward interface - it's just some kind of greetings from the past. The second - it is worth playing exclusively from the gamepad, when controlling the mouse, the characters begin to get confused in their own legs and shoot in the wrong direction. The third is a camera that lives by its own laws and is uncomfortable in both standard positions.

Generally Dungeon siege iii- a cute and seemingly original action / RPG, but its console (in a bad sense of the word) essence and the authors' desire to simplify everything that was possible did not benefit the project.

High-quality hack and slash is now rare, and therefore until release DS 3 it seemed that this game should be awaited with particular interest. Especially when you consider that Diablo 3 nevertheless, it is unlikely to appear this year, and the expected by many Dragon age 2, which turned from an RPG into the same "hackandslash" action, turned out to be an extremely monotonous and flat game, despite Bioware's reputation. However, now that the world has seen the second "The Witcher", everything has changed a little. Poles are ahead of the studio Obsidian literally for a couple of weeks, but this is quite enough to Dungeon siege 3 lost the attention of most of the gaming audience. In addition, there are other nuances, but first things first:

Genre: Hack and slash RPG

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment

Publisher: Square enix

Platform: PC, PS3, Xbox 360

So the studio Obsidian under the supervision of Lead Game Designer Chris Taylor, continued the story started in previous games DS, already six years after the sequel was released. Authors of successful Fallout: New Vegas and unsuccessful Alpha protocol We've worked hard on the engine for the third part and the dialogue system with the "wheel", familiar to us from Mass Effect. For the rest, they just made an ordinary fairy tale about the struggle between Good and Evil.

The events of the game unfold 150 years after the final of the second part, the player will again have to clear the Kingdom of Eb from all kinds of creatures and restore the Legion, which has been "scattered" across this fantasy world. Defeated is very simple: we find one surviving Legionnaire, who gives the task to find three more heroes. The search consists in running from one point to another, cleaning the area from the "bad guys", and meeting a key character. If we talk about the plot, then you cannot call it bad in this case.

In the end, any RPG game is somehow tied around the opposition of goodies to the Forces of Evil. Much more important is how developers use this framework for the benefit of the gameplay. And with this u Dungeon siege 3 Problems. The game turned out to be so linear and primitive that it is simply scary to recommend it to hard-core RPG and Huck and slash fans. It all starts with budget hand-drawn cutscenes and an episode in which the main character simply finds himself on a narrow path in the forest, a stone's throw from a devastated estate. The journey is accompanied by good special effects when something burns or explodes, as well as constant prompts that demonstrate an inconvenient interface. Who needed to draw windows with equipment, tasks and skills in size on the whole screen is not clear. Not only is it very unusual after more advanced colleagues in the shop, but also there is not very much sense.

For example, the abilities of any of the four classes of heroes are exactly the same. Adjusted for the fact that one has main ranged attacks, and the other has melee. By the way, due to the fact that the character is treated by collecting "energy" from the bodies of defeated enemies, it is not recommended to choose the latter. For they kill quite quickly, despite the childish dynamics of the game and a maximum of five opponents in the frame. It is possible to create a squad of various characters, but this is of little use.

It is still impossible to command individual units, and the AI, which the authors promised to endow with a special mind, in fact, only interferes. The battles take place in the same vein. For example, if you choose the warrior Pulcheria (funny name) with "powerful guns", the gameplay becomes somewhat easier than if we took the classic war with swords and shield. But this does not become more interesting, the tactics throughout the game are the same: we bang weak enemies from a distance with a rifle shot, more durable ones require evasion from blows, rolls and several hits.

Replenishment of armor and weapons is also very primitive. The further we go, the better the samples and the more powerful the monster. Therefore, there is simply no need to think about changing equipment. I picked up a new one, put it on right there and that's it, ready to meet new creatures. If you want to spend the gold you collect, you can buy something from the merchants, since they have a rich assortment and there will always be some thing more powerful than the one that the hero has in his inventory. But in general, all this in this case does not matter. Dungeon siege 3 is deprived of that desire to pass level by level that arose when playing the first part, and which practically did not work in the second.

And all because the developers decided to focus their efforts not at all on the variety of the gameplay, writing interesting dialogue lines and interesting, interconnected tasks. All the forces were sent, apparently, to polish the game engine and paint the scenery. With this, the game is in complete order. Technologically, it is, of course, inferior to the latest top representatives of the genre. But the picture gives out nice and optimized, and the locations delight the eye with rich colors and partly destructible environment. The latter should not be taken too seriously, because it concerns exclusively scripted scenes and the ability to break small obstacles on the way.

Also pleasing is the lack of constant downloads and a virtually seamless world. True, the levels are so reminiscent of a narrow path with decorations on the edges that there is nothing surprising in this. Therefore, if you thought that Dragon Age 2 was the most linear "slasher" of 2011, with stupid quests and the same locations, DS 3 can shake that point of view. But enough of the cons. The game, if you do not find fault after recent impressions of The Witcher 2, there is still a chance to find players. Creation is simply meant Obsidian for those who haven't played the most powerful RPGs of the last decade.

Or it will appeal to those who have already studied the whole genre up and down, and now just want to spend time on a beautiful and uncomplicated huck and slash with a decent amount of game hours. It was clear from the very first trailers and screenshots, where they mainly demonstrated beautiful special effects and the most interesting camera angles, which, by the way, also sometimes cause continuous inconvenience. But DS 3 boasts good optimization, and you can play without brakes on configurations two to four years ago. release date Dungeon siege 3- June 17, 2011.