I’ve played the demo of Dungeon Seige, and I must say that while it is in one sense just a hack-n-slash game, it is the finest I’ve ever seen. They cut out so much bullshit that there’s hardly any left. Character advancement is based on what you do, with hardly any tough decisions to make (although, as a hardcore RPG player, I tend to fret it a bit anyway). Constant regeneration of hitpoints makes for low downtime. No `Diablo finger’ – one click does the trick. In fact, if Farm Girl gets attacked while you’re away from the keyboard she actually fights back. Nearly every other game in the world would have her go, “Oh, well, I guess I’ll just let this monster chomp me a new asshole.” I turn around to do the dishes and when I come back Farm Girl’s got a semi-circle of dead wolves at her feet.
The setup is as crisply efficient as you’d get from a platform shooter --Farm Girl is farming along, probably thinking about turnip prices, when suddenly the encroachment of evil is announced in the classic manner. A guy says, “Uuurk…evil…,” and dies at her feet. Gurgle, thunk. And with a righteous sssschlllliiing, Farm Girl whips out her turnip knife and comences to whale on evil immediately.
Such moxie!
Apparently she had been voted `Most Likely Haul off on Evil’ for her high school year book, because her neighbor isn’t a bit suprised to see her dripping with viscera. “As soon as I heard about the invasion, I knew you’d gouge a meaty path to the next town. Feel free to slaughter everything in my basement and loot it if you want.” Good thing he said that because, uh, she already did.
I agree!
It’s a superb game and we’ve been playing it on the LAN in our house for a couple of days now, just going over and over the demo, advancing our characters. The full game is arriving tomorrow
The best bit has to be starting with a ‘blank’ character and adding more skills to whatever disciplines you use the most, though it always seems to be melee + {another}
Jerad, lvl 20 combat mage here. I’ve got the full version, and it’s a fun fantasy assault course. No story whatsoever, as you’ve likely surmised, but a vast array of things to kill.
The automation is really neat. I’ve gotten best results setting my fighters to autopilot while I get the most out of my magic users (heal! Spray fireballs! Heal again! Run, you idiot, run!)
What little I’ve learned:
A nature mage and a combat mage can make the game much easier. Combat mages have a lot of spells that can damage everything in an area, sometimes for scary amounts, softening them up for your fighters. Nature mages can really cut down on the number of potions you have to cart around (though they still need hideous amounts of mana to keep everyone going), and have some very cool enhancement spells.
Attacks don’t seem interruptable unless a character is knocked silly, so weapons with low attack speeds aren’t as detrimental as they are in Diablo 2. They just get fewer swings per round.
It’s frequently wise to run. The biggest danger in this game is getting swamped, surrounded by so many enemies that you are taking damage so fast you can’t save yourself.
Ranged attackers are often much more dangerous than the ugly thing with claws in front of you.
Dante, 13th level melee, 13th level archer here. I think my favorite part of the game…
Has gotta be the packmule.
How many times in a computer RPG have you played the ‘inventory game’ – sitting there for half an hour, shuffling things around in your characters’ inventories, trying to carry everything you’ll need, plus high-value items to trade at the next town and end up having to leave stuff behind? The solution in DS – throw it on the packmule! It’s like having your own little tractor-trailer with you; more storage space than you’ll ever need!
Admittedly, it’s a pain in the tuchus sometimes having to guard the little guy – he has a tendency to lag behind when you’re running away from monsters and getting his butt kicked, but you gotta love a game that actually tries to address problems that have cropped up in prior RPGs (like the inventory issue).
Plus, you gotta love the ‘auto-heal’ feature. Keep your nature mage’s healing spells as her ‘primary weapon’ and when your guys dip below 50% health, she heals 'em automatically! Especially when you can use the Healing Wind spell (which essentially heals the whole party), your guys can sit up in combat all day and never use a health potion!
This game is entirely too damn addictive. I gotta sleep SOMETIME…
The demo is fun. Now, I have one more thing on my list of things to buy. I haven’t yet decided whether I should curse or thank Johnny Angel for bringing this to my attention.
I think my wife might like it and we’ll probably pick it up next time there is a break in her schoolwork, but I like RPGs with more depth. I’m tickled pink that Morrowind has gone gold and will be in stores in a week or so.
Not the game itself, but rather the multiplayer aspect.
I took a brief look at the multiplayer by myself, and realized that it’d be a good game for Microbug and I to play together- ever since we gave up on Dark Age of Camelot, we’ve been missing a game we could play together.
Anyway, so get a copy installed onto her machine, and the night before last, we started playing.
We had a BLAST. I’m a combat mage, she’s a life mage. We manage to get to the first dungeon (and activate the first waypoint), then head to bed. Then, last night, we fired up the game again.
It’s all gone. Or rather, the world’s been reset- our characters and our equipment are still intact, but get this: the world is not saved, nor are the quests!
We started right back in the starting town. Sorry, we just couldn’t stomach fighting our way back to that first dungeon. I’m goin’ back to the single player game, dammit.
Now, you’ve got to understand- apparently, the story for multiplayer is completely different from the single-player game, and the world is supposed to be THREE TIMES LARGER. And yet there’s no way to save your progress? Um… who thought this was a good idea? We don’t have a ton of time to invest in playing- we just play a few hours every night.
In the multiplayer start screen, there’s the option of where each character should start from, I think it depends on your level and nothing else,.
Multiplayer is GREAT fun in our house, there’s three of us - a Warrior/Mage, an Nature Mage and an archer. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve rasn into the mage’s rooms demanding they heal me
Multiplayer was designed differently from single player. If you take a look at the way people actually play, they typically don’t sit down with a bunch of buddies and play through the whole game…they get on the zone, find a game, and jump in.
So muliplayer games never save. If you play in the multiplayer world you are given an item if you complete a quest. This is essentially a flag for all the NPCs to know that Thundra defeated such and such, and so is ready to be given quest such and such. Multiplayer is really a whole different thing than single player…you shouldn’t have the same expectations.
When you start a MP game, you are given a list of starting locations. Each start location has a different level requirement, so to start at Stonebridge you need to be at least level 3. If you didn’t get to level 3 before you quit the game, you have to start over again at the beginning…but you don’t have to start at the beginning every game.
Oh, by the way. I happen to work for a large software company located in Redmond Washington. And I juuuuust happen to work as a tester for that company. And guess what project I was just on?
Well, my point, Lemur, is that Microbug and I DO like sitting down to play together. But since the worldstate and quest status aren’t saved, we have to set aside a chunk of time to play- and if we don’t get to a level checkpoint, we’ve lost all the time we’ve put into it.
Quests, especially, bother me- this means that every time you start up, you have to go around and reactivate all of your quests again- why they couldn’t just keep track of quests on your character, rather than the world, I can’t understand. I don’t mind having to fight through the monsters again- as long as a checkpoint stays open (in later games) once you reach it.
An option to play in either mode would’ve been perfect. I, for one, dislike playing online RPGs- I want a persistent worldstate. Or at least a persistent queststate.
Ok Lemur866, now that y’all hooked me with that free demo, do you got some more? I’m getting a little jumpy over here. I’d be ok with just the next 10%, or how about 15%?
And another thing Lemur866, if I put the whole game on the same computer that has the demo, will it be possible to continue playing the same game, or will I need to start at the beginning of the whole game?
Well, what you should probably do is copy your MP characters and SP games to a temp file, uninstall the demo and install the full version. Then copy the save files back into the save folder of the full version…I believe you’ll have to launch the game to create the save folder.
And yes, the fact that quests are saved in the world rather than on your character is silly. But I think they have a reason. These multiplayer characters can be used in any multiplayer world. Once the Siege Engine is released there will be lots of worlds to play in, and you can take your character from world to world. If the quests were saved on your character she would soon get filled up with all kinds of stuff. I suppose you could have the option to delete items in your quest log manually, but that wasn’t the design choice.
Also…the quests really don’t matter that much, except the townstone quests in the MP world. You can get all the encounters without getting the quests first, so the quests are just hints as to what you should be doing next. So the first quest is to go to Stonebridge and find Gyorn. When you do that he gives you a quest to do something else. But he will always give you that quest, whether you have the “Find Gyorn” quest or not. The MP world is different, since it’s non-linear, but you get quest-completion tokens to serve as “memory”. But you don’t have to complete the townstone quests in order…you can do the tougher ones first and double back to get the easier ones.
hey, is there a .Zip of it anywhere? i don’t have a chance in heck of downloading something that large on a 56k; a problem will crop up well before the required ten hours pass…
or, if someone knows of a good partial-download-resume utility, that would be nice, too.
I think it was Computer Gaming that had the demo on their CD, maybe you could pick that up if it’s still in stores…it’s only ~$8.00. Or you could talk to a friend who has broadband and a CDR.
