Worried about playing this game based off the Gamespot review? Don't be.
The story line in Dungeon Siege III is quite engaging. You will find yourself swaying from one belief to another as you have mostly interesting dialogue with the characters in the world. Your choices will shape the many different endings in the game, but more importantly, help you build loyalty with your party members.
This loyalty awards you with a new mechanic in the Dungeon Siege universe, deeds. As you accomplish tasks, you will occasionally be awarded different deeds that give you permanent stat adjustments. These deeds are awarded for many different things and for different actions whether they be noble or antagonistic. You will also receive deeds for more mundane tasks such as; selling 100,000gp worth of loot and taking 100,000 points of damage.
The control scheme for this game worked very well on the XBOX360. I never found myself wondering which button to hit, and I felt very effective in all my battles and dialogue. The camera does however sometimes become an annoyance. Fortunately, this is infrequent enough to not be a main issue while playing the game, and I never had an accidental death due to the camera.
The graphics on this game are fantastic, and all of the environments are varied and unique. Each area brings new creatures to fight, new sounds, and different color pallets. This made going to each new area very interesting and enjoyable.
As noted by Kevin in his review, the loot system is constant and rewarding. Dungeon Siege III also makes it very easy to figure out what loot you wish to use by putting a "NEW" label on all recently acquired items, and auto-sorting each equipment slot in a list format with the most valuable item on top. This makes equipping your character very simple, and provides great feedback on the stat changes between different items. I wish the merchants had been setup with this same style though, as it is difficult to navigate the merchant items and compare their items against your current in a meaningful way. While the merchant does provide the stat changes, you cant see the overall impact on your character without purchasing the item first.
The game will take you about 12 hours to complete on normal. Hardcore took me about 3 hours longer as you have to progress quite a bit slower due to the challenging creatures. Replays give you different perspectives on the story line for each character, though don't expect too much change in the overall dialogue. I was a bit disappointed by this fact, and it does reduce my urge to complete the game with all the characters.
Overall this game was very enjoyable, and deserves a solid 8 rating in my book. I would recommend this game to anyone that enjoys engaging story lines and dialogue along with RPG style advancement and hack and slash action.
PDXGeek