Space Siege is dummed down - not sure why they felt they had to do that, but the game definitely suffers for it.
When I first heard about Space Siege, I was totally jazzed. Both Dungeon Siege games were pretty fun and my girlfriend and I had a blast playing MP coop through both games. We both lean more towards the Sci-Fi side of the house (bummer for us since most games are fantasy), so yes, Space Siege really got my blood pumping. That is, until details about the major game design decisions began to leak out.
I bought it anyway, mostly due to the aforementioned Sci-Fi bent, but a worthy Dungeon Siege game it is not! It has no inventory system. You cannot collect "loot". There are essentially only two types of drops in the game: health packs and upgrade materials. The health packs are self explanatory. Think of the upgrade drops as "money" that you can use to purchase upgrades for yourself, your weapons, armour, or Robot companion. You'll find no "Electric Tesseract Rifle Mark IV" or "Hyper Reflective Laser Mesh Armour" here. Which is a shame, because that is by far the best part about playing action RPGs. You do find weapons and armor as you go, but they are set piece items. The only way to make them better is through upgrading using the tech drops.
The graphics are decent and they provide a good Sci-Fi atmosphere. Throughout the game the voice acting crosses the line between ok and bad. The sounds are pretty good but I just wonder what the deal is with the cheesy firework sounds when you shoot oxygen canisters? Character development is minimalist for an Action RPG. There are only two development trees (combat and engineering). I found myself continuously emphasizing the combat skills 'cause I like blowing stuff up but some of the engineering skills help with that too (better grenades, etc). Much has been made of the vaunted "To 'Borg or Not To 'Borg, That is the question" but I don't see it. In the context of the game the story did not offer any real compelling reason to go one way or the other. Some may disagree, but in my opinion, this decision is overrated and does not a gaming crux make. At no point did I feel even remotely tempted to upgrade to cybernetic implants.
Which brings us to Multi-player. The main reason I buy these games is to play them with my girlfriend. She will not play this game with me for one simple reason. You can not play a female character. You can't even customize the look of your given male character. You have no input whatsoever into their creation. And then you start off with most available skills and upgrade options. Where's the fun in that? Multi-player is a very generic and somewhat tacked on afterthought. What genius decided not to include the single player campaign as a playable multi-player coop mode and not allow you to customize the look of your character? Between this and the lack of inventory/loot, the game takes a major hit for me.
This game has drawn a lot of comparisons to Shadowgrounds (a $10 Steam Downloadable game) and those comparisons are not inaccurate. If you liked Shadowgrounds, you will probably really enjoy Space Siege. The two games are similar in style and game play (and simplicity and lack of RPG elements). More to the point, if you want to know if you'll like Space Siege, you can always just drop $10 on Shadowgrounds... If you like it and want more of the same, splurge another $20 on the Shadowgrounds sequel. Maybe by then, Space Siege will be in the bargain bin and you'll only have to spend $20 on it too... :-P
Despite all this, I am enjoying Space Siege - if only as a minor 10 hour diversion that I'll never play again. I just wish they'd made a real Action RPG instead of this dummed down piece of fluff.