A surprisingly fun hack and slash, too bad the online is such a mess
The story isn't anything spectacular, but it will keep you interested in playing until you finish your adventure. You will also stumble upon a dozen of side sidequests. The conversations are really good and all of the characters have well acted voices. You get to choose what to say in dialogues, which can change the way how certain parts of the game play out, as well as decide on what kind of ending you will get. Sadly though you are unlike to have any kind of emotional connection with anything or anyone and at some point, you might even feel like skipping all the talking and jumping right into action instead.
Overall Dungeon Siege 3 is a good and fun game, but it does have certain things that bring it down, like for example the level up screen pops up as soon the battle ends, but the game has a hard time deciding when the battles actually end. Sometimes it will take too long and you could really use an extra skill point in the current battle, and sometime it will interrupt your battles.
The entire game can also be played online with up to 4 players, but the online has a lot of issues. First of all when you join a game, you don't play as your own character, instead you join and take control of a character that player has in his own game. That means you won't get to take money or items back to your own game at all.
Apart from that, the camera is a real issue with many players on the screen, since all of you have to stay together, the camera will keep acting up, rotating to the sides, and even teleporting players to the host if the somehow end up too far away. In combination with a few other issues, the online experience quickly becomes tedious and frustrating.
The combat is rather good though, each of the playable characters plays quite differently and has two unique stances to fight in. Every time you hit targets with basic attacks such as swinging your weapon you earn mana. You can use mana to unleash a few different and well balanced spells. By hitting enemies a couple of times with spells, you can fill another type of bar which you can then use to heal yourself or unleash even more deadly attacks. Such a combat system works very well and encourages the use of everything, instead of just spamming a single attack.
Both stances have their own unique attacks and spells, and both have their own strengths and weakness in certain situations, so deciding which stance to fight in and which combination of skills to use in the heat of battle can be very thrilling, especially if you manage to fight your way to victory on the hardcore setting.
Trying out new character and making different choices throughout the story might make you decide on a replay at some point, but the lack of randomness will make sure you are playing exactly the same game again since every chest will always contain the same treasure.
Dungeon Siege 3 is a surprisingly good hack and slash game, sadly the weird online will prove to be a real turn off for many players, especially since games of this genre are best enjoyed with other players, but instead of rewarding or encouraging you to play online, Dungeon Siege actually penalizes you.