Meh...it's average/slightly below for a generic hack and slash, which is part of the problem. DS 1&2 were damn good, and then you get this ____________. You could build your character how you wanted based on spells found and weapons used, now you are stuck in predefined roles as named characters. You used to have a fairly open world to explore, now it's pretty much a guided tour...seems like things keep getting "simplified" for "our benefit" in many modern games.

If you can get it cheap, go ahead...It's decent, but I wouldn't suggest paying full or even half price.

Summary (TL;DR)
Dungeon Siege III, while not stellar, is a bit underrated or otherwise suffers unjustly from its departure from the original games of old. Those had more of a Diablo-like interface, with top down, mouse point&click, party management gameplay, with classes, gear and loot. Dungeon Siege III was clearly designed for consoles and controller use, as the keyboard and mouse controls are very awkward and it has a more 3rd person view. Without a controller, it is very difficult to play this game.
I’m a fan of the original game, and I found that despite the change in paradigm to a 3rd person hack and slash action RPG designed for the controller, the Dungeon Siege “feel” is there. Experiencing the different events in the story, meeting new characters and talking to them, going from location to location, playing the combat, collecting loot, and optimizing abilities and equipment in regards to combat, all was rather enjoyable. None was arguably groundbreaking, but was interesting and enjoyable enough to keep me invested for 32 hours, which, in retrospect, is saying something. 7/10

Detailed review
RPG-wise, it’s actually quite deep with lots of stats and mechanics. You choose from 4 different main characters with different characteristics and play styles: a knight for meele/tank, a rifle and pistol/shotgun wielding ranged character, an agile fire magic female warrior and a spell casting mage/scientist. One of the other characters follows you as an AI companion. Each character has 2 stances that can be switched on the fly, each stance has one attack and 3 active abilities. There are also 3 defensive abilities per character. Active abilities include heavier or AOE attacks, buffs/debuffs, or even summoned creatures. Defensive abilities include healing, pushing back of enemies or buffing yourself. As you use attacks and abilities you fill their mastery bar and once you’ve mastered it, you can perform an empowered version of it. As you level up, you can develop each of your abilities in a branching choice, for instance do you want more damage or increased chance to knockback opponents? You can go all in on one, or choose any balance between the two. Additionally, there are passive “talents” to level up. With all this and also the different equipment you loot, buy and enhance with enchantments (3 weapon slots, 4 armor slots, a ring and a pendant slot), with different stats, you have a vast array of possibilities. You can choose the abilities’ perks to work well with one another enhancing your favorite play style, and also compliment your companion’s abilities to your own, which is very satisfying, particularly, I suspect, in local coop.
However, with this 2-stance system sometimes it’s a bit difficult perform actions from different stances in the heat of battle with a lot going on. Of course, it would be easier with pausable combat and 1-9 keyboard hotkeys, but this is a 3rd person action game. Also, the way aiming works is a bit awkward, especially for ranged combat, as you have to move in the direction of an enemy to soft lock on it. This results in sometimes having to move away to get a better line of sight to the desired target. I got used to it, though. Additionally, the companion AI is not ideal, though it’s reasonable. Again, local coop should be fun.

I won’t spoil the story, which I found surprisingly interesting, meaning that the game is far from a loot fest. Events are set approximately 150 years after the first game, much of what once was has fallen or faded, and the characters from the first game are now close to legends, which also means you don’t need to play the other games to enjoy this one. You’ll learn of what happened as you progress in the game, your journey has always that tone of grandeur lost as you seek to reestablish some of that. You’ll meet interesting characters and the plot will make you reflect on your actions and compare them to the main antagonist, and also think about your dialogue choices. The voice acting is also good and the dialogues lengthy. The lore is very well done, tying in nicely to the Dungeon Siege universe, and is deepened by finding some books or documents, and talking to characters. You’ll even explore a location directly related to the characters of the first game, which was extremely satisfying for a fan.

The progression is mostly linear with growing scale of locations, enemies and events. It’s an action RPG, but the pacing and amount of enemies is not insane like for instance on Diablo 3, though some battles are more enemy heavy. Though there are different and varied locations with enemies matching them, “dungeons” aren’t as big as in the first game, but nonetheless acceptably lengthy.

The graphics are quite good, showing some age by now, but at least in runs well, high FPS. However, the camera is always restricted to look down a little, so you can’t tilt it up and enjoy the scenery in a more 1st person style, which is a shame. That restriction also sometimes doesn’t provide the best view for combat either. Though different equipment reflects visibly on the characters, there’s no way to view the full character close up and rotate it, like in a character screen. The HUD is somewhat simplistic, as are the indications above enemies, which at first makes it a bit difficult to understand what’s going on.

The soundtrack is quite good, mostly in the atmospheric orchestral style, aiding to that tone of grandeur lost, but with tense and epic combat sequences.

Probably the most important info about this game is: This is not hack&slash. This is pure action game
This is not continuation of old Dungeon Siege games by any standard.
When I first play this i thought what the heck is wrong with this game?!
I played with keybord and mouse and I was completely confused by the camera and controls.
There are only three or four classes with pretty much no room for customization.
I stopped after half and hour and felt cheated but...
After few moths I gave this another try. Now I was prepared.
I grabbed proper gamepad, took the class with the lady that hold rifles, pistols and shotguns and...I was blown away.
This is extremely fun action game. It's very challenging. Boss fights are probably the best part.
Graphic are beatiful and get better the longer You play.
I understand that this might be not game for everyone especially for those rooted in H&S reality but If You like pure action and Your gamepad literally burning under your fingers give it a try.

Try to imagine Obsidian's role-playing dialog system embedded into the console port of Diablo III. In a nutshell, that's Dungeon Siege 3.

You'll notice that the majority of negative reviews on here can only be summed-up the way Machinima's Inside Gaming Daily recently described most haters' opinions. It goes something like, "I hate this pizza because it isn't a taco." Granted, it isn't wise to change a franchise as much as Obsidian did here. Many fans of DS1 and DS2 appear incapable of liking this game, and it seems a lot of them feel tricked out of their cash. I'll mention their gripes here, however, to give a fair review, I don't want to just look at what DS3 *isn't*. I want to review it based on its own merit. To be up front, I actually hated DS3 at first, but when I was looking for a co-op to play with my non-gamer wife, I took a second look at Dungeon Siege 3. I found I had completely changed my perception of this game, because I changed my perception of its design choices, and it actually became one of my favorites of all time.

Dungeon Siege III is a gamepad-friendly isometric action RPG with local and online co-op. While much more casual than its predecessors, there's still plenty of quests, hacking, slashing, shooting, magic, looting, upgrades, lore, and dialog - and when multiple players (online or off) are in a story conversation together, players can vote for their preferred responses to NPCs, albeit Player 1 has the final say.
There are four characters to choose from, and each delivers a different fighting style (melee, ranger, sniper, magician). Each character also has two "stances" to vary up their attack strengh, range, and/or speed. Not to mention, the back story will also change, according to which hero you've selected.

Gone is the tactical pause. Gone is the squad management. Gone are the skill points you earn, specific to your fighting style. Gone are the multiple skill trees for each character. Each weapon and piece of armor you find can only be equipped by a specific character. Obsidian has "streamlined" this game, effectively consolizing it. This is the heart of Dungeon Siege 2 fans' complaints, besides multiplayer camera controls and multiplayer inventory management. You now will be only upgrading a single skill tree for your character, which means close vs ranged combat will not award skill toward that specific stance. Instead of holding down on right-click to attack, you'll button-mash, and each press will be one swing/shot. Also annoying to some, even when you gain NPC followers, you will not be in charge of their tactics, nor their upgrades.

This game was developed by the same people who made South Park: The Stick of Truth, Fallout: New Vegas, Knights of the Old Republic 2, Neverwinter Nights 2, and Alpha Protocol. I loved all of those games. My point, they KNOW role-playing. In my opinion, the story here is great. If you don't have nostalgia stars in your eyes, it's easy to see that the voice acting here is by far superior to its predecessors. Although the story is drastically shorter, it's certainly more focused.

All in all, I can tell you this: if you have a friend or loved one you want to play an immersive, open-world action RPG with while sitting on the couch together, this is the game. You'll find a rich story, a simple skill tree, upgrades, dialog choices, and tons of loot. It's one of the best (and few) couch co-ops that delivers a true RPG experience. Plus, gamers of all experience levels can enjoy it together.
I come from a Fallout 3 background, but my wife is really only good at Bejewelled and racing games. While I was able to try to craftfully master my character's moves, she was able to button-mash with a rifle-wielding hottie from a distance, and we made an excellent team! We were able to hack/slash/loot our way all the way through the campaign +DLC together and we both had a blast. If you've ever played/enjoyed Diablo 3 or Daggerdale on the couch with friends and/or family, and you like the idea of breaking up the action with cutscenes and dialog choices once in a while, I'm telling you, this really is an awesome game.

If you're looking for the next 100-hour tactical RPG in the Dungeon Siege universe, buyer beware.

Not sure why they even bothered to call this game Dungeon Siege III. Nothing like the first 2, not even published by Microsoft. I guess Microsoft just sold the name to Square Enix to publish it. Truly second rate game, wouldn't even buy it on sale.

Dungeon Siege 3 is actually a GOOD game, and you´ll enjoy it quite enough once you get past the 2 biggest problems of this game:

1) despite the fact that it is called DUNGEON SIEGE 3, and takes place in the same fantasy world of the previous 2 DS games, other than that it HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO with DS1 and DS2, and if the producers of the game had not named it DS3 this game would have more appeal and approval, overall.

Let´s see: unlike the other 2 DS, this is NOT a HACK´N´SLASH RPG, it´s a (quite good, actually) ACTION RPG, with very pretty graphics (even now, considering its age), good acting voices, a deep and intriguing storyline full of lore.

2) A good controller is MANDATORY for this game become playable (and fun). Once you get the hang of it you´ll discover a whole different game than the one described by most of the reviews.

So, my advice, coming form a HUGE Dungeon Siege fan, that spent hundreds of hours on the previous titles, is to give this game a chance, making an effort to completely forget this is called Dungeon Siege 3, and after the initial hate ends, you´ll be surprised.

8/10 (Y)

Decent - both good and bad but overall okay.

Pros:
Good story, but a little slow to start. Perhaps this is different if you're familiar with DS lore from previous games. Played them, but must not have been memorable enough
Good voice acting
Choices come into play during and at the end
Skills and abilities are balanced

Cons:
Poor camera control - takes a few hours to get used to
Quest system/map isn't well designed. Hard to find some quest lines and others are much too simple and bunched together.
Capped level - DLC increases it, but I hate killing stuff and not getting xp
Some of the quest lines are a little predictable
Equipment is a little all over the place - can't get into details on some stats so you're not sure which piece might be superior

hmmmm... I love the first dungeon siege and my playtime was about 30 -35 hours.
this one? well I love the graphics though.. but the story and the gameplay just extremely horrible.
nope.. not gonna play anymore, thanks

Rating 7.5/10

What is it?

Action RPG

The Good:

+Graphically the game is beautiful, but what really stands out is the use of color especially in regards to the characters skills. Every skill used is colorful and bright and makes the combat really stand out. Making a critical ht is satisfying because it really stands out. It makes you wonder why other developers are so afraid of having color in their games.

+4 unique characters each with their own unique play style. Every character has 2 offensive stances used to either deal with single or groups of enemies and one defense stance. Each stance has 3 skills associated with it. Each skill has 2 way you can upgrade it, allowing you to customize how you want to develop your character. In addition each character has a passive skill tree further adding to your build. All of this leads to interesting builds.

+The game play mechanics are a bit more unique to this type of game. In order to use your abilities you need force and the only way to gain force is to attack your enemies. Defensive skills use power spheres which fill up as you take damage. All of this creates some unique game play elements and changes the way you play and develop your character. Dodging and blocking also play an important role in game play,

+You can always rely on Obsidian to craft a well thought out story. The games side quests in some regards are even more interesting and creative than the main quest. Books and lore are scattered around the world to further flesh out details if your into that sort of thing.

+Music/sound and voice acting are all top notch.

The Bad:

-If there is one aspect of an action rpg that you need to get right it's the loot. The loot has to be exciting, it has to make you want to kill enemies to discover new items, it should feel rewarding. This game has non of that. The loot in this game is boring. For the most part, loot just changes stats and more likely than not you will equip the loot that gives you the highest stats. A good loot system means the player has to make tough choices, this game doesn't do that.

-Multiplayer is all but dead meaning you are not going to get any achievements related to multiplayer. Even if you do play a multiplayer game you character progress is not saved if you join someone else's game when you go back to single player. How this even passed in today's time is mind boggling.

Conclusion

I really loved this game, I played it many times on 360 and will continue to play it here. This game gets a lot of things right in regards to the genre sadly it also gets things horribly wrong as well. I love that each character is really unique and no two characters play the same. Hopefully we see Obsidian get to make another with more improvements.

Dungeon Siege in name only, this game has nothing in common with the ground-breaking classic, other than being an action RPG.

DS1 was classless and level-less. Pick up a sword and start swinging it, you get better at using swords. DS2 added classes, but kept specialties. DS3 takes away almost all character customization by giving you four characters to choose from and a handful of points to spend each level.

DS1's equipment system allowed anybody to use any equipment they had the stats for. DS3 essentially drops different loot for each character. This must have saved a lot on art assets but leads to some oddities, such as the witch-with-a-gun character only being able to wear stockings, not pants.

The only real upside to DS3 is that it's not a grindfest like the first two. But this is mostly a side-effect of it just being a much smaller game, both in terms of length but also in terms of ambition and vision.

TL;DR: Hilariously wooden voice acting with gravelly-voice-man doing the cut-scenes and fire-baby make for great laughs with friends. Just kind of annoying and awful without.

This game is hilariously bad, it's like one of those movies you watch with friends and laugh, a lot, about.

Like, I don't care about any of the characters, the voice acting is half-wooden, switches between accents, and from time to time just sounds like someone ran Siri throuhg a Synthesizer.

But it's pretty frustratingly hilarious when you play it with a friend. I just don't recommend playing it alone, because as a single player game I would have just stopped playing after roughly 10 minutes.

I also got it very cheap, so that factors into my 'this game was worth 5 dollars as a package deal with two other games that don't run on my computer because they're so old.'

I haven't gotten to play dungeon siege I & II, but dungeon siege III is a barrel of (albeit unintentional) laughs.


6/10, with friends.

Not recommended without friends.

this is my first DS game , i haven't played any of the previous titles in this series so i can't compare but what i can do is let you know that this is a very good game except for a few flaws
1. the loot is very repetitive , you get to a part where you stop hoarding items and ignore them if the name seems familiar which is honestly disappointing since in this type of games players are curious to the looks and advantages of loot and boss drops.
2. sometimes the creeps become annoyingly op and you have to rely on your companion to revive you numerous times in one encounter.
3. the story is somewhat simple although the game has great potential to become a diablo 3 competitor if develloped with more care and complexity
i havent tested out the online tbh and it might show that i have very few game time on this game since i mostly played it in offline mode so it doesnt really add to the time played , if you're interested in buying this game go for it , it's a nice game and it will amuse you (since that is the point of video games instead of making them become a culture or point of obsession like WoW , CoD and other games) and if you do buy it add me for online gameplay :D

This game is a rather fun and interesting game, however this is not a Dungeon Siege game. As a stand alone game I would recommend getting it, but if you are expecting a Dungeon siege game you may not enjoy the game unless you change your expectations, you don't have to lower your expectations but you will need to change them.

As a stand alone game: 7.5/10
As a Dungeon Siege game: 4/10

I was very upset about how much was changed, if you are selling a Dungeon Siege game it is best to make a Dungeon Siege game. The mechanics in the first game were great, the second game managed to expand and refine the mechanics of the first game...then the third game throws it away...not surprised fans are not happy. Maybe change the name and just have the game in the same world as the Dungeon Siege games but not as a Dungeon Siege title.

I recommend this game as a stand alone game, but not as a Dungeon Siege game

Graphics? Acceptable. Sounds? Fair enough. Gameplay? Pretty bad with keyboard and mouse, so I switched to a controller, a bit better. So I'm playing this game, only on normal difficulty, and I keep asking myself: "Why do I even bother?" Even though I've purchased this game, I have absolutely zero intention of playing it again. I just can't get into it. Let alone the tedious walking from point A to point B, the respawning monsters and/or the loot system (which isn't very good either), the controls just kill it for me. I know my character isn't bad equipped, yet I keep dying because of control issues (bad response time, etc...). I just can't recommend this game. :(

one of the worst games ive ever played.....is nothing like dungeon siege 1 and 2 which are absolute classics.

DO NOT BUY...does not deserve to have the dungeon siege name.

It's not bad. But still a led through the nose adventure game. You can't deviate from the path.

Playing as Katerina wasn't to bad. Pup to play with. And some plce spells.

The mage great . Traps and decay spells. Not fussed on his sweep attack. Can't go around corners even though it looks like it does.

Lucas what a joke. You get stamina and agility no attack. Or attack and no stamina and agility. And low armor. Teamed up with AI Katerina she may fire 1 every 10 seconds and call her pup a few times but not a lot. Yet she was fine with Anjali (I think better check).

Very Very frustrating. Doesn't raise the likability at all.

I'd recommend buying this game, it's different to the other parts of Dungeon Siege, but it has its moments and i really enjoyed the story, thats why i finished this game 3 times.

This isn't like the old Dungeon Siege games, they've gone for an action RPG this time.

I wasn't sure at first but after getting hold of the controls I really liked it. Don't get me wrong, the game isn't perfect but the combat is smooth and quite challenging. The boss fights so far have been hard but not unfair and quite diverse. I might have wanted a few more skills and spells to choose from but the story and combat is enough for me to forget about that and enjoy the game.

Not game of the year but worth the money and your time.

Definitely like the play style: similar to Diablo, but I find the difficulty setting is much higher (easy on here is somewhere just above Normal on Diablo), without being a copy + paste game.

From what I've seen, this game is considered terrible, to which I highly disagree. This game definitely doesn't pass as a Dungeon Siege game, the only thing that qualifies it is the lore that's in it (Which I think I gathered all but one piece of). It has many nerd-service moments, in which it refers back to the original game, and even some moments that refer to the second, but it's style is entirely different. I look at games for what they are, not what they should be. It's still a good game, full of great story-telling, and an alright Combat system. The Combat System could use a bit of work, and I would have liked some more companion interraction, but it was a different developer from the first two games, so first of all, you can't expect them to go all out like they would have. Second, people need to stop saying "It's not the same! It fails my professional inspection!" It was a bold move to go from a, well, I don't know what genre it is, but mostly mouse controlled, to a game that actually requires some thought into combat. The combat system is very situational, and quite challenging, I can say that in the last two games, the combat mostly depended on luck, and how geared out your characters were. This one depends on actual skill, with the gear of your characters... The learning curb is a bit off, seeing as how it went from disappointing cake-walk to frustrating fires of hell, but once you figure it out, it tends to be a rather well-thought-out system that actually levels up quite nice now that I think of it.

For those that couldn't pay attention to my horrible rant: It's not a Dungeon Siege game, though it has the lore of it. It's still a good game, for what it is. I highly recommend it. (Unless you're stuck on nostalgia rather than gameplay)