Where's The Second Half Gone/
There are two reasons behind this, firstly catching up on some games that got lost amongst the mass of releases like L.A. Noire and Deus Ex, and secondly to ensure that when Skyrim arrives it'll appear even better than it is having played some lesser titles… Dungeon Siege 3, despite the "SquareEnix" logo on the box is never going to considered a big name release.
Things don't start well when the "Obsidian" logo appears… they know what they're doing and have produced some thrilling titles in their time… but there's usually one thing that ruins the game in a major way for me… Knights of the Old Republic 2 improved on the gameplay of the first, tidied up the battle interface for using shields, force powers and grenades, introduced the influence system so other characters would be affected by your actions… but dropped the ball big time when it came to the final section and boss battle.
After selecting your character the game starts and the first thing you really want to do is adjust the camera angle, it's clearly not right, you can't see far enough ahead of you for your own liking… but you can't… you can zoom in, which only makes it worse, or swing from side to side… you can't just drop it down a few degrees to give you a better view of the road ahead.
Now you can get used to this, well… it's more of making do than getting used to… and the game begins in earnest, enemies are despatched, armour and weapons upgraded, chests opened and gold collected… all standard dungeon crawling RPG fare… there's a lot of back tracking through previously played areas as side quests open up before you and it's while back tracking the second thing that annoys hits home… it doesn't run fast enough… it sort of jogs along at a sedate pace.
It's also while you back track that you realise there are no potions in the game, healing is done by collecting the correctly coloured orbs dropped by fallen foes, or by triggering certain abilities that unlock as you level up… nor is healing instant, you have to ensure that you stay out of trouble while healing to allow your strength to gradually be restored… a nice touch and one that I'd much rather see be the norm as opposed to being an oddity.
As you progress you'll join forces with other characters, open new areas and learn more of the back story to your current predicament, and it's an engaging enough story… but then it all stops… the game leaves you hanging… after 12 hours (and this was a first run through so they'll have been plenty of running around in the wrong direction, listening to every strand of dialogue, hunting for items in totally the wrong place and general schoolboy errors) the credits rolled… where's the rest of the game?
Now let's be clear here, I didn't bypass any side quests, I failed to complete one that must be done before the main quest is progressed which I thought I could finished after I'd done another quest in the same area, but I didn't deliberately pass over any huge chunks of the game here, I came I saw, I talked to every person the game let me talk to, listened to every single line of conversation… and all I get is 12 hours.
There aren't many games I've managed to complete in a matter of days… certainly not RPG's aside from Eternal Sonata but I did put in a couple of 10 hour days to finish that one… I felt a little cheated.
Take out the goofing around, the running blindly like a headless chicken in the wrong direction as I'd forget the button which indicates which way you should go and factor in everything I learnt about the game and a second run through should take less than 10 hours… 10 hours for an RPG… what is this 2005?
This is the first time I've felt that I've been cheated out of a full game since the credits rolled in Halo 2, just as the story is getting interesting the story stops… dead in its tracks.
On the up side the boss battles aren't bad, they manage to be varied enough for you not to get bored, a couple of them are even challenging… but the shortness of the game stops this from being a truly "good" game… as it is it's just average… and at least 5 hours short.