Game #996: Dungeon Siege - Throne of Agony

  Of agony of agony, 'member that one?

 What is Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony and why does it exist? No, really, before its release Dungeon Siege was a PC-exclusive franchise, and both initial games are part of my all-time favorite games ever, so why release this game out of the blue on the PSP of all systems? It makes no sense! On the other hand, this game continued what DS2 started by Diablo-ificating itself even further, working as the perfect bridge between DS2 and DS3.

 Dungeon Siege being a franchise very close to my heart meant that I had some sort of expectations out of this game. The fact that it released on the PSP because reasons also meant I had a few slightly more negative expectations. In the end, it delivered a bit on both fronts!

 The series has always played like dungeon crawling looters, you go into dungeons, kill tons of baddies and get tons of loot to customize your character with. Every piece of equipment reflects on your character, and they kept that in here, so you can always look forward to how your new equipment will look. Skills weren't a thing until DS2, but in this game you'll constantly get new skills, both passive and active, as you level up, and you get three skill points to increase their levels. This addition is very welcome. You can equip up to six different active skills, one one the O button, one on the Triangle button and another four by holding down R and pressing any face button. It works really well to be honest.

 Dungeon Siege always stood out from other dungeon crawlers by the way in which you developed your character, if you fought with melee weapons, stats associated to that would increase, use a bow and those skills would increase, so you could develop your character in any way that you wanted. It was brilliant. This game follows the Diablo formula, you must pick a class and you're stuck with it. Dungeon Siege always had character creators... until now. Wanna be a Warrior? You'll have to play as the ugly semi-giant. Wanna be the rogue? Stuck with a blue-skinned female. You're into magic? White guy it is. If this was any other game I wouldn't have cared too much, but this is Dungeon Siege! Create your OWN character, develop him your own way! Huge step back, very limiting. At least you get three stat points to spend on leveling up, so that's something. I gave DS3 more credit because at least the pre-defined characters had more personality and styles to mess around with.

 Another thing that made Dungeon Siege what it was was the fact that you micro-managed an 8-man team(6 in the sequel), but here... all you get is a single AI ally that is dumb as a sack of rocks and will get itself killed. Melee followers are a waste of time, and if you try to keep them alive they'll only waste your potions since the potion button makes both you and your follower chug down a bottle, even if you don't need it. Ranged followers will sometimes watch you fight while doing nothing, while other times will walk in front of the enemy because why not. They are useless.

 The gameplay is as addictive as any other Dungeon Crawler is, that said, I feel like the camera is TOO zoomed in. The fact that I played as the caricaturesque semi-giant probably didn't help. So you'll have to rely on the mini-map a lot. The framerate tries it hardest, only had bad slowdown a few times, but nothing to worry about. Not that you'll ever face the huge waves of enemies you did on the PC games. That said, sometimes your attacks will just miss even though the animation overlaps the enemy. In those cases, the enemy won't even be triggered to fight, but it's dumb, so you'll end up using an active skill to damage them.        

 The game is prone to crashing, a lot. I had like 8 different crashes while loading zones, so save and save often. Other people reported crashes when having the Stone Golem as an active follower. I read some people suggesting turning off the PSP Cache, but by the time I did it I was near the end of the game. Here's the wildest part, throughout the first fourth of the game I had a ton of crashes.... but the next two fourths were crash free, it was super weird.... and I got confident, I must've gone through approximately 10 hours straight without a single crash and then... it crashed one final time. Regardless, it's super annoying and the game has no auto-save, so I just saved the game any time I was gonna exit or enter a zone, just to cover my bases.

 The last thing I'll mention is how poorly designed, or explained, the 'find the settlers' mission is. I found the settlers but they wouldn't follow me. "I know! I'll use a portal next to them" and nothing. I read a guide and it mentioned a portal gem, but I had no portal gem. So I did some research and other people came upon the same bug! We had no portal gem. The settlers wouldn't react! Here's the thing, the settlers you are likely to find first are part of the NEXT quest, these other settlers are hidden further away, along the coast of the overworld.... This stumped me for HOURS, and I was not the only one. The second batch of settlers shouldn't even appear until after you trigger their sidequest.

 I wouldn't call Throne of Agony a total disappointment, I mean, I had played DSIII already so I already suffered from the series deviating from the formula that made it what it was. And the basic gameplay is fun, the way your skills work is decent, there are some very nostalgic songs from the original game(THE THEME SONG IS HERE, BABY!) and I love the fact that equipment reflects on your character. That said, all the crashing did put me off a bit, as the scare of the game possibly crashing again always loomed, plus, some of the technical issues such as dumb ally AI or positioning to land attacks are hard not to notice. So yeah, it's not awful, but it's quite probably the last DS game I'd even pick to play again.

 5.5