{"id":8834,"date":"2020-12-26T05:40:30","date_gmt":"2020-12-26T05:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/?p=8834"},"modified":"2020-12-26T06:40:38","modified_gmt":"2020-12-26T06:40:38","slug":"dungeon-siege-ii-iron-danger-shard-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/dungeon-siege-ii-iron-danger-shard-of-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Dungeon Siege II & IRON DANGER: Shard of time"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a fit of nostalgia I decided to revisit Dungeon Siege II<\/a>… only to discover I’d never played it before. What I thought were memories of II<\/em> were in fact of the first game<\/a> in the franchise.<\/p>\n

While notably better than that first game in the gameplay department, it suffers rather badly from some of the worst character interactions ever conceived. And though better than DS I<\/em> the gameplay is still not particularly engaging. Rather than Diablo<\/a>, it instead brings to mind a proto Titan Quest<\/a>. There’s just a certain emptiness\/soullessness about the enemies and loot situation which, when combined with the limited ability system, makes progressing past a certain point far more trouble than its worth.<\/p>\n

Sharing the malus of atrocious writing, Iron Danger<\/a> takes a notably different path where gameplay is concerned. It’s a ‘real time with mandatory pause’ tactical RPG featuring a time manipulation mechanic you’d expect to see in a puzzle game. Rather than simply take turns acting, characters move about in segmented (paused) real time which you can advance or rewind at will even if your characters die. So every combat encounter essentially becomes an equation to solve by finding the right actions to take during the right segments to most efficiently eliminate the opposition. It’s pretty cool.<\/p>\n

The problem is of course the aforementioned writing; it’s infuriatingly bad. If this were an action RPG where the storyline didn’t matter it would be an acceptable price to pay for the innovative combat system… but that’s not the case. The game’s very clearly story\/character driven, and that story and those characters are insufferable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a fit of nostalgia I decided to revisit Dungeon Siege II… only to discover I’d never played it before. What I thought were memories of II were in fact of the first game in the franchise. While notably better than that first game in the gameplay department, it suffers rather badly from some of the worst character interactions ever conceived. And though better than DS I the gameplay is still not particularly engaging. Rather than Diablo, it instead brings to mind a proto Titan Quest. There’s just a certain emptiness\/soullessness about the enemies and loot situation which, when combined with the limited ability system, makes progressing past a certain point far more trouble than its worth. Sharing the malus of atrocious writing, Iron Danger takes a notably different path where gameplay is concerned. It’s a ‘real time with mandatory pause’ tactical RPG featuring a time manipulation mechanic you’d expect to see in a puzzle game. Rather than simply take turns acting, characters move about in segmented (paused) real time which you can advance or rewind at will even if your characters die. So every combat encounter essentially becomes an equation to solve by finding the right actions to take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,7],"tags":[148,28,121,120,473],"class_list":["post-8834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pc","category-video-game-related","tag-action-rpg","tag-fantasy","tag-rpg","tag-tactical-rpg","tag-third-person-perspective"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t