YMMV / Dungeon Siege

• Awesome Music: In a nod to Diablo II, when you defeat the Overmage, some of the music from the first game plays in the background.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Every boss in Throne of Agony. Unlike in the mainline series, the bosses not only barely have more health than an Elite Mook, they also have no special gimmicks attached to them, something compounded by the game averting Health/Damage Asymmetry. The result is a game where everyone is a Glass Cannon, including bosses, meaning even Malith herself can and will go down in less than 10 seconds.
• Complete Monster (Dungeon Siege II & Broken World): The Overmage of the Cinbri was Zaramoth he Unmaker's most ruthless ally. Binding shards of his former lord's soul to his own after the former's defeat, the Overmage crafted a long-term plan to return to his own native dimension, uncaring of all the suffering he would cause. His plan included enslaving a Dwarven expedition and manipulating Prince Valdis into believing himself to be Zaramoth reborn, leading him to a quest for power that once again plunged Aranna into war. In Dungeon Siege II, the Overmage poses as an Azunite scholar to manipulate the protagonist as well, leaving them and Valdis to their fate once they have caused the Second Cataclysm he needed. In Broken World, the Overmage torments the continent with the Familiar Surgeons, who tear their victims apart and painfully reassemble them into bloodthirsty minions; he also turns Mordens into ravagers with Blood Magic, all to gain time to complete his own fusion with Zaramoth.
• Contested Sequel:
  • DS III is pretty much considered a In Name Only entry, with a change of developers, more console-oriented controls, and the removal of character creation in favor of premade player characters.
  • DS II is contested to a lesser extent, specifically for more hardcore fans of the first game. The reduction of the max party cap from 8 to 6, and restricting getting more than 4 at a time based on subsequent playthroughs, the introduction of a fast travel system in the singleplayer campaign instead of a single seamlessly loading unbroken world, the enemies respawning instead of staying permanently killed, and even the change to the way party aggro works (requiring setting the entire party to specific modes to affect their behavior instead of individually setting their aggression, plus ticking two options that are tucked away to make them keep attacking enemies without holding the right mouse button and attack back enemies back automatically after taking damage), are all things that hardcore fans of the first game say makes the second one inferior.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • In DS II, thanks to a bug introduced with the Broken World expansion, the Undead Azunite Archer Hero Elite Mook is level 45, 5 levels higher than even the final boss! Being an enemy that has a very large range of attack, and takes Scratch Damage due to how levels work, fighting these things will result in death unless you're grossly overlevelled for the base game's campaign. The worst part is that due to the semi-random nature of enemy spawns, sometimes these particular ones may spawn in place of the other normal-level Undead Azunite Elite Mooks when you need to collect the Champion Masks required to access the Azunite Burial Grounds. Luckily you can just collect the masks without fighting them, so unless you plan on getting the Bestiary entry for these guys, there's no need to engage them.
  • There's an enemy in the final dungeon of DS2 that casts a curse on the whole party which deals a lot of damage over time and can easily cause a Total Party Kill. This basically forces you to bring a Nature Mage with Spirit Embrace, since its buff also provides curse immunity.
  • Decaying enemies from Broken World. Take the exploding enemies' damage upon death and replace the regular damage explosions with a lingering Area of Effect poisonous cloud that deals a ton of damage over time, and you've got yourself a recipe for frustration if your party is melee-focused, lest you risk a Total Party Kill for staying inside too long.
  • Magma Golems in Throne of Agony. For an Elite Mook encountered midway through Act I, they're easily more dangerous than any of the actual bosses. They have an absurd amount of health for that point in the game, are usually encountered bunched together in the pretty claustrophobic level they're found in, and have the highest damaging and largest Area of Effect attack in the whole game, capable of hitting you from offscreen and even two shotting you while you're overleveled. Hope you've stocked up on Status Buff potions, 'cause you're gonna need them.
• Disappointing Last Level:
  • The final level of DS II, Zaramoth's Horns. A Marathon Level with zero puzzles, and the only gimmicks being the occasional invincibility-giving Azunite Obelisk and One-Hit Kill Eye of Zaramoth. It's filled with Elite Mooks and two Boss Fights, culminating in one final ascent filled to the brim with even more minibosses, with the last checkpoint located before the room of the first boss. The good news is that there's a lot of good loot and experience to be had. The bad news is all that grinding can get rather boring after a while. It's a perfectly serviceable finale, but its level design pales in comparison to the Agallan Trial beforehand. By the time you reach the Final Ascent, you'll just be asking for the game to end already because the dungeon has been going on for nearly 2 hours with little more than Demonic Spiders to spice things up.
  • The final dungeon of Broken World has you traverse a seemingly endless series of identical rooms until you reach the final boss. Becomes even worse on revisits, as unlike the base game's Zaramoth's Horns, only a small fraction of the enemies respawn, making for an incredibly barren final dungeon that doesn't even make for a good place to grind for loot.
• Even Better Sequel: DS II to the original game, due to the better narrated story (as opposed to the Excuse Plot of the original), more fleshed out recruitable party members, and more distinct character classes.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Fallout fans, especially Fallout: New Vegas, due to Obsidian Entertainment's involvement. Many fans of the latter game express disbelief on how the developer of New Vegas can ruin another series.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Many old-school Dungeon Siege fans had long regarded DS III as non-canon due to the various lore change or lore advancements that were met with much derision. Don't even get us started with the game mechanic changes.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Nature mages in 2. They have the best healing, powerful offensive ice magic, and a number of very strong party buffs. Their two best super moves are a short term full team invulnerability spell and the single strongest Fantastic Nuke in the game. Combined with extremely dangerous pets (nearly equal to another PC in many respects) many players just ended up running a bunch of nature mages with an Ice Elemental for mana recovery.
  • The Ice Elemental pet in the same game was this due to its powerful Mana Regen aura. The pet itself was a little lackluster, but as long as it lived it was nearly impossible to run out of mana on your mages allowing them to spam spells, heals, and summons with impunity.
  • Leveling up the Luck stat in Throne of Agony. Not only does Luck increase the frequency of a Critical Hit happening for both regular attacks and skills, it also increases the frequency of Gold drops and higher quality equipment, which can include items that further increase Luck passively. Focusing on leveling up Luck early on serves as a devastating Disc-One Nuke, since you'll get access to higher tier merchandise much earlier than intended the more Gold you have.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • In DS II, during the "A Family Hairloom, Part II" secondary quest, if you break the Vai'kesh Demon's prison but then save and reload the game, then return to the same area it's found in, the Vai'kesh Demon will be stuck in an A-Pose instead of its intended Idle Animation while it was sealed, which looks goofy.
  • In Throne of Agony, it's possible to carry more more items than your arbitrary carrying limit allows. Because the inventory system is based on your character's Strength stat, if you use Strength-increasing equipment to reach a new threshold for the game to add a new slot, get an item, but then unequip the equipment, the item will still be in your inventory, which is useful for the first half of the game, before you get access to the Mule in Act II to upgrade your slots passively.
• Goddamned Bats: Broken World introduced quite a few:
  • There are enemies that explode upon death. These include Volatile Boggrots (the first enemies you encounter, in fact) and Morden-Sin Ravagers, although the latter at least have a telegraph for when they're about to explode. They're not very dangerous on their own, however, they're usually paired with much stronger enemies, who'd be more than glad to finish you off after taking a good explosive beating. The Familiars all employ a much more dangerous version of this, as not only do their explosions deal far more damage and are far larger too, they come back from the dead afterwards.
  • Breeding enemies, like Breeding Kurtles and Breeding Bortusk. Ever wanted to fight enemies that spawn hatchlings and multiply themselves mid-battle so long as there are two of them near each other respectively? Well, there you go. Have fun dealing with the ensuing Zerg Rush.
• Memetic Badass: Among those who played the first game, the Player Character is often remembered as one of gaming's most powerful farmers, who only went on their murderous quest that happened to save the continent of Ehb because the Krug ruined their crops.
• Mis-blamed: A few of the fans put the blame on Square Enix despite Square Enix role is just the publisher and there's no evidence of Executive Meddling.
• Narm:
  • Some of the dialog in Dungeon Siege II could get pretty goofy, such as this one Taar says in the second half of Act I: "You must take care when talking to strangers. You never know when someone is lying." It would seem that Taar took the expression Team Mom a bit literally.
  • For some reason, Jeyne Kassynder in Dungeon Siege III is almost always referred by her full name, rather than simply Jeyne or Kassynder, resulting in some awkward dialogue.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Bound creatures that make up a majority of the enemies in Broken World, especially since they can remind one of a notorious episode of Fullmetal Alchemist. Plus there's the Dark Wizards and the Familiars, and to some people, pretty much Broken World as a whole.
  • Of course, that's not to say that the prior games didn't have scary stuff of their own, but fortunately, in their case, it was safely distributed here and there. Broken World, on the other hand, just piled it all on.
  • There is also The Pit of Despair from the Utrean Peninsula. No enemies, near total darkness, and it can take hours to complete, since you are constantly backtracking.
  • In DS III, when you enter the Gunderic Mansion, you can hear the ghost of Alice Gunderic speaking in a high-pitched voice that echoes throughout the mansion whenever she speaks.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: The general feeling among fans is that the third game by made by Obsidian Entertainment is way too different from the previous ones and should have been made by its original creator, Gas Powered Games.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Present throughout the entire series, but especially prevalent in the first game. There is a plot, but the minimalistic dialogue and the lack of forced Infodumps means few will know or care about what's going on in the game's ongoing narrative, since most of the backstory and plot is instead kept to optional collectible in-universe books. Even though the sequels increased the amount of dialogue and cutscenes, not many care about their inclusion because at best they're Cliche Storms or at worst border on Excuse Plots that are just there to point you towards the next area filled with monsters to kill and loot to collect.
• Porting Disaster: Despite being a simultaneous release, the PC version of DS3 has serious interface problems, specifically requiring auto-lockon instead of the mystical, sophisticated computer-only peripheral known as a mouse in combat. There has since been a patch that added keybinding and the capacity to use a WASD layout. However, the targeting system has not been patched.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Elevators in the main series. In the first game, they automatically trigger when boarded, and the game doesn't wait for all party members and summons to reach it before moving, which gets especially problematic the larger your party gets, as they're both not large enough to accommodate up to 8 characters in a tight space, there's also no good formation that'll keep them from leaking out. The second game at least has the courtesy of fixing the first two issues, but due to Artificial Stupidity involving summons and characters seeing space they could be standing on as being occupied by something else, there'll still be times when at least one party member gets left behind and you have to keep trying to get them into the elevator without them stepping out and activating the damn thing and getting left behind as a result.
  • For Throne of Agony, the inventory system. Equipped items not only still occupy your precious few limited inventory spaces, but your carry capacity is dependant on your Strength value. Up until you reach Refuge Hall in Act II, where you can buy a Pack Mule that can be upgraded to passively increase your slots by up to 20 even while it's not summoned, you'll have to rely on Strength increasing equipment and dumping points into the stat just to not have to return to town to offload after each dungeon trip.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: The Broken World campaign as a whole is much harder than the vanilla DS II one, what with the new enemy types introduced that like to pull off some pretty nasty tricks on your party, bosses that are fast and hit hard, and copious amounts of Guide Dang It! in regards to completing Side Quests. There's a much more noticeable Difficulty Spike thanks to the shorter playtime compared to the main campaign.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus towards Throne of Agony. A hack and slash that translates the series' formula about as well as it could for a non-PC platform, with the caveats of the combat being too repetitive for its own good, having Loads and Loads of Loading when played on real hardware, plus being seen as too short and too easy to be a game worth full price at the time.
• That One Attack:
  • Valdis' standard attack in the second game. It comes out fast, has little cooldown between sword slashes and deals far more damage than his area of effect attacks, as those leave him a sitting duck and are very well telegraphed. If his combos don't outright kill your party members, they'll at least put them deep in the unconscious state. Whatever you do, don't leave your party near Valdis for too long.
  • Most of the Rogue Mages in Broken World have relatively simple attacks that don't deal much damage, in virtue of being Warm Up Bosses. However, all three of them possess an attack that consists of them teleporting right to the center of the party, forming a magic circle with a disgustingly large radius, then proceeding to unleash 3 blasts that will kill you if you don't get out of there in time, no matter how much HP you have. So if you see a red circle slowly forming on the floor, run for your life. Celeb'hel in particular loves to spam this attack. Have fun!
• That One Boss: Rogue Mage Celeb'hel in Broken World is basically the previous two Rogue Mage bosses taken up to eleven. If you thought that Celeb'hel would be just as simple a fight as the previous two bosses (teleport-circle-of-death notwithstanding), you'd be wrong. He's a much faster and vicious opponent than them, with his standard moves hitting just as hard as his signature move. The fact that he fights with a strong Familiar alongside him is just the icing on the cake. You will suffer a party wipe to him if you don't play carefully.
• That One Level: The goblin workshop in the first game will likely be the first stretch that forces you to backtrack to the nearest vendor for more potions. While you've seen a few bosses or midboss monsters that do massive area-effect damage before, the workshop is the first place with entire packs of them, often ambushes you with huge packs of them at the end of elevator/conveyor rides where you have no reasonable escape route (or from behind), and forces you to take them head-on in narrow corridors where you're unable to turn their blasts to the side. Heaven forbid you're playing on Hard — healers are mechanically incapable of keeping up with the damage flow of more than a couple of them, summoned monsters with three times the HP of party members dissolve in seconds, and you'll often have to clear rooms via ten minutes or more of tedious hit-and-run or summoning creatures around corners.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • One universally despised change DS II made was reducing the maximum amount of party members from 8 to 6, and locking getting more than 4 party slots to higher difficulties, one slot per new difficulty, something aggravated by Broken World's inclusion of an entire separate campaign before you can access an Inn in a higher difficulty again.
  • DS III is this in spades. Many of the changes were deemed as not necessary and in any case, it actually harmed the Dungeon Siege experience more than it enhanced it.

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