Dungeon Siege III Previews and Co-op Trailer

I’ll be posting my hands-on preview of Dungeon Siege III in a couple of hours (embargoes!), but it looks like a couple of websites were given the green light to share their multiplayer impressions before the rest of the world.

GameSpot starts us off:

For the most part, it was just a lot of tapping the attack button and watching the numbers fly. This basic pleasure, a staple in the action role-playing genre, is not lost here. For all our frantic sword swinging (and accidental dodge rolling), it was Anjali’s “aura of immolation” ability that did most of the work. On command, she could conjure a pool of fire that would heal allies and damage enemies. Combined with the stunning power of Lucas’ shield bash, we could trap our foes in flames and finish them off with steel.

Once we got some experience under our belt, we were able to level up these abilities. Each ability is divided up into two styles for you to improve, so you can choose to either focus on one, or go with a combination of both. For instance, aura of immolation can be improved with “fiery presence” (which deals more damage to enemies) or “cauterize” (which provides better healing to allies). Our extremely useful blade dash could be improved with “lightning precision” (which improves critical hit chance) or “hemorrhage” (which deals more damage over time).

Yahoo! Games picks up where they left off:

Smashing to pieces almost anything in sight unleashes orbs used to level-up our hero, so it’s not just the enemies that yield treasure. However it is only fallen enemies that drop treasure in the literal sense, such as shiny coins and weapons. Our hands-on demo kicked off in a burning Montbarron estate, where barrels and so on scattered around the place received as much punishment as the marauders. Lucas, we discover, is the last in a long line of Royal successors, and his homestead has come under attack from the wicked, as in not very nice at all, Jeyne Kassynder and her army.

Since all seems lost at the Montbarron estate, Lucas rides out to confront the nearest group that he can hold responsible. This leads him to the village of Raven’s Rill where for the benefit of the demo we allowed ourselves to be distracted by side-quests (indicated de rigueur by exclamation marks above people’s heads). These included fighting a pond creature that had been terrorising fishermen. ‘˜Dungeon Siege III’ is rather majestic, but it’s good to see it doesn’t always take things too seriously.

And then IGN brings us a minute-long co-op gameplay trailer.