Review: Dungeon Siege III, Treasures of the Sun:

Regular readers of this blog will probably remember the review I did of Dungeon Siege III some weeks back. It was a fun game, flawed in some ways but overall very enjoyable. So I was quite excited when the new downloadable content for the game, Treasures of the Sun, was released.

Treasures of the Sun adds a new side mission to the game, which takes you outside of the Kingdom of Ehb’s borders and into the mysterious Aranoi Desert in search of a lost hero of the 10th Legion and “the greatest treasure of the Azunite faith.” I’m not sure exactly when in the story the DLC becomes available if you come at it from a new campaign, but I chose to play through it on one of my characters that had already completed the game, and it threw me back to just before the final quest. This made the introduction of the DLC’s story a little awkward, but this may not be a problem if you start a new character.

The new storyline is interesting, but also very short. I think I got maybe six hours of play out of it, and that’s with doing every optional quest, grinding respawned mobs for XP, and stopping to read every in-game book and explore every conversation branch. But, as I have constantly reminded myself, the thing only cost $10, and you get what you pay for.

Treasures does a surprising amount to flesh out the backstory of the Dungeon Siege universe, and as someone who loves immersing himself in video game lore, this was probably my favourite part of it. But I realize most people probably don’t care what precisely led to the War of the Legions and the downfall of the Empire of Stars.

I found the Aranoi Desert rather bland compared to the game’s other environments, but some of the new dungeons are pretty spectacular. It would have been nice to see a few more new types of enemies, as killing skeletons gets old after a while.

In addition to the new quests, Treasures of the Sun also ups the game’s level cap from 30 to 35, adds a few new spells, introduces a new system to enchant your weapons and armor, and adds the option to respec your character’s talents (for a hefty fee in gold). These changes apply to the entire campaign, not just the DLC (though one does need to visit the Aranoi to access the respecing and learn the new spells), so Treasures of the Sun does add some replayability to the main campaign.

Finally, the DLC also changes the autoloot button to include gear, instead of just gold and powerups. No more need to hover your character directly over a sword to pick it up. It’s worth the $10 just for this.

Once you finish the new storyline, it brings you right back to where you left off in the main campaign. In my case, it was just before the final boss, so I went ahead and killed the ugly bugger again. This reminded me just how awesome the game’s main storyline is, as well as informing me that Treasures of the Sun has no impact on the game’s ending, unlike the major subplots that shipped with the game.

Ultimately, I was a bit disappointed with Treasures of the Sun, but it’s as much a problem with my expectations as a problem with the DLC itself. It’s not an expansion pack; it’s an addendum to the original game. Though there is the “they should have just included it with the main game” argument to consider.

Overall rating: 6.9/10 If you liked Dungeon Siege III and were planning on starting a new campaign anyway, this is a great way to add extra enjoyment to an already fun game. If you’d only consider buying it to play through the new content, it might not be worth your time.

If you haven’t tried it yet, Dungeon Siege III is available to buy on my Amazon Affiliate. I’ve also added the demo to my store — you can download it at no charge. Treasures of the Sun doesn’t seem to be available on Amazon, unfortunately.