Playing like a mix between Diablo and a squad-based RTS, Dungeon Siege remains an extremely compulsive game to this day. You're given a slew of options to customize your party's behavior in combat, to the point where it's possible to sit back and only occasionally intervene, perhaps to resurrect a fallen comrade or cast a debuff. This level of automation was criticized by some reviewers at the time, who argued it made the experience trivial. However, if you play DS on Hard difficulty and perhaps avoid filling all eight party slots, you're probably going to die a lot. Still, this is a mostly relaxing game where your level of involvement depends entirely on you - it's possible to make wacky class combinations with the right balance.
There are undeniably tedious moments in the game, and some dungeons seem to stretch on forever. But the sheer relief of finally emerging in the light of day, every single inventory crammed with loot, is the kind of catharsis I've not experienced in any other game. What Dungeon Siege manages to accomplish is feel like a robust, world-spanning journey, without easy shortcuts and convenient "teleport to merchant" abilities. All that remains is pushing forward, numerous environments and thousands of monsters separating you from the source of evil. And it just works.

Results:
Ehb campaign, once on Normal and once on Hard

Extremely cozy game. Obviously Half-Life 1 inspired. What if you played the scientist team and had to survive with your wits instead of your inexplicably amazing way with guns?

I'm generally anti-survival-crafter because they mostly seem to be about stripping the environment of trees and rocks and shit and building an extremely ugly-looking box house. This game recontextualizes that behavior into strip-mining an office complex to build little hovel-apartments to support your work exploring each zone. As a result it feels like the intermediary period between the start of the cascade and when you as Gordon Freeman run into some scientist guy huddled in a corner behind a makeshift barricade going "please help me!!!"

The other thing I super love about it is that so much of your time is about exploring a specific path until that path eventually loops back into the main "unlocked" part of your run. There's five billion shortcuts per area, all bespoke, all uncovered by digging through every nook and cranny. It's extremely rewarding to just wander around and get lost and follow some arbitrary path because it'll give you resources AND open up new parts of the level.

Brilliant stuff. Palworld could never.