Speaking of the party, while the player is represented by a single character, other characters can be hired or will volunteer to join the party as the game progresses.  The party can grow to up to eight characters, and the player can control the party's marching order and formation.  The level of aggressiveness and target preference can be set for each character so that the player does not have to frantically give orders to each individual character during the heat of combat.

Probably the most unusual character players will have the opportunity to add to their party is the pack mule.  Pack mules solve the inventory management issue which plagues RPGs and forces players to constantly decide which items to keep and which to leave behind.  Should the player fill up the pack mule's expansive inventory space, a handy 'Transmute' spell allows the player to convert items into gold, although not at the value that could be obtained by selling the item at a shop.  The pack mules are very handy, but they do come with their own problems.  They tend to lag behind the party, which helps to protect them from attack most of the time.  However, attacks from the rear come often enough that the pack mule is often hacked up before the player party can reach it in time.  Expect to use most of your 'Resurrection' spells on your pack mule instead of your party members.  Another issue is that it is often hard to get your pack mule to join the party on small platforms and elevators.  The platform will whisk the party onwards only to leave the mule behind, requiring the player to wait for the platform to return in order to move the pack mule along.

As an action/RPG, Dungeon Siege is heavy on the action and light on the RPG.  The game's plot is pretty basic and serves more as a motivation to move the party from one location to the next than to make the game an immersive experience.  The linear plot does fit into Dungeon Siege's linear world, which for all its beauty keeps players on a steady course from place to place, without any leeway to explore a wider world as in most other RPGs.  There is also not much motivation to backtrack to revisit locales or in case a sub-quest was missed.  There is no random generation or re-generation of monsters, and the only way to return to previously visited locales is to trudge back the entire way on foot.  This is probably a consequence of Dungeon Siege's "no load screen" design, which while saving a player from the annoyance of waiting for locations to load will make many players miss the various spells and other methods usually provided in RPG games to move between major locations.

The "no load screen" design also seems to have had an affect on the game's automap.  The automap is convenient, supports zooming, and allows the player to give movement and attack orders from within the automap - very convenient for targeting enemies in heavily wooded areas.  However, the area displayed is limited to the party's vicinity.  There is no way to scroll the automap to determine where the party is in relation to anything else or to look for missed passageways.

The combat in Dungeon Siege is often furious, as the game likes to throw hordes of monsters at the player.  Unfortunately, the monster AI is pretty basic and the attacks consist primarily of head-on charges or stationary standoffs from the monsters with ranged attacks.  Groups of monsters do not work together at all - instead it seems that they tend to focus their attacks on a single party member oblivious to anything else going on around them.  They also lack any kind of situational awareness - large groups of monsters will mill about when slowly approached by the party, completely unaware that a couple of their comrades on the flank are charging into battle.

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