I was pleased that I was able to find a copy of Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony on the PSP. It was a game that devoured many hours of my life when I should've been sleeping throughout the years. I can't remember when or why I purchased my first ever PSP, but I remember that I owned both a DS and the PSP at the same time, and the PSP got way, way more playtime.
My PSP console is in fairly good condition, and runs like it did when it was brand new. Opping in the UMD disc for Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony, you're meet with a high pitched seeking / spinning sound - akin to the Sony Walkmen of old.
The visuals on the real hardware
The fact that a disc based portable system was possible at all was likely the result of decades of research by Sony into CD-anti-skip technology, which worked in their CD walkmen, car audio head units, and other portable CD playing devices.
You see, much of the game world is streamed from the disc to the screen - with no installs from the disc to the internal memory of the PSP. This leads to a bit of hitching, and very slow load times for the fairly large environments that are presented in Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony.
This game was released at around the same time as Dungeon Siege 2: Broken World, and integrates with the PC verson, allowing item exchange between the two titles through a specialised merchant. That's where the similarities end.
Instead of controlling a party, you control a single unit. Instead of making your character, you choose from one of three premades, with set progression, and a few branching choices when it comes to abilities and your choice of follower.
The menu system is easy to navigate, but can be a bit of a slog, in particular, when it comes to inventory management. Thankfully, you can compare items by tapping R, which lets you see if the myriad of loot you're finding is any better than what you've got equipped.
You can even do this while in the field as soon as an item has dropped.
Other than that, this game is definitely Dungeon Siege. Go into an area, kill all the enemies, take all the loot, go sell the loot, do it all over again. Along the way, complete some quests, and get snapshots of the story of an entirely "broken world", where people are scrounging around to survive as well as they can.
The grinding is good fun - but you're constantly pushed forward if you want to continue growing your character. This is due to the fact that once there's a certain delta between your level and the level of the enemies, you cease to gain any experience points.
All in all, its a good experience.
One caveat, and one minor annoyance - saving. Saving takes a long time, but thankfully, you can do it anywhere - which is welcome (for a portable console!) Saving is not automatic, and there's no checkpoints, so save frequently!
If you die, not all progress is lost, however, you respawn, with a little less experience and gold. You start again from the start of the area, but so do all the monsters - so this can be a decent grinding strategy.
Overall, the game is pretty good, but the hardware certainly helps to show both it, and the game's age. A worthy addition to the series, if you don't want to carry around some sort of bizzare laptop to play Dungeon Siege on the go.