After your abilities there’s also passive skills you can pour points into as well - these include increased agility or attack modifiers, a deeper mana pool, and the ability to heal faster. Once again - there’s many, many skills here and you won’t be able to unlock them all (or fully upgrade them all) - so there’s a lot of customization going on.
The third and final piece of depth for your character is actually using the proficiencies. The more you use an ability, the more XP you earn in mastering it. Once you master it you unlock a more powerful alternate version of it that consumes a small special meter.
So far we’ve established the game has a solid story (with a horrible villain name - seriously try not to laugh when it’s said in cut-scenes), great graphics, fun combat and an incredibly deep character system. There are also some epic boss battles as well, some fun - others frustrating. But now, lets talk co-op.
Here’s where things get dicey for Dungeon Siege 3. The game has such potential to be a truly great co-op Action/RPG and it really does do some great things to streamline the co-op experience.
Let’s establish this now - unless you are the host you are a slave player. You are a mercenary without pay and short of earning achievements from the game, get no tangible goods out of the co-op experience. You are a mule.
This is the mule from Dungeon Siege 2. There's no mule in Dungeon Siege 3, but he's there in spirit...in your co-op partners.
If you play with consistent couch or online partners, this isn’t too big of a deal. The second (or third or fourth) player can still independently manage their character’s equipment, proficiencies and talents making that character their own. This is actually the first place the game creates a truly excellent co-op feature - when playing online co-op the game won’t pause while someone is managing their character or looking at equipment - instead the AI takes over for them so the rest of the group can keep playing. There’s even a “take a break” option like Left 4 Dead had so if Fido has to pee, you can let him out without yelling “hold on” over the mic. With four player online co-op this feature really streamlines the process and keeps the action moving. Sadly for couch co-op you’ll be taking turns looking at each other’s inventory screens.