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[Megamessiah]

Here's my impression of Dragon Age 2's demo on the PC:

Pros:

1) Combat. I absoloutley loved the new combat. I know some people miss standing there hunched over with a staff in your hand firing little bolts of indistinguishable blue fuzz or green slime (mage-bias, and whatnot), but I'm glad the mages don't play like old men with an affinity for blowing stuff up anymore. The quickness with which every bolt and spell was fired is what most mages should be like: you can make a tornado with a flick of your wrist, why does everyone think I have to be slow as molasses to cast a spell or use my staff? The rest of the classes play with a fluidity and quickness that I've come to accept doesn't exist in RPGs. I really don't see why not. So the combat is fast. Well, gee, I guess that's awful. I wanted to slowly rear back with my heavy sword and possibly miss after 2 seconds of watching my dwarf swing. I sure love the fact that my DAO rogue plays like a 2-handed warrior! Good riddance. The rogue plays like mercury: quick, deadly, and attractive to the eye. The warrior plays like a festooned tank with turbo boosters: he's big, he's fast, and he kills in a way that's eye-catchingly beautiful, in a bloody mess kind of way.

2) The graphics. They were a huge improvement. I was concerned at first about the new art style because, in all honesty, the screenshots did the in-game graphics no justice. When I saw the motion blur, the sharpness of the textures and the models, and just how amazing the new character models looked, I knew I wouldn't miss DA:O's gaunt, long-chinned characters at every corner. While the Wilds were a bit unimpressive (since when did the Wilds become a deserted wasteland?), Kirkwall gave off a nice vibe: dark and foreboding, but vibrant and lively all at once.

3) The voiced protagonist. I can't tell you how much I loathed standing there in DA:O, surrounded by all this tensious drama, only to say one sentence and have my companion elaborate on what I was saying. (Ex. "NPC: So, Warden, what happened in the ruins? Warden: We were ambushed. Companion: Yes, we were ambushed whilst travelling, and ended up engaging a batallion of darkspawn..., etc.). I know some people miss being able to add their own tone and inflection to what was being "said", but quite honestly, the responses of the NPCs around you let you know what your tone was anyways, so any sort of ideas that YOU were choosing how you said what was being said flew out the window.

Cons:

1) The choppiness*. I honestly don't know why, but the game was just choppy at some points, and it really bothered me; specifically, the running animations, and even some of the cutscences had a bit of choppiness to them. This isn't a simple matter of "Oh, well upgrade your PC." I checked canyourunit.com, I checked my specs, and I know for a fact I can one up everything the game asks for (except RAM, which I'm on par with the 4GB they're looking for). While it may just be the demo, or my borderline 4GB (which I'll be upgrading soon), I felt that the choppiness really killed most of the experience. I'm running up a hill and my character runs like he's going 10FPS, but everything else is going 60+. I could find no explanation, and I tried everything, switching on and off settings, lowering the graphics, but still it persisted. I hope it gets fixed.

2) The UI and Tab. The UI in DA2 was a bit too streamlined for my liking. It felt unfinished, like a placeholder. It also was a bit of an eyesore when compared to the medieval surroundings of the game. Here you have a silver, straight-edge bar on the bottom of your screen surrounded by swords and staves. It just didn't match for me. Also a part of the general UI was the fact that "Tab" didn't highlight enemy health bars or all the enemies arround you. While I understand it may be to add to the immediacy of the game, I feel short changed by the fact that I have to break up the quickness of the combat to see if three more Hurlocks ran up behind me. Which brings me to my last gripe about the UI: the mini-map. The map itself was fine, but the red dots on it were much too dark and small to be even remotely noticeable. All I could see were about seven small blobs out of the corner of my eye, and before I know it I'm swarmed. It's not eye-catching enough to add immediacy to the fact that, in about six seconds, you're going to be surrounded. Once again, immediacy is all well and good, but the mini-map's enemy markers should at least make up for the lack of Tab-highlighting.

3) The camera distance. I enjoy playing this game with a mixture of speed and tactical analysis. Some fights, I'll breeze through it like a blizzard in Boston, and other times I'll pause and coordinate every attack to make sure the enemies around me have no chance at survival. To do this, I'd use the over-the-head view on the PC to ensure that I was able to avoid my allies, hit all the enemies, and come out of the fight without a scratch. While I realize there's no friendly-fire on normal (maybe not even on hard; definitely on Nightmare), I still miss being able to zoom around the map and toss my fireball where it'd hurt the enemies most. Better to hit six people with one fireball than one enemy out of every six fireballs.

Summary:

I thoroughly enjoyed the game, and have no reservations about having pre-ordered it. That said, I really hope the running clears up, since about 80% of the game is spent moving around, whether it be fighting or walking down a flight of stairs. I also hope they re-integrate tab's functionality into the game, else I'll be missing a lot more chests and books than usual. Still, it'll be a first day purchase-and-play for me.

8/10 for the demo. Here's to hoping the released version kicks even more ass.

Thank you for reading my wall of text.

[Coldest]

I guess BW could implement a cooldown (around 7 to 10 secs?) for melee lunging attacks so rogues don't look like they're flipping around half the time trying to catch enemies that are moving in the opposite direction. It would also slow down the pacing of the combat to a much more reasonable level.

[r2dr]

Someone should make a mod that turns the swords into lightsabers and adds lightsaber sounds to combat, because the animations would fit eerily well.

[Neverwinter_Knight77]

r2dr wrote...

Someone should make a mod that turns the swords into lightsabers and adds lightsaber sounds to combat, because the animations would fit eerily well.

And then make everybody able to wear robes, lol

[r2dr]

Neverwinter_Knight77 wrote...

r2dr wrote...

Someone should make a mod that turns the swords into lightsabers and adds lightsaber sounds to combat, because the animations would fit eerily well.

And then make everybody able to wear robes, lol

And dwarves would be maintenance bots, Qunari would be wookies and elves would be protocol droids.

[Neverwinter_Knight77]

That would make for a compelling conversion mod.

[Erode_The_Soul]

I'm actually pretty surprised at my reaction to the demo.

First off, I am really not good at this game. I felt terrible for my party when I played a mage, as damn near everyone but Aveline died.
Second surprise, I prefer ManHawke's voice to Lady Hawke's, at least based on the demo. I think both of them are great, but there's just something about ManHawke's voice that clicked a bit more with me. Now I'm torn between the two.
Third surprise, I loved the mages (even though I suck at them) and really didn't care much for the rogues. It's usually the other way around, but MageHawke is a beast, even in the "non-exaggerated" story.


I'll admit, combat is a bit fast for me; when playing RogueHawke, I often lost sight of my character. But, overall, I'm pretty comfortable with the changes. And now that I know my system can run it, I'm going to go ahead and grab it from Steam this payday. Looking forward to it!

[Hardosuty]

r2dr wrote...

Someone should make a mod that turns the swords into lightsabers and adds lightsaber sounds to combat, because the animations would fit eerily well.

Exactly! Maybe they took some of the combat animations out of the new KOTOR mmo...

[r2dr]

Hardosuty wrote...

r2dr wrote...

Someone should make a mod that turns the swords into lightsabers and adds lightsaber sounds to combat, because the animations would fit eerily well.

Exactly! Maybe they took some of the combat animations out of the new KOTOR mmo...

Yeah, that's my conspiracy theory. Or some Bioware animator was slacking out all day long while copying files from SWTOR and pretending he made them. 

Modifié par r2dr, 24 février 2011 - 03:11 .

[errant_knight]

Okay, just finished the demo. First the good. Those of you who've been saying that Carver and Wesley's deaths weren't affecting? Hearts of stone. Even with the lack of roleplay and character development at the beginning, that was just sad. Isabela is more likable than I expected. I became interested in the story, so that's good, too. Also, the general animations are quite fluid and natural. Three cheers for Mama Cousland returning as Mama Hawke. I like her work very much. Flemeth was awesome--and a lot more evil seeming. I wouldn't have had any trouble deciding to kill this one in Origins. All the acting is excellent.

Now the bad. OMG, I hate the combat sooooooo much. I got used to it enough by the end of the demo that I think I can bring my self to buy the game for the other elements (which wasn't the case before Kirkwall), but unlike DA:O, where I enjoyed combat as much as the story, this is going to be sucking it up and getting through it to get to the next story part. It's so completely over the top that it breaks any feeling of immersion. I thought that the dialogue wheel/voiced PC was going to be the big issue for that, and it is in part, but the combat is even worse. Holy Crap. It made arcade games look realistic. Things I really liked before like shield bash were just lost in the flurry. It's just too much, too fast, to the point of losing all effectiveness. I can see why they got rid of friendly fire. With the mobs and everything going that fast, it will be extremely difficult to play at all with friendly fire on. That really ruins tactical play for me, I'm afraid. It's not battle, it's a feeding frenzy. Tactial play just feels gutted.

I felt no connection to Hawke. She's just another character--one over whom I have slightly more control. This is partly because you're thrust into the game with no oportunity to roleplay and create a persona. It's also because Hawke has character elements that I didn't create. Her stance, movement and manner of delivering lines all create an impression of character that I had nothing to do with. Although I can chose the way she speaks to a limited extent, I can't chose her reactions. A good example of this is her amused/interested reaction to Isabela's invitation. Hawke isn't someone I can create. She's just someone I can influence. I did like her voice acting. I don't dislike her or anything, but I can't roleplay her. She's not my character.

Dialogue is about what I expected. Choices  require little to no thought. That element of play is pretty much gone. The lack of conversation while travelling is extremely distancing to me. When one is really traveling with people, one can talk to them. This is like being followed by strangers--ones you don't care about and who don't care about you. It's just unnatural and aloof. I found the same thing with Awakening and the DLC that occurred outside the main game. If you can't talk to them at will, they don't feel like companions and they certainly don't feel like family. They're just there.

The style is what I expected too. The flat shading is very odd. It's particularly odd when blood and the ground is shinier than metal. I did see some armor that I hated less, like that of the raiders attacking Isabela, so I have some hope of being able to get some of that. And Hawke's Lothering armor (warrior) wasn't terrible, although it looked too close to the body and thin. With luck, these things can be modded, though.

All in all, the story and acting was good in my view, the style and gameplay, not so much. And I found the combat very close to gamebreakingly unenjoyable. The game also doesn't seem to have the same sense of fun, but perhaps there's a character whom we haven't met yet who will add that. I was finding Origins a bit grim until meeting Alistair, so maybe there's a character in DA2 who will add that same sense of fun. I sure hope so. Very, very much.

Edit: Oh, yeah... The UI.... It looks like it was made for an entirely different game. Very jarring.

And I forgot to mention the music. Unlike the music in Origins that never became annoying to me or intrusive, this started off that way. I wanted it to go away.

I really wish there was a way to attach the camera to selected characters the way it was in Origins. I could never seem to get the view I wanted. Really missed the ability to zoom out, too.

Modifié par errant_knight, 24 février 2011 - 03:32 .

[mizark3k]

Pretty sure I'm going to cancel my pre-order. After about 10 playthroughs of the demo I'm totally put off by this game. I cannot seem to get past the ogre and endless horde of darkspawn at one point, my attacks do no damage and only one of my team actually helps in the fight, the others just stand around doing nothing. One character actually just did 360's. I was pretty good at the first one so I don't attribute these losses to my skill level, maybe it is some kind of bug or maybe the game is just too simple for me now, and if it has to do with this "glancing blows" mechanic I'm hearing about that is just lame and really needs to be worked on. Also constantly pressing the A button over and over is not fun at all, thanks for turning the game into a hack and slash. I know you guys were going for a stylized look but the game looks terrible in my opinion, character models are too simplistic and the environments are sparsely detailed, with a strange shrub here and a low-res ruin there. I also don't like way the team is herded down a very linear pathway fighting groups of enemies along the way, no exploration, reminds me of Final Fantasy 13. There may be more in the full release but a demo is played to get an idea of what to expect when the finished product is released. Also, having virtually every gameplay mechanic except for attack, some potions, and a few special abilities locked was a big disappointment. I know you are trying to open the game up to a broader audience, but it is all too much of a drastic change. Like ME2, I'm afraid this is going to end up being a checklist rather than a game, with little choice or variety. Find a teammate, make sure they are loyal (which is totally unrealistic, if you are on a mission to save the world - or universe - you really don't have time to help someone with their daddy-issues or help someone get revenge, saving the lives of every living being is just too great to get sidetracked by these trivial issues), make sure you have all your upgrades, then finish. Well, at least I still have hope for Skyrim.

[SandMan2012]

I will have to say that this demo has given me something to think about for my first playthrough.  All the classes seem fun now, and I would consider playing any of them for that first run through, and replaying for the next!  My one dissapointment with the demo was the lack of being able to cuztomize my character ahead of the full game.  I quite liked that I could use the character builder for DAO and was hoping I could do the same with this.  But alas I can not, still can not wait for the full game.

Good job BioWare, it felt like a much more polished game than the first.

[onehp]

Female models look hotter and more realistic, something BioWare recovered from Dragon Age 1. Good job BioWare!

[Crell77]

I have played through the Demo ^ times so far, trying various different combos of class/ fighting style and have enjoyed every thing i have tryed.

the 2 handed sword warrior was way better then in origins, the sword and shield warrior was great, the archery rogue was awseome, the dual wielding rogue was fast and devistationg, the mage was incredibly powerful, now I'm sure I will be playing a mage on my first playthrough.

I am eagerly awaiting the full Dragon Age 2 game on march 8th, I have pre ordered the game since Dec 31 2010.

[Lady Niltiak]

What the hell is this?

I so enjoyed the running around the enemies, and trying to attack them from behind while Alistair took all my kills! It was what made Dragon Age so much fun! Why did they have to remove that with this faster-paced rush version of game play?
I loved how the mages would do that awkward point-blank spell weaving instead of hitting the darkspawn on the head! Damn you Bioware for totally taking all the cool parts of Dragon Age: Origins out!   



On a more serious note though, why do people hate Bethany? She seems more like a nicer version of Morrigan! 
I can't wait for the full game. It's going to be fun. 

[Lethe Vas'Dur]

it was a blast to play the only thing that would have been nice is to be able to play with the face setting like the character creator from the orginal da., unless they are not done that part. Out of curiosity is the character that dyes random or based on your class?

[Midnight Voyager]

(Note; played as a rogue)



Combat felt deeply awkward. Hate the locked camera, want to zoom out again. Kept losing sight of the UI altogether, unless I focused on it. Stuff moving too fast, especially since I had to keep removing my focus from combat to find the UI. I'd like being able to sit way back and see what everyone is doing at once. 100% lack of feedback on what I was doing, so I ended up just hitting things endlessly. Absolutely never figured out if I was using one of my abilities right. I felt like I had no battlefield control in combat at all, no feel of what was going on. Found myself wishing combat would just stop. Not fun. All the flips and such are nice and showy, I guess, but if it's so busy that I can't tell what's going on, that is not helpful. I never figured out how the rogue charge ability worked either. It once hit just one guy and didn't touch the guy directly next to him, once knocked down three people. NO IDEA why. Felt like I was flailing at random.



HATE FemHawke's voice. Sounds too "proper", stuck up, too much of an accent, hard to describe it.



Can't really comment on anything else, I suppose. Not much else to it. Flemeth was the highlight of the whole thing. I didn't mind the conversation bits with whatshisname the dwarf, I suppose, but I felt really disconnected from my character.

[pellem]

That's great. I downloaded the demo twice. Missing a file error. Cant play it yet.

[mrjohnchimpo]

ugh i tried to play through it 3 times now and i froze all three times (PC). dont know what's going on.



what i can play i like. but the freezing is getting stupid.

[Oraiea]

pellem wrote...

That's great. I downloaded the demo twice. Missing a file error. Cant play it yet.

Reinstall Direct X.

[Muddlehead]

It's just struck me why the weapons are so weird, things are really oddly (if not badly) drawn, you can't drink when you really need to, the characterisation and plotting are sketchy, and so on:

This isn't DA II; it's actually Kingdom of Loathering!

I'd been wondering what had stopped Jick and Skully from releasing NS15. They've been too busy working for Bioware.

This explains everything. KoL has finally taken over the world.

(No, I probably shouldn't post when I haven't slept for a really long time and have been living on serious painkillers...)

[r2dr]

Combat felt deeply awkward. Hate the locked camera, want to zoom out again. Kept losing sight of the UI altogether, unless I focused on it. Stuff moving too fast, especially since I had to keep removing my focus from combat to find the UI. I'd like being able to sit way back and see what everyone is doing at once. 100% lack of feedback on what I was doing, so I ended up just hitting things endlessly. Absolutely never figured out if I was using one of my abilities right. I felt like I had no battlefield control in combat at all, no feel of what was going on. Found myself wishing combat would just stop. Not fun. All the flips and such are nice and showy, I guess, but if it's so busy that I can't tell what's going on, that is not helpful. I never figured out how the rogue charge ability worked either. It once hit just one guy and didn't touch the guy directly next to him, once knocked down three people. NO IDEA why. Felt like I was flailing at random.

This was very much my experience too. There's just no sense of being in control of what happens. And all the icons are so tiny, I have no idea what button performs what action, so I just mash them at random hoping it somehow improves the result of the battle.

[Rikala Cousland]

I played the PS3 version, and kinda bummed that I started seeing the radial menu toggling problem I also had in origins straight away. Hitting it too quick when you pop from a cutscene into a fight gets me stuck with menu on and things moving, or menu off and paused. I kinda wish the character could still autoattack when you were controlling them.



Though those are minor complaints..the only big one is that like ME2, DA2 doesn't agree with my little SDTV. The text is a bit tiny. I'd have liked a way to modify the UI scale or something.



As for the actual story and such..don't think the demo was enough to comment. I tend to be unsure about games for longer than the demo was worth before I can make up my mind.

[errant_knight]

pellem wrote...

That's great. I downloaded the demo twice. Missing a file error. Cant play it yet.

Just update directx using the microsoft update. You'll be good to go.
http://www.microsoft...&displaylang=en

Modifié par errant_knight, 24 février 2011 - 03:33 .

[Kaltre]

I can see that my time playing box games is coming to an end. Being a baby boomer I've been playing along time and have seen all the changes. At this point the changes have passed me up. I for one, do not like the combat. With every change it caters to the younger crowd at that time. Combat these days gets more like shootum up, it moves at a ridiculous speed which exaggerates the the whole combat process. Sorry Bioware I have to pass this one by.