Okay, I got the demo for PC and my roommate got it for PS3 yesterday. I played the heck out of it, playing each class twice, with each gender, and trying out different ability sets/conversation tones.
I'm impressed.
No really. I wasn't sure what to make of DA2 when I first started seeing things from it, but now, well, I'm sold. Most of my complaints I chalk up to it being a demo version, but I'll try to address everything about the demo and what I hope to see in the full version in turn.
Art Style
I'll be the first to admit that when I saw the redesign of the darkspawn in early screenshots and the heightened stylization of the setting, I was skeptical. When I got into the demo and fought the darkspawn and saw the Emissary, I was sold. The darkspawn in DA:O always felt like they were the setting's Orcs/Goblins. Now, however, you get a clearer idea of what the base race was and it helps sell the idea that these are corrupted humans/elves/dwarves and that makes them much more unsettling.
I've glanced through this thread and I've seen some people complain about "realism" in some of the environments, particularly the prologue of Lothering. To them, I say, "Watch a movie and realize that the set is as much a part of the theme/mood as the characters and lighting." The desolaton of Lothering's environment is evocative, selling the hopelessness of the Hawke clan's situation and the inevitable doom of Ferelden under the attack by the darkspawn.
The clothing and armor designs are much more fanciful than before and I say that with affection. They're totally style over substance and completly impractical. However, to make that agrument is completly missing the point. It's supposed to be that way. It's a fantasy story. Complaining about such a thing would be like the guy sitting behind me in the theater nitpicking the costuming in "Rise of the Lycans". Nothing about this says "Historical Recreation" so why should we get bent out of shape about it?
Now, the one thing about all of this that really makes it all stick for me is this: While it's all very stylized, it's all very homogenous. DA:O bothered me in that there was no clear art direction. There was a lot of diffuring styles and artistic ideas going on and it all seemed to mesh very poorly (vastly differen armor asthetics, overy fanciful mage robes, spikey barbarian gear, etc.). I feels like the art team hit their stride with DA2. While Isabella's outfit is very different than everyone else's, theres enough about her design that's consistant that I can beleive she's still part of the same world.
The mage robes don't suck as much, either.
classes and Combat
I was in for a surprise here, as well. When I heard the design philosophy of "press a button and do something cool" I wasn't sure I liked the sound of that. While this is mostly relegated to a repetition of stylish attacks, the unique animations for the various abilities is really nice. Now, on the PC, the auto attack is a welcome feature. It lets me worry less about attacking my enemy and watch the battle as a whole. On the PS3, I could see the constant tapping of X as a liability. Not to mention my roommate was totally confused at first, expecting a Dynasty Warriors/3D Beat-em-up control style (tapping X then ending with a different attack via one of the other buttons). In this regard, I think the PC gamers are going to have the advantage of fun. Mercifully the cooldowns on abilities are quite short (though I think Heal's cooldown is too long, but from what I can see, I don't expect that to be a problem).
I first experimented with the warrior. Holy crap is a two hander fun to play. The abilities take some getting used to, but that's to be expected. I was really delighted when I discovered that Scythe will slash through several layers of enemies if they're positioned right. The opener lets you get a good taste of what these higher level abilities will be like (getting surrounded by darkspawn, having Bethany freeze them with Cone of Cold then activating Whirlwind is a fun fun combo). Two-handers in DA:O were one of the more boring specs to play, in my opinion. Then when I discovered what a damage machine a two weapon berserker was, I all but left two handers in the dust.
Sword and Shield, while one of my faves from DA:O, is much more of a blast in DA2. Smacking opponents with your shield as a part of the auto-attack is satisfying and judging from what little bit we can see from the tree, they come into their own as tanks much faster than they did in DA:O. Glancing around at the other abilitiy trees for the Warrior brings me a lot of hope that the class will be a lot of fun to play, no matter the spec.
Rogues were next on my list and what fun were they. Fast, dishing out a lot of damage, and a fiend on the battlefield. Not at all durable, but that was to be expected. I first followed a two weapon line rogue and they were really nice: carving a bloody path through enemies is a delight. An archer blew me away, however. I remeber how hard it was to make a good archer in DA:O. The builds forum is filled with advice for how to make one work and they all admit that they don't stand up until you get to their end abilities. Right off the bat in DA2 the archer is a damage fiend. Pinning Shot dealt massive damage in addition to the status effect. Rain of Arrows (I think that was it's name), however, that was what one me over. That ability cleared the room in the fight with Hayder. I didnt play around much with the sabotage line, but I like how each set of abilities for the Rogue has a different goal for how you handle the fight and I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do with them.
Mages. Both the most frustrating and most rewarding class from DA:O. Well, Hawke and Bethany certainly have a lot of flare for style with their staves (when they synch up its hilariously awesome). I only really fiddled with Elemental and Arcane trees, but they played very differently, which is a plus. The Elemental mage was a glass cannon and extremely powerful (in the opener you can single handedly clear the battlefield of darkspawn). Arcan was significantly more durable with the sheilds you can place on yourself or your allies (Barrier was instramental in keeping Carver alive with the ogre fight). As always, Crushing Prison is a welcome addition. Some might complain about how the spell is nerfed in comparison to it's DA:O equivalent, but I like that it's not an instant death sentance, since I expect it to get tossed at me by enemies too.
Systems and Mechanics
There are a lot of welcome changes here. The Attributes Screen telling me what each attribute did, showing it's derrived stats, and showing exactly how it affected your abilities was a godsend. Knowing what effects my choices will have on how the character plays is so very welcome. The spread of important abilities is an interesting touch. Cunning for a defence based Warrior? Interesting, but nice. Dexterity is no-longer the end all stat. Everything is important in some way. I wonder if we'll end up with builds that are less "Pour everything into one stat" and more "Most here, a few here, and a few here".
The Friend/Rival system makes hints of it's appearance in the demo and I'm excited. I grew to despise the approval system in DA:O. You may be saying, "Why? It's so good!" Well, I could write an essay about the problems I have with the system but the short of it is: only good things happen when you gain approval. The fact that I glanced at Verric and Avaline's abilities and noticed that you get a bonus based on whether they're a Friend OR a Rival. That makes me happy as I can then play whatever type of character I want and not feel artificially confined because I'll lose party members or not get stat bonuses because I didn't "Play nice".
The dialogue wheel system from Mass Effect is a sticking point for a lot of people. I don't mind it, personally. This comes down to opinion, but is it really that big of a deal? The icons are a very nice tool and I was able to figure out their meaning from that alone. Though I'm still stuck on the "Gem". I think it's for one-liners. None the less, while Hawke is a "Bioware Character" as some have been crying, I at least get to play Hawke how I want, and that's what's important. If anything, the game showed me that selecting only one line of style is limiting myself and doing different things is good. I'll cover that next.
Story and Dialogue
While we only get prologue and a glimps of a later mission (and folks really need to calm down on this part, this is the old E3 demo, not the final product) what we see is very interesting. We all knew Hawke's history, but I haven't been following the development very close so I wasn't aware of Carver or Bethany being Hawke's siblings. In my first playthoughs Carver was killed by the Ogre. I thought nothing of it, though I did scratch my head a bit. Then, when I got to the mage and Bethany died, I sat up straight. One sibling dies and you take the other one with you through the game? That's pretty incredible. We see Flemeth, which we all knew we were going to, and she's cryptic as ever (and still enjoys witty banter). Then we get a taste of an introductory quest with the bisexual flirt that is Isabella. We get a bit of a look into what makes her tick as she confesses to having freed a bunch of slaves who were taken advantage of in their flight from the darkspawn. We don't get much look at the bigger picture, but the game promises to be very rewarding on that part.
The dialogue held the most surprise to me. Some of Hawke's lines vary depending on the conversational tone you take. What I mean is, if you're snarky about where to go, Hawke says, "Thats not my first choice." when his mother suggests Kirkwall. By contrast, the peaceful line is followed by "Are you sure that's wise?" in response to the mother. The demo is littered with moments like this. While the intent of the line in any instance never changes, the delivery and the wording is quite different and that adds a different level of playablity. Even lines traditionally Hawke's get picked up by other characters, depending on class. I even spotted a difference in animations. When Wesley threatens Bethany, Hawke steps in to stop his advance. If Hawke is also a mage, Wesley steps directly towards Hawke, instead of heading for Bethany (I wish his line was different, acknowledging Hawke's status as a mage, but I digress).
Voice Acting and Graphics
The voice acting is good. Some actors are turning in better performances than others and the sound mixing needs a bit of work (this I chalk up to it's demo status). On the PS3 we caught the room-tone disappearing in Verric's conversation with the Seeker, but I didn't notice it on the PC. Again, this is something that is probably the affect of the Demo and not indicative of the final product.
The two voice actors for Hawke leave me on the fence. They're not bad, but I don't think Male Hawke delivers the snarky lines quite as well as his female counterpart. He delivers the aggressive/authorotative lines with excellent gusto, however.
In the graphical department, I was afraid my PC's hardware was going to start showing it's age, but I was suprised at how well it handled everything. Even with the shiney magical effects going off I didn't experience a lot of framerate drop. That's not to say there wasn't any, and the drops were really bad on the PS3. Again, I suspect that's more to do with the demo than anything. The PS3 did have a leg up on me as it operated smoother and could handle the high antialiasing, but that's a hardware limitation and not a comment on the demo itself.
Also, it's worth noting that the character models are vastly superior to DA:O's. Yes, the women are curvacious, but a little eye candy never hurt anyone. What I mean is the women's body types and movements are much more natural. The female models in DA:O were terrible. Also, DA:O suffered from some simple anatomy fowel-ups: mainly the hands being way way waaaaay too big. Mods for the win. Also, facial animations are better. I've seen some disagree, but its a sublte improvement. Eyebrows (especially on Male Hawke) are much more expressive, mouths move to voice much better and I've even caught tongue movements at times as well.
Final Thoughts and What I Hope to See
If you managed to slog through that wall of text and spelling errors I applaude you. ^^
In short, the demo convinced me that Dragon Age 2 will be worth the money. I was skeptical and held my opinions in reserve during development, exspecially since it followed on the heels of several very dissapointing expansion/DLC material (in terms of forum reactions, anyway). However, the demo gave me a glimps of what to expect and I'. going to be picking this title up as soon as I can.
What I hope to see in the full version:
1. Family appearance changes
My roommate and I discussed how nice it would be if, in the full game, there would be background sliders that react to how you change Hawke's appearance so the family continues to look related. Nothing would be stranger than a Hawke who's skin tone looks nothing like his/her's siblings.
2. class Reactions
One of the things that sold me on Origins was how people reacted to your class and race. It may have been very little, but I hope that plays a greater impact on DA2. Hawke as a mage did have some reaction from Flemeth, but I hope to see more.
3. No silly clothed love scenes.
I'm not saying this because I want CGI boobs (that's what mods are for), but sleeping with someone with your underwear on... there's no denying how goofy and PG-13 that is. You guys have an M-rating. Use it.
4. Armor and Equipment
I understand why the equipment screen was unavailable (probably wasn't finished at the time), but I can't wait to see how awesome Hawke can look with various gear. I heard somewhere about party member's not changing clothing, but I hope that isn't true, warriors like Carver and Avaline should be in heavy armor by the end of the game.
5. class Combos
I saw an infoblurb mention this and I'm curious as to what it is. Unless it's as simple as using the mage to freeze an enemy then the Warrior to Shatter it. I hope it's more involved than that.
That about covers it.
TL;DR
This game is going to be awesome!<3
where have you been??? lool
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