How did I feel about the demo...
Well, I did like this new type and perspective of story for DA:2, while some may make the claim that you don't really know what you're doing and are just being told to do things by npcs, I'd point out that this is only a demo and a very small one at that. You can't make that assumption with the little information provided. This new type of story seems to be from the perspective of a gladatorial esque character, at least that's the kind of feel I get from it. The feeling I've been getting is that the champion has acquired his status in many a fight and was just some average joe initially, was not a grey warden or innately bound for special things. I like that.
The art style while somewhat jarring with the new presentation of the darkspawn didn't really bother me, at least their models looked better than before. There was improvement, so I'll live with it.
The story present was pretty par for the course, it's Bioware, from the snippets in the story it's obvious it's going to be more bioware esque story. If we didn't like that kind of story, we wouldn't be here.
The characters so far I didn't like at all outside of Hawke's family, though again, it was only a demo, if I purchased the game I'm sure I'd gain a much better understanding and hopefully a lot more charactesr than the ones present in the demo.
But finnally, and the crux of it all at least for me, the combat system. I only have a pc (and it's a pretty darn good pc, Phenom II 965, ATI 5870, 4GB of DDR3 16600 ram for all who are wondering) it even managed to handle the DX 11 mode for the inital 10 minutes of the tutorial, at which point it became EXCEEDINGLY laggy and I couldn't manually target a thing. But that's a problem which is reportedly solved, just not in the demo build so I'll pass over on that.
No, the main issue here with the combat system is, it's the same one in Origins, just faster paced, not too much as there is still plenty of time for tactical input (you can just pause the game anyways but I was playing in real time the way through). While the console version does have a different combat system, which isn't tactical but button masher. Here's the thing, the combat in DA:O bored the heck out of me, I didn't want to just click and have my guy move into position and auto attack, and as combat is the meat of games of this type, it is a huge detracting factor for me that there doesn't appear to be a toggle in place, and I've been unable to get a developer response as to whether there is one, simply multiple users (like myself) claiming there is and is not.
The "new" conversation wheel is simply the system from Mass Effect, a game I like and I'm sure quite a few people here do. So it's fine by me, it's not even really worth mentioning because it seems to be more of a copy/paste thing than anything. As it is the EXACT same conversation system, not that that's a bad thing.
Though it seems that the warrior this time around cannot use dual wielding combat, and that is limited to the rogue, I SEVERELY question this choice as it is in direct contradiction with the last game. My main character dual wielded as did Duncan and I'm sure several other people as well. Why not leave the tree in there for the warrior? And before anyone jumps in and goes off on a rant on how dual wielding is stupid or some other such nonsense. Dual wielding is essentially meant for one on one combat, to provide one with an extra advantage over their singular opponent. WIth the vibe I get from DA:2 as the champion having some sort of gladitorial section of his history, it seems to me it'd fit in perfectly.
So from my impressions of the demo, I will not be buying this game, unless I find out that there is infact a way to toggle between the hack and slash combat and the auto attack variants on the pc version, I'll be passing over DA2.
Summary:
- High quality story (Bioware)
- New art style is jarring but graphics are sharp and there was clearly a technical improvement
- Different type of story telling following a very different type of character (appeals to me personally, may not appeal to some)
- Same dialouge system as Mass Effect
- Warrior seems unable to dual wield all of a sudden
- PC version appears to be stuck with the same combat system from Origins, which is pretty much the only negative I have from the demo, if there was a toggle in place I would buy this game day 1 because I myself to prefer hack and slash combat, there is not, and I do not own a next gen console, so thanks to this revelation from the demo. I will not be picking up DA2, unless I can get an answer after the games release or from a developer as to whether or not this is the case.
Retour en haut
) lots of fun...
