Dragon Age 2 Demo feedback thread
#876
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:39
Great job with the rogue class and cut scenes, paticulary the screen rolls when switching between the story in the story and Varrics scenes. Can't wait to find out what is going on... ;-)
Since I played on the xbox will the achievement awards not carry over the PC version. Didn't see them showing up my promotional items page...
#877
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:40
#878
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:40
The only other annoyance I had was with loading during the cutscenes, but i don't know if it was the game or my computer. (Can anyone confirm?)
Despite these two problems, I had quite a lot of fun.
Modifié par Tragick Flaw, 22 février 2011 - 10:42 .
#879
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:40
I have a suggestion. Go and make your own RPG game. Then it can be perfect. Until then you will have to be satisfied with what others make.Bhav wrote...
Twaddlefish wrote...
Bhav wrote...
Yea, thats why that game still has such a large dedicated fan base today, is regarded as the best RPG ever made, and was the best game bioware ever made.
The tainted iron idea was fine. All you had to do was use magical weapons instead which were easilly available.
Also trying to even imply that Baldurs Gate was in any way worse than DA2 just shows how completely clueless you are about RPgs, its no wonder why you would like DA2 so much.
What? No. No, it isn't and I am in no way alone. There is at least it's sequel, Planescape: Torment and the first two Fallout games that most would rank higher above the first Baldur's Gate. Then, I'd throw in Morrowind and Deus Ex (FPS RPG, but whatever it's a moot point). For what it's worth, I regard (edit) KOTOR as Bioware's best so far.
It's an old game for people who refuse to move on into the present. I used to be like that, and shyed away from anything that wasn't Forgotten Realms. But then I pulled my head out of my arse and realised that a grainy isometric view with a laboured interface isn't the bes thing since sliced bread, especially in 2011.
Its not my problem that you like dumbed down and easy to play games. I dont. I like nice graphics as much as anyone else, but that has nothing to do with it. No RPG games these days have the same kind of depth and gameplay that the Baldurs Gate series had.
#880
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:41
#881
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:41
#882
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:41
1) Have you ever heard word "optimization"? I can play most games in hd quality, this game was "loading" in medium 1440x900... Are you kidding me?
2) Game felt like slasher, was enough to take my character and point enemies to kill, rest of the party managed to kill everything i didn't... Dissapointing.
3) Dialog options are for kids from kindergarden, sorry guys, bad move...
4) Graphics... For Christ sake, DAO was beautifull, DA2 is just bloody and boring, landscapes suck so badly my eyes bleed...
5) Size of the weapons... If I would like to play Final Fantasy...
6) Where is rpg? Didn't noticed it... At all...
Summary: I will probably cancel my order for this game...
#883
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:42
#884
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:42
-Hawke's VA, meh, couldn't relate to the char in most situations. Especially the "paragon" dialogue, sounds way, way too soft. On the other hand, the "judgemental(?)" dialogue sounded pretty good;
-Darkspawn artstyle;
-Warrior 2h (not-so-)auto-attacks felt very weak, if attacking a mob with other chars, didnt feel like i was helping at all. While using skills it gave me a nice roleplaying experience, as i enjoy 2h playstyle, but the downtime between skills only attacking, meh, had to switch to bethany at some point for a few secs.
-Disliked Beth dying as male Hawke mage tho, and probably won't be playing one in the full game if i have to keep carver.
Overall, think mage still felt the most fluid and (due to 2h problem) coolest class to play.
#885
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:42
And today, I had been anxious all day long, and when I finally played the demo, I was appalled!
It started with old nasty bugs, like Biowares Gloooooorious
And I wouldnt have to care about (industry standard) right-handed fascism if allowed to play the gamepad, I wouldnt have to search the menu for "switch mouse buttons" (windows has it, why not simply keep windows settings), and to spend the first 2 minutes changing wasd to ijkl.
Now, the game started, at high. Now I know, there will be very high settings, but just judging from the demo settings, while the engine is better with animations and faces (though there are some artifact glitches still left, but they were there in DA:0 too), the style is bad and two steps back.
So I am very, very disappointed, the demo made me yawn from the very first minute, and it only got mildly better by playing, only good thing were Isabellas gigantic pair of you-know-whats, her model really reminds me of a colleague of mine I now consider dating, but Dragon Age 2? :innocent: Its a giant disappointment for me so far, I can only hope there will be some changes/amendments whatever. I really need to get OGHREN-DRUNK now!
#886
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:43
#887
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:43
Thank you for the demo, Bioware [smilie]../../../images/forum/emoticons/smile.png[/smilie]
I loved the demo. The combat is much faster and responsive. Graphics are much improved and the voice acting is excellent.
Femhawk's voice is ace. I am very tempted now to play a female rogue (very fun to play) in my first full game playthrough.
The Darkspawn crossbowmen, helmets are great.
Going to try the PC demo, to see how it plays on my pc.
Looking forward now to playing the full version of Dragon Age 2 in a fortnight.
Modifié par Lindum , 22 février 2011 - 10:45 .
#888
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:43
Me thinks that one guy only does games on the easy button.jamskinner wrote...
I have a suggestion. Go and make your own RPG game. Then it can be perfect. Until then you will have to be satisfied with what others make.Bhav wrote...
Twaddlefish wrote...
Bhav wrote...
Yea, thats why that game still has such a large dedicated fan base today, is regarded as the best RPG ever made, and was the best game bioware ever made.
The tainted iron idea was fine. All you had to do was use magical weapons instead which were easilly available.
Also trying to even imply that Baldurs Gate was in any way worse than DA2 just shows how completely clueless you are about RPgs, its no wonder why you would like DA2 so much.
What? No. No, it isn't and I am in no way alone. There is at least it's sequel, Planescape: Torment and the first two Fallout games that most would rank higher above the first Baldur's Gate. Then, I'd throw in Morrowind and Deus Ex (FPS RPG, but whatever it's a moot point). For what it's worth, I regard (edit) KOTOR as Bioware's best so far.
It's an old game for people who refuse to move on into the present. I used to be like that, and shyed away from anything that wasn't Forgotten Realms. But then I pulled my head out of my arse and realised that a grainy isometric view with a laboured interface isn't the bes thing since sliced bread, especially in 2011.
Its not my problem that you like dumbed down and easy to play games. I dont. I like nice graphics as much as anyone else, but that has nothing to do with it. No RPG games these days have the same kind of depth and gameplay that the Baldurs Gate series had.
#889
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:43
I'm don't want to go into details but above all it's the new style. Not my cup of tea and I'm glad I didn't pre-order.
I will not buy Dragon Age II, that's for sure.
#890
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:44
#891
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:44
#892
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:44
- Combat feels more or less the same, exaggerated moves aren´t as bad as I feared, but then I noted the enemies still fight as in Origins. Ogre fight was way too easy. Aveline could go toe to toe against it with no trouble.
- UI is ugly.
- Didn´t care about VA, especially Bethany. Paraphrase system seems worse than ME. The one for "At least he won´t be alone"? Who wrote that? Hawke´s "reaction" to the death was really bad too.
- Most details in clothing seem painted over. Otherwise graphics were OK.
- Didn´t like much the end credit song. I hope the lyrics fit better than the music.
#893
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:44
Pros:
-The EA dragon animation was sped up! When it was slower I used to mirrored dragons.
- Amazing cinimatics
-The darkspawn redesign was not as bad as I thought it would be
- The voice acting was good overall. Lady Hawke's voice changes a lot though, and was pretty bad when we met Isabela.
- Playing a rogue was very responsive and fun. Do they get an AOE attack?
- The characters looked amazing
- Meeting Flemeth was very interesting, the highlight of the demo
Cons:
- Female animations are better than Origins, but still not as graceful as the male animations.
- Game crashed on a lengthy alt/tab and I had to do most of the combat over. Blah.
- DA2 interface is a step down from Origins. Here's why:
-DA2 is missing a "select all" button under the character portraits
-The level up arrow takes up half of their pictures, which are small to begin with, so I kept clicking the arrow by accident when I just wanted to select a character. The small + in Origins was better
-DA2 interface is also plain looking
-Right clicking the portraits did nothing (In Origins it opened up either the character or inventory screen). Keybinds I and C worked in the demo, but right clicking did not.
- Humor better in Origins. The only time I laughed was when Flemeth made a joke... I think it was a repeated joke from Origins
- Dialogue choices weren't really choices. Flemeth and Isabela pretty much ignored my objections and kept talking as if I agreed with them.
- Couldn't anticipate where the darkspawn would come from to keep them off Bethany
- Pressing taunt multiple times when darkspawn was on Bethany and it didn't register
- Lots of actions can't be selected when the screen is paused
- Hawke doesn't even HAVE an Origin story. We don't know anything about him/her except that he has a mother and 2 siblings. I would have preferred seeing them leave Lothering.
- Didn't even get to know Carver/Bethany before s/he died.
Modifié par Cazlee, 22 février 2011 - 11:17 .
#894
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:45
prazision wrote...
The demo basically confirmed every fear I had about this game:
- Bad writing.
- Bad voice acting.
- Trash mobs.
- Combat is both mind-numbingly boring and completely spastic at the same time.
- Art direction is a mess. I don't care about technical graphical quality, but art direction is very important.
- Limited dialogue choices that don't actually affect the outcome of the game.
So, to everyone saying "wait and see" (including the developers), am I allowed to think I won't like this game yet?
(And no, I'm not saying "worst game ever" - if anything, the demo is so aggressively mediocre it defies me to even care enough to dislike it.)
Pretty much summed up my feelings about it.
I can't believe some people are actually suggesting that this is only a demo when the game is a mere few days away and they're expecting graphial/combat updates.
It truly shows how stupid some of them can be.
#895
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:45
I really like the skill trees and how I have to really plan my team and the battles.
Modifié par Melca36, 22 février 2011 - 10:48 .
#896
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:45
#897
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:45
Somewhat detailed write up regarding my personal experience from the demo.
First off, lets start with the good things from the demo shall we?
Positives
User Interface
I was very very impressed by this; how clean and tidy it was and how easy it was to nagivate, not that I had any issue in Dragon Age: Origins but being able to see more of the screen rather than opaque bars clustering everywhere is a significant improvement.
Menu navigation seemed fine, but obviously most of it was locked down during the demo so I cannot verify this to the full extent.
Cinematic Presentation
Special effects everywhere had me in my seat going "ooooohhh" and "aahhhhhh", big props to whichever group was in charge of those as they were very pretty indeed. The story telling reminds me some of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker through the glyph type presentation, yet obviously more animated and fluid connecting each event seemlessly together.
Combat
Wow, I can pave through my comrades instead of getting stuck between them, a rock and a hard place (literally). This makes movement across the battlefield a lot more simpler and even when utilising the pause and play system such as myself, the combat still seems a lot more fluid, especially when you get enough energy to actually use abilities more now instead of using 1 or 2 and having to wait for 20 seconds or a rejuvinate to perform another one, this could be that I have not encountered many 'sustained' abilities yet, but if it remains like this the fast paced combat is a welcome addition rather than leaving on auto attack.
Facial details
Wow, hair looks moderatly like hair, instead of big blocks of shaped plastic molded to a persons head, a big step up not only from Dragon Age: Origins but from most games in general, I also admired the noticeable veins on Aveline's husband. In retrospect it makes me question why it wasn't in DA:O as a story that revolves around the corruption in the blood did very little to emphasise that. Seeing the blood pump through his face as he succumbs was a very small but nice change.
Voice Acting
With the exception of Hawke (who sounds like Hugh Grant and makes me immediatly want to punch him in the throat) they've all been done very well. A considerable amount more inflextion and emphasis on the dialogue than in DA:O where some scenes had you facepalming so hard at the attempt of voice acting.
Kirkwall
The snapshot view from the demo was different to my preconceptions. I was expecting a Charles Dicken's-esque London type place only with taller and grander buildings, perhaps there is a disparity between regions that I have yet to see but it was very Grand and stunningly beutiful. Whether this remains after extended play and doesn't become monetenous remains to be seen, but first impressions are very positive.
Issues
Next part will be the issues I encountered in the demo playing on medium settings at 1366 x 768 resolution (should this effect anything).
Dialogue Wheel
I'll go into my depth with this in the next section below, but I noticed using the numbers still select dialogue options, what I did not see however was which numbers selected which dialogue options, so I would like for a toggle option or something in tips to display these until I become accustomed to them.
Menu
Hovering over certain sections was a hassle, the Tactics are in a rectanglular block, yet I seemingly only had 1 or 2 pixels in which I could place my cursor over to be able to highlight and select that block. This proved a hassle when setting up tactics.
Alt Tab
This could possibly be hardware issue, but upon alt-tabbing the demo did not load again (at least not within the minute), this could however be similar to the issues I encountered when playing Mass Effect. As a PC gamer I would like the opportunity to do this without having to save before and pray that I return or use task manager to end the game and restart it if I do not.
AI and tactics
HOLY HELL (oxymoron/meh)! The AI of the sister absolutely infuriated me. Let's run through my issue as I played
"Okay enemies are charging, when they've all gathered around the tank, the sister should let fly with a fireball"
*Fireball flies as enemies are still moving, landing where they once where a moment ago and hitting nothing"
"Goddamit"
Second Situation
"Okay I know that my sister is over zealous with her fire, I shall make a note to keep her away from solvents and children. I'll pause the game and issue commands to everyone and take control of the sister to make sure she doesn't fire it until ready, the script in tactics says 2 or more enemies clustered, but I want them to be stationary not moving"
"Hmm my tank is slightly out of place, I'll just move her a bit so she can't get flanked"
*Sister shoots fireball whilst I'm moving the tank*
"Goddamit"
Taunt
This is a very very very very very annoying issue. In DA:O, you could see the spectrum of taunt and which enemies were encompassed by it so you could know which other ones require pick up using other methods. However in Dragon Age 2 you get no notification on how far your taunt extends and just have to hope you got the people you intended to pick up otherwise on harder difficulites I'd imaging the squishy mage is... ****ed... proper ****ed. Perhaps a system like the Area of Effect moves could be implemented to see taunt to be casted via a placeable circle if the new animation is too tricky to implement. It is as I said "very very very very very annoying" in its current form.
Shield Defense
Why o why did this keep deactivating? It is almost as bad as Aura of Pain in DA:O. I would like to keep my sustained spells "sustained". Is that too much to ask for? Apparently so.
Cutscenes
ARRGRHRHGRGRHGRHRGRHRGHRGRHRGRHGRHRGRHRGRHRGRHRGHRGRHGRHRGRHGRHRGRHGRHRGRHGR
I absolutely, vehemently, passionately despise unskippable cutscenes, especially intro ones.
DA:O was not exactly the most stable game originally and memory leaks did plague it, the amount of restarts this required was made okay given how you could simply press 'ESC' to skip the Dragon taking ages spelling out whatever publishers and designers and get straight to the splash screen to press 'Resume'.
In Mass Effect 2 and now Dragon Age 2 it seems, this is going to be a virulent plague that will make crashes and simply wanting to load up a game ever so more frustrating. I suppose the 20 or so seconds of introduction cutscenes does give me an extra 20 or so seconds to smash my firsts against the wall in rage though.
Gameplay/Design issues overall
This will be a complete whinge-fest of "I want it more like DA:O", but in a feedback thread it is perhaps to be expected so here goes in brief since you probably see this too much already:
Design of Lothering is bad, it's bland, very bland.
The design of Darkspawn is bad, they're oversimplified on the features and detail and look "Hurrr durrr".
The blood is too bright, similiar to those old films using that new fangled discovery of colour and realising their blood looks really bad or like ketchup. I don't want grim dark because I'm not emo inclined and I don't want fountains of said grim dark blood because I am no longer 10. But I would like a slightly darker hue on it.
All the men look like they've been on the Atkins diet, they no longer seem 'built' but rather skinny/muscular than just muscular. If these are just the people from the demo then excuse me, but I would like my warrior to have the type of stature seen in the Spartacus Blood and Sand TV series, not Final Fantasy XIII "is it a woman or a man".
If Aveline is a love interest (not that I'm particulary bothered or feel I'm 'forced' to take one) she'll be at the bottom of the list. She looks more butch than the men and you have to wonder whether that chin would suffice as a shield rather than an actual shield. Very bad character design on this one.
Why are all the eyes either hazel or blue? In DA:O it was dark enough that you couldn't really distinguish the eye colours too easily, but in this game when they have anime-esque gargantuan optics, it is very noticeable that nearly everyone in the demo has hazel/light brown eyes. It's very disconcerting.
Textures are baaadddd. This could be that I'm playing on medium, but if the buckles, clothing on other graphic settings still look like they're painted on then my 'baaadddd' remains. This is 2011, surely people could simulate layers of clothing better than just painting on layers atop one of another.
Clipping is still evident, but that goes for all BioWare games so I'm not even surprised anymore.
The amount of DLC or removed content from the game before it even launches not only outstands me, but sickens me.
Finally
Dialogue Wheel version 2
UGGGHHHHH
It's bad enough having a voice imposed on the main character where people with Dungeons and Dragons experience and general older RPG generations are still used to using their own interpreted voices for their character rather than using some one elses who sounds nothing like they'd want their character to sound like...
This would be fine if...
...It wasn't paraphrased. Again UGGGHHHH as the likelyhood of an aneurysm increases from the overwhelming travesty of having my brain cope with this mess... even in this demo I picked the response and lo and behold Mr Hugh Grant says something completely unintentional. Give a person a few words and each person will interpret it different ways, in this case, not the way of the main character your supposedly playing. This creates a seperation and loss of immersion between the player and the game.
This could be fine if...
...There was no standard set up on the wheel, with faces pointing out the response just to make it obviously clear as to what the action would be. It's like Mass Effect 1 & 2. I know that selecting up (or I assume '1') in every response means I'm going to be a very good and likeable person by the innocent and puritans. I know that selecting down (Or I assume '3') will make people want to attack me more unless I have the snide and sinister party members. This again loses immersion as it makes everything black and white without shades of grey.
In Dragon Age: Origins I wanted to be good, but I actually had to mull over responses and decide which were more benefitting of my good persona, in Dragon Age 2 I can just hammer '1' and get good responses.
Well that's all.
This demo has certaintly unsettled me in some areas, and enticed me in others. Unfortuanetly it's probably more of the former, but not enough so that I will cancel my signature edition pre-order because if I do change my mind at a later date and decided to purchase it I'll be missing out on not only exclusive content but I'd be expected to pay extra for the things I can currently get free.
Modifié par OmegaJudgement, 23 février 2011 - 12:15 .
#898
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:45
Cebul86 wrote...
Well, few things:
1) Have you ever heard word "optimization"? I can play most games in hd quality, this game was "loading" in medium 1440x900... Are you kidding me?
2) Game felt like slasher, was enough to take my character and point enemies to kill, rest of the party managed to kill everything i didn't... Dissapointing.
3) Dialog options are for kids from kindergarden, sorry guys, bad move...
4) Graphics... For Christ sake, DAO was beautifull, DA2 is just bloody and boring, landscapes suck so badly my eyes bleed...
5) Size of the weapons... If I would like to play Final Fantasy...
6) Where is rpg? Didn't noticed it... At all...
Summary: I will probably cancel my order for this game...
sadly i have been trying to say similar things before the demo came out.
#899
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:46
I loved the voice acting and cut scenes, it kept my attention really well and I didn't feel the urge to skip through dialog. I liked that Hawke was voiced and the female voice actor did a great job. I liked that there are more conversation options than just good and evil. I particularly enjoyed the sarcastic/funny options, and I felt those were well-identified with the purple laughing theater mask symbol. However some of the symbols were pretty obscure, like the diamond... is this supposed to be greed/selfish?
Combat was great. It felt fast-paced, probably because of the speed at which my rogue moved. I loved the leaping attacks, backstab, and chasing-pouncing on a fallen foe. At the same time, people did not die so quickly that I couldn't make meaningful decisions. I set the combat to auto-pause and made frequent use of the space bar, like I do on every Bioware game. Thanks for retaining this option. Really great job with the combat. It feels like an upgrade to DAO; it was very enjoyable.
Skill choice was nice. I like the graphical display and the upgrades available for abilities. I wish the top level of the graphical display showed more hints or information about what type of abilities were in each tree.
For me, the most annoying thing about the demo was the tactics screen. I've played DAO quite a bit and am familiar with the possible tactics settings. When I tried to set up some tactics I felt like the menu was clunky and not as easy to use as it was in DAO. For example, I bought Mind Blast for Bethany, and I wanted to set it so she would use it when she was surrounded by at least two enemies. I clicked on the tactics screen and tried to set the initial condition - self, surrounded by enemies, two or more. No problem, I was able to find all of those options. But then I went over to the right side of the menu to pick the resulting action she would take. When I clicked on the right hand side, it somehow flipped my initial condition to three or more enemies. I couldn't tell why it did this. I had to clear and reset the left hand side. Apparently, at least on my game, you couldn't click just anywhere in the action box in the right hand side. You'd have to click on a specific spot in the box that wasn't identified with a border or anything. Then the whole box would light up and you could pick "use ability/ mind blast," etc. I messed around with several tactics settings, and in each case it felt buggy and switched my settings for no apparent reason. Hopefully this is just a bug or not working properly only in the demo.
But the tactics menu is really a minor thing, as I play with pause and the tactics choices that the game makes on its own are reasonable. I'm glad I pre-ordered, and I'm really looking forward to playing the full version.
Edit to add: I really liked the framing device for the story. I was a little concerned that it would feel contrived, but it didn't. The voice acting for the questioning was great (sorry I can't remember the character names). Better accents than in DAO. The dialog was entertaining. I liked how the initial tutorial bits where you couldn't die were played as "the legend" version of the story. I thought it worked well.
Modifié par Pamoya, 22 février 2011 - 10:57 .
#900
Posté 22 février 2011 - 10:47
I will have to see for myself shortly





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