I think there has been a resoundingly negative reaction to the demo from PC gamers, that much is sure.
Whether this will hold true for the full game or not is yet to be seen, but I have to admit, after the demo, I wasn't happy.
I am by no means an exclusive "elitist" PC gamer. I've drifted in and out of consoles and computers all my life, started off with the C64 and Amiga 500 then moved almost exclusively into consoles until around 2000.
I played old cRPGs like Dungeon Master, Might & Magic, Pools of Radiance, Champions/Deathknights of Krynn...but I also played lots of games all the way through in Japanese even when I couldn't read any of the text (Breath of Fire comes to mind)
The Baldur's Gate Saga would definitely be in my top 5 games of all time, but so would Final Fantasy Tactics. I love Capcom, used to competitively play Street Fighter, and did some of the hardest challenges in the DMC and Onimusha games.
So basically I am pretty across the board gamer, but I will never spend time with a game which I do not think is 100% quality.
Now I hear a lot of the arguments against the so-called PC "elite" saying they fear change. I disagree with this strongly. I do not think they fear change. Did they hate the changes from BGI to BGII? Did they hate Planescape Torment? Was DA:O not given a very warm welcome by them? These are all different games that were, by and large, loved by PC gamers. They live on as classic pieces of gaming history to many of them (myself included). So please, don't brush their concerns aside with a simple "oh you're just an old fart who fears change". It's just plain wrong.
Now, onto what I feel is really the biggest issue with DA2's direction, the combat. Sure, there are many other points people are voicing displeasure about, but this to me stands out as the most consistently talked about one.
I see so many people say "The combat is just like DA:O! It''s just faster and there's more flashly animations". Don't you see, that you are contradicting yourself in this statement? How can the combat be exactly the same, but then different? I'll give you an example from an enormously popular and excellent gaming franchise: when Street Fighter II moved from Champion Edition to Hyperfighting and the game was sped up considerably, it changed forever (in that case for the better).
So my point is, that the speed of the combat, in my belief, has fundamentally changed the way a large part of the game works. It intrinsically has moved DA away from a tactical approach to playing. Look at all the Final Fantasy Tactics games, or their related titles (the fantastic Tactics Ogre just got re-released for PSP). These are pure, turn based games. Strategy requires thought, timing, planning. How can you do this when everything happens at light speed? Sure you can pause, but really, I have to be brutally honest, the pausing in DA2 so far seemed totally pointless. Why? Because when I paused and issued a command then unpaused, the action was over so quickly that I had to pause again instantly to issue the next command. It just seemed totally redundant and not the way the game was meant to be played.
Now someone will bring up that the game was on normal difficulty. Okay, sure. I played DA:O on nightmare, it was the only difficulty that made the combat in the game interesting and challenging for me. The problem with DA2 that I am already seeing is that...the combat seems so twitchy that I don't think making it harder will actually make it more fun. I think it will actually just turn into a frustrating mess. Look at that firestorm spell, with FF turned on, would you every actually use this? It will be totally useless with FF. Now you will say "ooh well Mr Hardcore, that's just another challenge" well honestly, I think that is just lazy or thoughtless programming right there.
This is part of what all of the "haters" as many call them are feeling. Couple this with the complete loss of a tactical camera and the loss of full dialogue to choose from, and PC gamers find themselves thinking "wait, why did I like this game before?"
I don't know if this will impact on sales. I think definitely the PC might take a slight hit, but so far, I feel that the consoles will more than make up for it. It does make me kind of sad, because it was nice, to feel that just maybe, there was going to be one SINGLE franchise, that catered to people who love true cRPGs.
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