I've completed DA2 twice, once as Mage and once as Warrior. My lengthy review is below.
Tedious, linear, repetitive level/environment/dungeon design.The re-use of dungeons absolutely destroys all immersion. It is the main reason I really struggled with a second play through; the environments are just so boring.
You can be in chapter 1 or 3, and the dungeon will be exactly the same. You can be in totally different zones/areas on the "outside city of Kirkwall" map, and encounter the exact same dungeon. The dungeons themselves are boring. There are less than 10 items of interest in a given dungeon, and at most two routes of exploration, which invariably means one becomes redundant or becomes a dead end, occasionally even with nothing at the end.
The actual dungeons themselves are aesthetically bland. Walls are uniformally textured, almost all of the dungeons are very well lit, and generally they lack atmosphere, character, and defining features.
Outdoors environmental design suffers from the same issues as dungeon design. The re-use of the same environments throughout the chapters all but destroys any sense of progression. The environments are bland, lack atmosphere, and are almost always very well lit. As with dungeons, in a given outdoors environment there are at most, less than 10 interactive items of interest. Outdoors environments also suffer with regards to linearity of level design. At most there are 3 routes you can choose in a given outdoors environment, and all roads lead to Rome, apparently. The environments almost completely lack signs of life apart from humanoids. You don't see or hear any other animals or even insects in the environment. Immersive...... definitely not. Exploration? Non-existent.
The city of Kirkwall is cold and poorly populated. A city which by all rights should be bustling with activity even at night, is all but dead save for encounters with vagabonds. The trip to the deep roads lacked any significantly dwarven architecture, one of the major atmospheric contributors to Origins. The Dalish camp offered very little to do at all, and really might as well have only consisted of two individuals.
There were no puzzles, no riddles, and no mini-games employed in the level design. It lacked variety and the kind of depth you'd expect from a Bioware title.
Minimal, homogenous enemies.This is one of my other major complaints with DA2.
There were no Genlock's.
Hurlock's, Skeletons, Shades, Abominations and Dragons all look identical.
There were no new fauna/enemies indigenous to the Free Marches encountered, except for "varterral" and "pride demons".
The only variation in enemy strength was arbitrarily greater health, occasional elite units, and boss units. In most cases however, elite and boss units were merely scaled up versions of the other units with some unique abilities.
Characterisation, companions and story.Most of the characters in DA2 lack polish. Most are cookie cutter archetypes; rival sibling Carver, passive and reserved Bethany, smarmy and occasionally witty Varric, overly zealous anders, s-l-u-t-t-y mc-s-l-u-t isabela, prudish butch aveline and the socially awkward Merrill. None of the characters are quirky or interesting, they merely try very hard to represent a wide audience. There is little or no intrigue, no real development of character, hardly even much real exploration of character, from beginning to end.
I won't even broach the issue of romances. They were so comprehensively poor, they genuinely appear to have been a complete afterthought.
The story is sadly much the same. The story is merely an interwoven series of loosely or altogether unrelated events, which limp along sluggishly in anticipation of core storyline development, which actually only entails about 20% of the story. The framed narrative is employed desperately to try and give connectedness to the disjointed combobulation of quests, but ultimately is used far too predictably and limitedly to achieve this. The short scenes of framed narrative between Varric and his host all but gloss over the details of almost an entire chapter in mere seconds, before quickly settling back into another tedious round of grinding through the same 5 maps and dungeons again for, purportedly, different reasons.
Combat, animations, skills, attributes and itemisation.Combat in DA2 is a mixed bag. On the one hand, certain spell effects have been improved and cross-class combo's make for more intricate strategies. I would however like to see the return of combinable spell effects for mages as in Dragon Age Origins. The pace of combat in DA2 is fine. The issue is really with the animations. The warrior and rogue animations, at least for some abilities are, sadly, laughable. I'm referring to scythe and rush. Combat is otherwise very repetitive however, and the wave mechanics, dropping enemies out of the sky onto the field...... really? The only way this could have been less immersive, is if they warped in sci-fi style, or materialised out of thin air. oh wait....... The difficulty of combat seems to have been dialed back also, making it virtually mandatory to play on Hard to encounter any sort of challenge.
At first glance the skills available in DA2 seem extensive and varied. Unfortunately this proves to be false as you progress half way through the game. Certainly as a mage, it is inevitable that one will invest in multiple skill trees, which unfortunately means having to diversify into two types of spell damage, and thereby reducing the efficacy in one spec or the other by virtue of limited itemisation. The depth, or rather lack thereof, of skill trees, is therein prohibitive to developing a character sub-class, which greatly erodes the replayability of a given class.
Derived statistics from attributes in DA2 left me scratching my head somewhat. A weapon and shield warrior must invest in Cunning in order to improve their defense stat. In my opinion, Dexterity is a more appropriate attribute to tie defense or armor to, as the ability to manouvre quickly could make the difference between a blow received to the head, or a blow received square on a shield. Whereas Cunning makes more sense as an attribute that enables one to identify a weak point on enemy armor, and thus attack that point, dealing more damage.
Itemisation was a major issue for me in DA2. Gear was homogenous, with very little diversity of stats or derivatives. The limitations of party itemisation significantly reduced the player's ability to influence derived statistics, damage spec customisation, and the appearance of companions. Also disappointing was the lack of variety and exotic weapons.
Dialogue, morality, friends & rivals, and the conversation wheel.I'm impartial to a voiced protagonist. Personally I prefer the main character is not voiced, as this character can then assume whatever voice I give them, which invariably is more attuned to my perception of the character than a voice actor interpreting script.
I otherwise can't complain about dialogue per se.
Morality in DA2 is shambolic. Far too often it is born out of a dialogue option, somewhat confused with the horrible conversation wheel, further still by ambiguous paraphrasing, and then turned into a wedge issue between two or more companions competing to be your "friend" or "rival". /golfclap
Where is the option to tell all 3 of your party companions to ****** off? No really.....
The problem with morality, friends and rivals, is in so much that rivals and friends tend not to party or group together, certainly not in the circumstances presented in this particular tale. This leads to the abomination of morality which presents in DA2, which is really actually the moral consequence of actions on relationships, rather than actually being accountable for moral decisions. One way or another, in DA2 the companions will still either be a friend or rival, and that's just not how morality or relationships work. Not even close.
The conversation wheel really has no place in a fantasy RPG. I hope if Bioware resolves only 1 other thing apart from the horrendous re-use of maps in this game, it's that they get rid of the conversation wheel from Dragon Age. I literally lost count of the number of times I chose a paraphrased option based on what it said, rather than the icon, and heard the protagonist deliver a line completely at odds with the tone of the paraphrasing. I don't think i've ever quick-loaded more times in a single game play-through in my entire life, and it could have so easily been avoided.
The other noticeably lacking aspect of dialogue in DA2 was the often dark, dry, mature, double-entendre rich, witty banter that ensued from companion interaction, as in Dragon Age Origins. In stead it has been replaced with cheap jabs between two companions, very occasionally humourous and far short of witty, and sometimes of questionable intent. No, even frolicking elves can't redeem a conversation between Varric and Isabela.
Summary.DA2 had the potential to be a good game, even a great one. Unfortunately it missed the mark by a lot. It wasn't due to sequel expectations, but a significant drop in the quality of product. I'm certain even Bioware is not so far removed from reality, as to have been aware they were not releasing an AAA sequel to Dragon Age Origins. It's unfortunate that they did, because they could have extended the release cycle by 2-3 years and actually delivered a quality product.
I gave Dragon Age Origins 9.4/10
I gave Dragon Age Awakening 8.8/10
I give Dragon Age 2 7.5/10
Modifié par Wivvix, 08 avril 2011 - 07:22 .
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