Strong Points
Dialogue: The dialogue system and voiced hawke was a good step forward, the many different reactions you could have to somthing said is by far the games strongest feature. You could play as a wise-ass, a good natured soul, a no nonsense type, and a ruthless .....jerk. I think this brought a lot of good character development that made me feel much more attached to hawke. In contrast DA:Os only attachment to the main character was that you always see her, leaving all the dialogue up to imagination of the player. 9/10
Voice acting: The voice actors where typically very good, though there are several lackluster lines that just do not feel natural. Hawkes personality comes off as very likeable, and meaningful and i think the actress played her perfectly. 8/10
Music: While it's not the masterpiece that was Dragon age 1, Dragon age 2's musical score was still very good. 8/10
Unfortunately..thats where the good ends for me, Dragon age 2 was a massive disappointment for me.
Dislikes
Story: The story seems much more a collection of quests that just get lost to the point that it confused me. I would try my best to move the story along, but without any sort of driving goal to strive for it just..felt empty. As if i was running around like a headless chicken doing repetitive missions on the same couple maps fighting the same people over and over again. It's a dramatic downturn from DA:O that had a strong plot, that also set a perfect pace. DA2 seems slow, uninspired, and rushed. 5/10
Combat: The ball was seriously dropped here i though..in a single word-horrible. I don't know what was discussed at the development meetings- but how could anyone look at the combat and think it was a good idea? The animations are bizarrely fast, enemies die in unnatural ways, seemingly endless waves of enemies who spawn in the oddest of places, and killing them is just so repetitive due to natural animations. I often found myself just wishing to "get it over with" and avoiding combat all together when possible just to not deal with it. Such a radical change from the winning formula that had been around for years- somthing that defined the tactical greatness of DA:O has been reduced to little more than a dynasty warrior type theme- with actual amounts of gore. I can't find a single redeeming quality about the combat, it feels rushed, unnecessarily changed, and bluntly an abandonment of the fanbase in hopes of finding a new fan based who are more into fast paced FPS games than anything RPG. It's just..ugly.. 3/10
Graphics: I was shocked on many levels to find out that despite having a 1120mb GTX285, which is not the most modern card- but still plenty capable, the game dose not even give me the option to select anything above a medium setting. Why? It makes the game look so ugly, it's as if all of it's eggs got placed in a single basket on DX11 (Oh i have DX10, but for some odd reason i;m forced to play in DX9...why?) It just looks incredibly ugly, but because i can't see it on the highest setting i can't rank it- but DA:O looked 10 times better than DA2 on the settings i'm forced to play at. I stress the word forced, because it's literal. I've never seen any other game that forces users to select lower settings, it's just not accessible. I always play max settings, 1900x1600 and i rarely have any slowdown, my computer laughed at crisis, and every other "graphical benchmark" used- so why am i forced to play on settings that make it look like Jade Empire?
Audio: The sound effects are nothing quite special, but that are not noticeably bad either. There are more "men" then anything else, the audio of battles feel inspired but not empty, This however is still a major step back from DA:O that brought the sound of battle to life with armor clanking, swords rattling,
Redesigning/Lore: Why was so much of the game designer? I can not get past this and it tore me apart as a Dragon age fan. The 'beautiful' elves are ugly as sin, they are also human height- roughly 5'5. Everyone has received a makeover- why? Even returning characters got a makeover-Anders (about the only one i acually liked) to sandle..why would this be done? The darkspawn look like a medieval army led by skeletor,ogers who had only gotten armor after the darkspawn began "thinking" are not standard and look more Human the monster- and the biggest one of all..the Qunari..WHY? Why do they look like FF10 loinmen on crack? Are they another breed from Sten? Why would things already established, accepted, and loved be changed? It's as if things got changed for the sake of changing them! All of the pre-established lore seems to had been abandoned for unknown reasons... at least tell us "Different climate breeds other varies" or some such thing.. 4/10
Accents and script: I won't lie, despite the high class voice actors a lot of the script was very bad, it was not uncommon for me to be completely lost mere moments after a conversation initiated. If it was not due to very regional specific 'slang' and hard to understand accents, it was jumbled dialog from the script. Characters would act as if we had a history together-despite it being a first encounter, names wouldn't be told- but somehow known later without any further information.
Regional accents will always play a part in dialogue, i don't hold that against the game- but the selection of unclear accents makes for very confusing encounters to those not familiar with it. Hawke and Varric are two examples of well chosen accents, London and Midwestren. Both of these are very clear with easy to understand pronunciation for those who are not familiar with the more 'jumbled' accents like Texan, Georgian, and Scottish of whom would be relatively awkward to understand for someone without experience.
While that is not a major problem, it still kills the moment- forcing me to read much of the dialogue instead of listening to it. 6/10
I could go on all day, i have been a Bioware fan for a long long time, and i've come to expect triple A titles from them- and they have always delivered on that expectation- until now. I don't even want to acknowledge Dragon age 2, it's a mockery of the first in every way but the voice acting. The combat is rubbish, the visuals are at best last generation, and the story is utterly lost in the messy way it is told.
There isn't enough character development either, at no point did i feel any sort of lost connection if somthing bad happened to any of them. I never felt attached to them the way i did in DA:O.
This is the first bioware game i did not enjoy. Dragon age 2 feels rushed, stripted, and abandoned the fanbase in favor of more 'dynasty warriors' type action. The music, voice acting, and dialogue scene are it's only saving grace- but it's not enough to cover up everything else. I rarely say this, but the game is unfinished and needs to be worked on for another 6 months.
The good:
~ Good voice acting
~ Good quality dynamic music
~ involving dialogue setup
The bad
~ Ugly visuals
~ Boring, unrealistic, and repetitive combat
~ Slow moving, boring story.
Harsh 4/10
Optimistic 6/10
A change was gambled on and it missed..badly. Please no more games like this..the only bioware game i don't like.. I buy bioware based on it's company name but with the exception of DA:O the company has taken a disturbing turn in the direction of streamlinement. since 2009.
It's easy for me to blame the console for these problems, as DA2 was said to be "console first" as all the other bioware games seemed to have the PC in mind. Yet i think it was a very bad gamble that was not only rushed, but gave the finger to bioware fans.
Modifié par Princess_Peach, 11 mars 2011 - 02:07 .
((((( <---------------- on a side
Retour en haut
) and a sense of sentimentality, I just like seeing the guys & girls working with the main character be able to dress in a spectrum of styles of armors and cloths(*2) that is appropriate for their character. 
