3274 réponses à ce sujet

[E-magO]

Likes:
Good graphics
Voice Acting for the main character
Better UI
Easier Buy/Sell interface (specially the junk filter)
Good storyline


Dislikes:
A huge number of bugs(mainly nvidia related, and sound jerking), glitches, crashes, hangs ( VERY annoying ), NPCs that hide under stairs...
bugs
bugs?
bugs! ( so why release it with so many bugs even found in the demo? sigh.. )
..resuming...
Repetitive scenarios
Poor customization of companions' gear
Could have had more dialogues with more NPCs like the original game, I feel I only talk to those absolutely necessary to the plot and there's little room to develop character as in previous games.
And for the last complaint, the game looks more targeted for casual and new-to-the-genre players than fans of the series. It was dissapointing, but it's not completely a turn-off , i guess.

Overall I am enjoying the game so far but I'd really want to play a more finished and polished game. I hope there will be patches soon.

[kenpachiTaiChou]

ive enjoyed it to a point.. but gets a bit repetitve. level 20 and trying to kill that f'ing high dragon!! maybe mix party better?

[RaylenEX]

OneEntity wrote...

I like the game, I wanna love it I can't.

Yes I so wanted to love the game but it has me dissapointed. I'll try not to be specific so I don't spoil anything.

Pros:
Junk system in inventory: Kinda handy. A good tool for all RPGs to have.
Faster combat: No more sauntering into the fray.

Cons:
(Deep breath..)

Story: What story? Half the city get kidnapped, you rescue half of that, and the rest gets killed. The end. Furthermore, there are way too many cliffhangers. Some cliffhangers are good to ensure continuity in a franchise but here we have nothing but cliffhangers. Furthermore, all the cliffhangers from DAO ain't answered. Is this really DA2?

Relationships: "Hey I just met you 1 second ago, now kiss me". Totally awkward and unrealistic. If you can't pull off romance properly, then don't bother. What a bummer. Furthermore, there are no developments to the relationships. All just flings. In DAO, your choice of relationships actually had a material impact on the outcome of the game!

Friendship: Relationships aside, your friends are just NPCs. You can't chit-chat anymore. 

Environment: What stood out for DAO was the fact that you could travel around, on an ADVENTURE, with friends, and that brought us consumers into the game. The number of areas in DA2 can be counted with one hand. A dozen quests can be done in the same dungeon environment.

Time Jumps: It was widely publicized that DA2 would last 10 years. However, time jumps were abrupt, awkward and didn't make sense.

Creatures: There is NO variety! This is one of the most dissapointing areas. Creatures brought back from DAO (90% of the game) were the same at best. The rest were badly modelled.

Weapons and Armor: Terrible variety, and to make matters worse, only the equipment for your character can be fully customized. This, combined with the time jumps (and concurrent level jumps), makes it terrible.

Dialogue: The dialogue wheel has removed all challenge there is to conversations in DA2. It has also limited the number of conversation trees. When someone speaks to you, you can only respond in 3 ways.

Length: Was it even 15 hours of game play? I did almost every single side quest and it barely took me 2 nights!

Skills: animations, especially for mages, just didn't give the oopmh that was required. 



Sigh my mom always nags that computer games are a waste of time. Please don't make me agree with her.

[Deylar]

So I'll make a quick review, since it seems the posted above summed up almost all my opinions.

Pros:

Combat- Rogue anyone. Rogue is awesome with the two blades and like teleporting behind enemies and awesomeness. I also loved the mage. Never go for warrior types myself. Beat the game as mage though.

Clean Simple Graphics- They weren't all that mystifying and pretty, but they were clean, simpl and easy on the eyes and very nice.

Cons:

Rehashed dungeon, same dungeon used over and over and over again

Nowhere else but Kirkwall

No development between you and your companions

To short, I beat this game in three days. I realized I didn't play on Thursday. But played Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday.

And did all the side quest and companion quest

Story, but no story? I got lost, what is this game about again?

[arathor_87]

At first I was disappointed when I heard the news about Dragon Age 2, but before the release I was really excited.

But after playing this for a while I'm really really disappointed in this game, from bigger things to smaller things.

Big things: Graphic is better but the combat is way to fast. Sometimes I can't see what my character is doing because of the speed and all the blood flying around. The no time for breathing and its combat on combat. And I think the storyline is not half as good as in the first game. Not as good development between charcters as in the DA:O and I feel like I'm doing the same thing all the time.

Smaller things: You can't change armor (WTF?!), the spell icon bar is ugly and outdated and the talent tree is ugly.

And of course I have to give some credit to the voice actors and the updated graphics on my char, but thats it. I'm sorry thats the way I feel, and my opinions counts as much as yours even if you don't agree.

Modifié par arathor_87, 12 mars 2011 - 08:31 .

[Slender Brenda]

Dissapointed a lot, actually.

In sequel, you actually expect progress of some kind, but it seems Bioware got confused along the way, because sequel is pretty much worse at everything. However it does have dialogue wheel, lol.

Entire time it seems as if DAII is only improving the facade while it has it soul devoured (by EA, ofc).

Basicly, if you don't have DA:O nor DA II, buy the first one and ignore sequel.

[Uoman]

I picked up DA:O a few months ago and loved it. Played it, replayed it, and just went nuts really. When I found out DA:2 wasn't that far off, I went out and pre-ordered as fast as I could.

After finishing the first play through of DA:2 I felt like I bought a McChicken with a 50 and got change back for a 5. And all I got in the end was one chicken nugget. With a bite out of it.

I'm a huge fan of rpgs and I occasionally find myself playing the occasional hack'n'slash, but the combat system just feels like a horrible mutation of the two. There's potential there, but jeez.

I've played everquest off and on for over 10 years,so I'm used to broken, unbalanced, and overall just screwed up game content. This was just bad, by any comparison. The melee rogue is ridiculously abusive with the right abilities. Especially with the complete lack of needing to manage agro.

The graphics would have been a huge improvement, if not for spending 70% of your time in the same 4 dungeons. The copy/paste bs of the zones wasn't just obvious, it was obnoxious. There wasn't even an attempt to hide it. Other games may do it, but I can't remember any examples that would even compare in recent history.

My male rogue ended up in an accidental relationship with Anders because I gave up on the dialogue choices. You chose one option, get something completely different. Then there's the choices where you either say something flirty or completely rude. If I'd rather just ignore a persons advances and move on with the story, w/o being a ******, I should be able to. If I choose to. At least with Zevran in DA:O I could chose to ignore his advances and keep a positive relationship.

Don't get me started on my characters relationship with Fenris. Probably my favorite character in DA:2, but his views were the complete opposite of the decisions I made. I would expect he'd either attack me or just leave at some point. Well, he left my party for all of five minutes I guess and then came rushing back. There was just no reason for him to stick with me in the first place. Overall, the dialogue system was just half-arsed. It could have worked, but it seemed like in the end they just threw some random sound bites in at times.

The story was ok, but got buried by the side quests for a huge portion of the game.

As a whole it just felt like it was a stepping stone. The game felt unfinished, and then rather than closure they give us a cliffhanger. If they take the story the direction that was implied, I'd definitely buy future DA games.

There was really only three real positives for me. The fight with the arashok, grand dragon and the final boss. It was the only times I felt like the battle system really fit. They were also the only encounters that lasted more than 60 seconds, which appeals to my EQ addiction. They were also the only reason I'll ever give DA:2 a second play through. With emphasis on the first two.

[Godeshus]

Haven't read anything here and I don't plan on it for a while. Thanks for this thread I think it's important that game developpers involve themselves directly with feedback from their customers.

But after a few hours of play here is my initial reaction based on my experience.

Gameplay:

Camera motions are smooth. Player movement is precise (so far) and quite easy to control. Graphics and atmosphere is superb. Cannot comment on sound as I don't have a real soundcard to comment about. My onboard is decent but still generic, with sound quality quite average. DX11 really shines so far on the gfx side of things, though. Gorgeous game to look at.

I seem to get some serious lag during cutscenes. It appears to be random and a result to the game loading assets into the vram, causing lag? I'm just not sure, but I assume this will be fixed either in an upcoming patch or next time ATI releases new drivers. Regardless, this is most likely a tech issue with my hardware and not an actual complaint as I don't know any details on this.

My only real complaint here is that you can't zoom out far enough. I enjoy having a wider view of my surroundings than is allotted to us by the game. I also like to be able to pan the camera around but this seems impossible so far, but I haven't explored all the options yet so perhaps there are some camera options I can mess around with.

Levels are really well done. With a dynamic topography and tight hallways, tons of clutter and the right number of stragglers, I felt presented with a world that was quite rich. It's enough to say that from my limited experience so far, the levels have a 'lived in' feel. When you walk into an inn, or a shop, or someone's house, you really feel like that is where you are.

I don't really have any complaints as far as the levels go. Not yet, anyway.

Fighting is epic. I will go on to say that I haven't had this much fun since I fought off a horde of ninja zombies with my bare hands last year. True story!

UI

Everything fits right. Menus are ergonomic, well organized. Item bar is convenient and has lots of space.  Would have swapped the different sides of the shopping window but that's more a case of strokes and folks.

But the inventory...I don't want ONLY filters. I want to be able to scroll through all of my stuff in one window. You already put it 6 tabs to act as filters. What's 1 more? Found this to be sloppy.

I do not like the armor system. I want more control over my party.

Story

I like the characters so far. Voice acting is good, animations are natural. their stories are quite different and I enjoy learning about them. The story is unfolding at a good pace for me, with enough in-betweens to keep me distracted and exploring.

So far I find the story to be more credible than in DAO. Technically it seems richer, more emotive and darker even than DAO. For some reason I can't quite put my finger on, though, I don't have this obsessive drive, as powerful as a mating ritual, to keep going. That is usually how I feel with bioware games. "Just a little while longer" doesn't seem to have its fingers wrapped around me. But honestly I've been a tad down recently (just a bit, and nothing specific or serious is the cause) so it's hard to say if the game hasn't seduced me or if it's because the game itself...I just don't know right now.

Haven't followed the story far enough in to give any negative criticism in that department. It's all good so far.

Copy Protection

Remove it. All of it. Even disk check. Don't punish legitimate users because of some criminals. Piracy has popluarized games and brought them to the masses. And they're not your customers. The majority of illegal downloaders wouldn't buy your game anyway. You're not losing anything. And for every 20 of these pirates that rip off and share your product there is 1 brand new customer because of the publicity. Piracy helpped the gaming industry outgross hollywood last year.

Give your legitimate game owners a break. Give us freedom. We support you. Don't punish us or even make things difficult for us just because other people are thieves.

Anyway all around good job Bioware. The quality and thought you put into all of your games is evident here. The little things are rife, the jokes, cameos, banter. Your ability to try new things and experiment with your games is paying off, in my opinion. I loved DAO and I'm really glad that DAII is a fresh experience, rather than a continuation of the experience I had last winter.

Keep up the good work, and I'll keep buying yoru games.

But seriously. Copy Protection. Stop using it. It doesn't help.

-godeshus

[MintyBiscuit]

Ok so i beat it my first play through and i really enjoyed this game. Sure they could have done a lot better but hey sometimes sequels dont always live up to expectation. I was obsessed with origins. it has the best story i have ever played in a game. I know ill get any DLC they release also. And hope that if theres a DA3 they really look at what the players who are buying the game have said and work on fixing the problems.

[Uoman]

Oh, and the freaking itemization... omfg. Like ninety percent of the loot you receive is garbage, even excluding the fact that the vast majority of loot as a whole went immediately to your "junk". So, there's no optimization of your companions gear, yet most of the gear you can't wear because your character isn't class X?

Seriously, they waste dev time making so many different types of "junk" items and class specific items, but can't manage to give us any real diversity in quests and dungeons? Wasteful.

Then there's the star rating system for gear. Anyone want to explain to me why one ring has 3% damage and 2 stamina/mana regen and is a no star item and another ring is 3% damage and 2 stamina/mana regen is four stars? I'd really love an for an explanation for that.

As there's no bleed-over in class abilities to speak of they could have just made generic armor that would be functional for all three classes, with certain sets maybe leaning more one way or another. The itemization and inventory set up in DA:2, imho, is by far it's biggest drawback. In DA:O and DA:A it was one of it's greatest strengths. Mage class duel wielding in plate armor, if nothing else, is a fun change from the man-dresses fantasy games are so well known for.

[jinglesdxx]

big dissapointment ...

[AndroLeonidas]

Only issues I have with it so far are totally minor. Can't change companion armor and the male voice work. No matter how young looking you make th emale character the voice still sounds like a middle aged man. Guess I'll just have to play as a female all the time.

[AndroLeonidas]

Uoman wrote...

Oh, and the freaking itemization... omfg. Like ninety percent of the loot you receive is garbage, even excluding the fact that the vast majority of loot as a whole went immediately to your "junk". So, there's no optimization of your companions gear, yet most of the gear you can't wear because your character isn't class X?

Seriously, they waste dev time making so many different types of "junk" items and class specific items, but can't manage to give us any real diversity in quests and dungeons? Wasteful.

Then there's the star rating system for gear. Anyone want to explain to me why one ring has 3% damage and 2 stamina/mana regen and is a no star item and another ring is 3% damage and 2 stamina/mana regen is four stars? I'd really love an for an explanation for that.

As there's no bleed-over in class abilities to speak of they could have just made generic armor that would be functional for all three classes, with certain sets maybe leaning more one way or another. The itemization and inventory set up in DA:2, imho, is by far it's biggest drawback. In DA:O and DA:A it was one of it's greatest strengths. Mage class duel wielding in plate armor, if nothing else, is a fun change from the man-dresses fantasy games are so well known for.

The stars are in relation to your level. Guide says two stars is normal for your current level. If something has no stars than it is beneath your current level and there is better stuff out there. A five star item at level 7 might be a one star item and level 14.

[Uoman]

AndroLeonidas wrote...

Uoman wrote...

Oh, and the freaking itemization... omfg. Like ninety percent of the loot you receive is garbage, even excluding the fact that the vast majority of loot as a whole went immediately to your "junk". So, there's no optimization of your companions gear, yet most of the gear you can't wear because your character isn't class X?

Seriously, they waste dev time making so many different types of "junk" items and class specific items, but can't manage to give us any real diversity in quests and dungeons? Wasteful.

Then there's the star rating system for gear. Anyone want to explain to me why one ring has 3% damage and 2 stamina/mana regen and is a no star item and another ring is 3% damage and 2 stamina/mana regen is four stars? I'd really love an for an explanation for that.

As there's no bleed-over in class abilities to speak of they could have just made generic armor that would be functional for all three classes, with certain sets maybe leaning more one way or another. The itemization and inventory set up in DA:2, imho, is by far it's biggest drawback. In DA:O and DA:A it was one of it's greatest strengths. Mage class duel wielding in plate armor, if nothing else, is a fun change from the man-dresses fantasy games are so well known for.

The stars are in relation to your level. Guide says two stars is normal for your current level. If something has no stars than it is beneath your current level and there is better stuff out there. A five star item at level 7 might be a one star item and level 14.

Issue is, the items have the EXACT same stats/mods.  There's no reason an item I got at level three should have fewer stars than an item I receive at lvl 22 when they are EXACTLY the same in all but name.

Edit:
And I mean that literally.  I went almost the entire game after I got to my first "house" without using the storage box, choosing to sell everything.  When I went to clean out the storage when things were rapping up, I pulled out an item called simply "Ring" that had no stars with the same stats as a ring that had a special name and four stars.

As far as weapons go, it isn't even fully functional.  An item with 22 physical damage and an added 8 physical damage with two aug slots shouldn't be rated lower than a weapon with 26 physical damage and no added dmg, mods or aug slots.  Why would a weapon with a base 30 physical damage ever rate lower than a weapon with 26, especially when, if augged, can reach 44 physical damage?  It's just another way they tried to cut corners and should have been cut. 

Guess it'll work for people who upgrade gear based off the star system rather than a piece of gears actual full potential.  Still, the star system is misleading and obviously broken.  If you've ever played rpgs before it really doesn't take long to figure that out.

Modifié par Uoman, 12 mars 2011 - 10:01 .

[Imarikurumi]

I'd give it a 6.5/10.

I like the new combat system, improved UI and inventory.

But storyline and content is lacking badly. I didnt quite like, feel attached to the companions. Recycling maps and quests is a big let down, imo focusing the entire story around kirkwall is a big mistake, there is no traveling, even with the "story spanning 10 years" crap or whatever, it doesnt actually feel 10 years have past in a fantasy world. In other words, DAO 1 year of fighting darkspawn has more content, more enganing than the 10 years becoming a champion in Kirkwall.

Modifié par Imarikurumi, 12 mars 2011 - 09:47 .

[AndroLeonidas]

Uoman wrote...

AndroLeonidas wrote...

Uoman wrote...

Oh, and the freaking itemization... omfg. Like ninety percent of the loot you receive is garbage, even excluding the fact that the vast majority of loot as a whole went immediately to your "junk". So, there's no optimization of your companions gear, yet most of the gear you can't wear because your character isn't class X?

Seriously, they waste dev time making so many different types of "junk" items and class specific items, but can't manage to give us any real diversity in quests and dungeons? Wasteful.

Then there's the star rating system for gear. Anyone want to explain to me why one ring has 3% damage and 2 stamina/mana regen and is a no star item and another ring is 3% damage and 2 stamina/mana regen is four stars? I'd really love an for an explanation for that.

As there's no bleed-over in class abilities to speak of they could have just made generic armor that would be functional for all three classes, with certain sets maybe leaning more one way or another. The itemization and inventory set up in DA:2, imho, is by far it's biggest drawback. In DA:O and DA:A it was one of it's greatest strengths. Mage class duel wielding in plate armor, if nothing else, is a fun change from the man-dresses fantasy games are so well known for.

The stars are in relation to your level. Guide says two stars is normal for your current level. If something has no stars than it is beneath your current level and there is better stuff out there. A five star item at level 7 might be a one star item and level 14.

Issue is, the items have the EXACT same stats/mods.  There's no reason an item I got at level three should have fewer stars than an item I receive at lvl 22 when they are EXACTLY the same in all but name.

They may look the same but they are not. A level 7 ring with +3 stamina is not the same as a level 14 ring with +3 stamina, hence the stars.

[Chabodeux]

After the demo i was more than demoralised, but the game managed to surprise me in a good way.

Combat is fine, it looked horrible in the demo.
Me conv. system is still a setback, but not a big one. Most of the type you get decent amount of options...
Cant customize party members armor: First i thought this could really annoy me, but it turned out good. You can still change their weap,rings,amulet,belt...And i dont want an idiotic looking companion, just becouse that armor has better stats.

[Uoman]

[/quote]They may look the same but they are not. A level 7 ring with +3 stamina is not the same as a level 14 ring with +3 stamina, hence the stars.[/quote]

Actually, 3 of any stat at lvl 1 is the same as 3 of any stat at max lvl.  There are soft caps with deminishing returns at certain levels, but before you reach those caps 3 constitution is 15hps at lvl 1 or lvl 22.  Even then, I believe those soft caps only apply to attack, defense and armor ratings as I've never seen deminishing returns on stats.

The percentages don't change because you're a higher level, they function off what your base stat is now.  So, 3% physical damage is going to still be 3% physical damage whether you're doing 10 damage or 100.

[iLLbehaviour]

JoshPloof wrote...

I REALLY hate the new art style, it's wayy to similar to god of war. And I hate how Varric is narrating every single thing telling us what's happening and we don't actually get to experience how it happens or change/shape how it happens in any way.

Completely agree!
First thing I thought when I saw the intro was geez.. why such a god of war III look and feel?!

I'm a little disappointed.. (actually.. I think I'm a lot disappointed)

[Rothnang]

What I like about Dragon Age 2:

I like that the story for the most part really just focusses on someone making a name for themselves and influencing the history of a small city. I enjoy RPGs that don't always involve the end of the world, because it feels more real and more meaningful in a lot of ways. I liked the Qunari a lot more as enemies than the Darkspawn, they felt more like a worthy adversary who was threatening because of discipline and smarts and not just "yea, there is an infinite number of them" like the darkspawn.

I like the characters, most of them are likable or interesting, Varric is absolutely hilarious, so is Isabella. Having those two in your party makes the game just really funny.

It's not as horribly dark as the first one. I mean, the world is really wonderfully detailed, but the whole first game was just this all around picture of hopelessness, where every bit of levity always seemed like gallows humor. This game showed

Generally this game is just fun to play because of the story being good.


What I don't like about Dragon Age 2:

The map, enemy and item design is just lazy. Having the same location over and over and over and just blocking off different hallways isn't a good way to make an entire game, it's just really lazy. While all the unique locations in the game are beautiful and rich in detail, so many locations repeat ad nauseum that it really weakens the game. The same thing is true for items and enemies. A lot of the weapons in the game just look ridiculous, like they are way too big and would be impossible to handle by even the strongest person. I mean, there is a reason why I bought this and not some Final Fantasy game. You run into the same few enemies pretty much over and over in this game. Bosses excluded you got Spiders, Hurlocks, Shades, Skeletons, Qunari, Dragons, Golems, Abominations, Demons, Revenants, Arcane Horrors, assorted Humanoids. Maybe I'm forgetting a few, but that's about all there is in the whole game. Genlocks are completely missing, even though they make up the bulk of the Darkspawn as I understand it.
It's kind of very obvious that not a lot of work was put into the assets of this game and it shows.

Bioware seems to have some kind of obsession with giving casters horrible looking hats. I mean, the Consular Hat is infamous before the game even launched, but honestly, I don't think that thing can hold the candle to all the millinery misdeeds and humbug headwear that the Dragon Age games have forced on mages.
How about a headband, or a crown, or a plain hood, heck, I'd take the idiotic pointy hats from Two Worlds 2.

(Possible spoiler) When I gave Averline her gift shield she yelled at me for selling the shield of her husband when in fact I had it stored Ser Wesleys Shield in my house because I figured selling the one thing she still had of his was sort of a dick move. I applaud you for actually making a character emotionally attached to an item that doesn't level with them (Like Bianca), but if you're going to do that let me get it out and say "Actually, I kept it for all these years, because I thought you'd like to put it on the wall or something"

The combat in this game has a lot of bad flaws. There are several reasons why it bothers me:

- Every fight is an ambush. You litterally get ambushed all the time. If this was a D&D campaigns your players would be screaming bloody murder about letting them make perception checks. If spiders have dropped on my head ten times already in a cave why in the hell would my party walk into the next room without looking up to see the elephant sized spider chilling on the cieling? Seriously.

- Respawning enemies make the fights completely un-tactical unless you have died so many times on them that you know what's coming. I honestly just hate this. What's the point of having a tank pick up a group of enemies while your mages and rogues are shooting from the back if a second later a whole new mess of enemies just pops out of the ground or jumps off a roof and starts going after the mages and rogues?  That kind of thing completely negates all positioning and strategy in those fights, the only thing that helps you through them is to just kill as fast as you possibly can.

- Party control is just bad and awkward. I have a real problem with the fact that you can only either tell all characters to not move or none of them. You run into a lot of fights in this game where that's really a crippling issue because you need your melee characters to move and respond to the flow of battle, but you don't want your ranged characters to move, or maybe you see a boss monster charging a big AoE and you need a character to get out of the way, but unless you take him over and force him to stand there he will run right back in. The Tactics system on ability usage works great, but where common sense is concerned it doesn't at all. What I would really like to see for melee characters is to assign them an agression radius where I can tell them to stay put in an area, but still move around and engage enemies in that area.

- Party members always want to charge the enemy with absolutely no regard for strategy or positioning. It's really obnoxious actually. Let's say I'm in a hallway leading into a large room, in the center of the room are multiple enemy melee fighters, flanked by archers. Here is what you would logically do:  Stay in the hallway, let the enemies come to you to negate their range advantage. Here is what you are forced to do: Charge into the room and engage all the opponents head on because there is just no way to control your party tightly enough to keep them from charging eventually unless you want to play frame based tactics.

- Abilities have annoyingly huge cooldowns. You just don't get to use them often enough, especially single target abilities are mostly a disappointment. 

- The whole concept of combo powers is kind of crummy. I don't mind some synergy between characters, but come on, +900% damage if a certain condition is met? That's basicly just saying "Don't even bother with this unless that condition is met, oh and, if you don't like that character that causes that condition a lot, screw you!" I mean, I play as a mage and the damage my spells do is nothing but pitiful unless I get a perfect setup by a warrior. I mean, I could understand maybe 50% more damage or something along those lines where you can say "useful but not required" but we're litterally talking about a difference where if you cast the spell without staggered on the enemy it's like one extra standard attack from the rogue in damage, but if they are staggered they die. What's the fun in creating these synergies if you create them in a way where they aren't a welcome bonus but an absolute nescesity.

- The games balance is awful. This time around mages are the crummy ones. They can't do any decent damage without the right conditions on the target, so pretty much the only role left to them is crowd control and a little bit of healing. Healing got nerfed to hell, potions got a huge buff. Rogues do absolutely idiotic ammounts of damage, I haven't even played the game as a rogue yet, but both Varric and Isabella can turn an enemy into a fleshy pulp in a few seconds with just their auto attack and execute moves dealing upward of 1000 damage in my game. I mean, I'm fine with mages being utility and all, but the thing is, while with warriors and rogues I feel like after level 15-16 all additional talents are just icing on the cake, with a mage I feel like I don't even have half the spells I'd need to feel confident in saying "I can provide utility full time" because most of what playing a mage is is groaning at cooldowns and being annoyed that your standard attack is a tickle stick.

- Healing is handled in a sucky way in this game I think. Spirit healer is pretty much total bunk except for its passives, which are good. In order to use the spirit healer abilities you have to activate the aura, but with the aura on you can't really use any other spells. This wouldn't be such a big deal if healing was a full time job that actually required you to do something, but since the group heal is on a 40 second cooldown and the aura itself just isn't all that amazing you just end up turning it off again. Even if the aura was amazing, what fun is standing around and being a health dispenser / tickle stick shooter? Yea, you can still cast a few other spells, but the selection is so severely limited its not really viable. So basicly, a worthless passive you constantly have to turn on and off. Healing potions are much more potent than magical healing, the only thing that really nescecitates magical healing at all is that potions have a cooldown. Since mages do such awful damage you can't get away with having two mages in the party like in DA:O either anymore, so if your main character is a mage you either have to deal with the awfulness of healing or just say "screw it" and do the entire game with potions. (which is actually possible)  

- Enemies who are completely made of hitpoints. I already hated this in Mass Effect 2, where especially when you set the game to the harder modes the enemies basicly get to completely cheat the system by pure HP. You are cowering behind cover trying not to get hit because you'll get shredded in seconds if out in the open and then one of your enemies just gets up, strolls across the room through a hail of gunfire, gets to you with HP to spare, walks around your cover and kills you. That's what I mean by "cheating through hitpoints". This also happens a lot in DA2, though in a slightly different way. Here the main way that enemies cheat by hitpoints is mainly felt when you fight enemy mages, because your characters will hang around 100-200 hitpoints for the most part, so a spell that knocks them down by 50-70 or something that does periodic damage is incredibly lethal, in the meanwhile your spells promise 300 damage in the tooltip and rob the average opponent of maybe 20% of his health. It's very obvious that every single enemy you run across has hitpoints coming out their ears and only dies fast to characters that do absurd ammounts of damage.

- You have to pause way too often. The funny thing is, the reason why you have to pause the fights in Dragon Age all the time is because they are very fast paced, but you still have to control a whole party full of characters. It's just sort of contradictory. I mean, in Mass Effect 2 you also had to pause the game to issue orders to party members, but it wasn't quite as bad. For the most part your team mates would seek cover and you could trust them not to die, in Dragon Age that isn't the case, if their healthbar takes a nosedive and you don't see this, pause the game and figure out why, if you can heal them and what you need to do to stop it they will die, and this happens all the time. Isabella ran to attack the boss, got surrounded? Varric being attacked by 7 bad guys who respawned behind your party? Marill being attacked by 3 spiders that spit poison? There are any number of cases in which your only hope to save that character is to immediately pause, assign a health potion, use some kind of AoE CC to get the enemies off, taunt them...   While that is the one part in DA2 that is still tactical in a sense, you litterally get into some fights where you pause, assign actions, observe results, pause, repeat.  

Side notes:

Is there any place where you have compiled a list of things that were deliberately changed in the art style from DAO to DA2?  For example, was Sten the companion from DAO supposed to be a very human looking Qunari or a human convert or did you simply decide to update the look of the Qunari and he should have had horns as well? Do Genlocks still exist amongst the Darkspawn, or is it all Hurlocks now?


Technical stuff:

For some reason the game won't allow me to have high res textures at a 1920x1200 resolution. In fact some of the textures in the game show up at a low resolution and miss spec and bump maps.

Ressurection is bugged, it brings back characters out of combat mode even if the fight still goes on, where they regenerate huge ammounts of health, they don't go to combat mode anymore, but will only execute one single attack if you tell them to and then go back to out of combat mode. This allows you to cheat your way past dangerous bosses by simply ressurecting a character and then ordering them to attack over and over while they regenerate health at a huge rate and can't die.

There are some elven NPC which have really awful blocky faces with eyes that are just directly on the main texture, no bump or spec on there either. They look like rejects from Gothic 1.


In Summary:

Well, I really wanted to give my feedback, and yea, a lot of it is negative, but that's because all the good parts of the game don't need improvement. I love the story, but a better game system would make it even more fun.  The reason why I'm actually taking hours to write stuff that's bad about the game is because despite everything I have said I still really like it and I want to see it improved for future installments.

Modifié par Rothnang, 12 mars 2011 - 10:59 .

[SANNAFABICH]

I just finished the demo and am thinking of buying the full game, but I'm not convinced.

Game doesn't look or feel like it's set in the same DA universe we came to love from the first game. DAO felt dark, misterious, with an intriguing and fascinating mythology. Scenarios and places were magical and made you afraid of walking through them, but at the same time were so captivating that made you want to explore every corner.

DA2 demo felt nothing like that. Now, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm just saying it dropped all those elements that made the first game memorable. Even the designs looked different. And that is why I'm not sure if I want to buy it. Demo was fun to play but I was REALLY hoping to get the same feeling I got from playing DAO, but unfortunately I didn't.

I've yet to decide what to do. If the rest of the game is anything like the demo, I guess I'll just have to look at it like a different game set in oddly familiar but different universe than DAO. Maybe it's still a fun game to play on its own right.

Do the feeling and look get similar to DAO later in the game?

[KillerYeh]

It's one of the best dark fantasy stories I must say. So colourful, so sad... so unusual, I am really shocked, even some copy-paste dungeons can't stop me...
9.5/10

[WhiteCross]

likes :
no more friendly fire.
love the cross class combo.
battles are great.
so many quest to do.
inventory management made easy.
no need to learn potion/poison/trap crafting
tactic slots are great!

dislikes:
when i move to a spot, camera automatically rotates, it makes me dizzy.
friendly/rivalry system
warrior cannot use dual wielding... =(
since I'm from south east Asia, can't get the other bonus items even though i pre-ordered my DA2. ~sad

[Sueno]

Scelous wrote...

xsgenefuzz, I've probably been gaming as long as you have, and I feel the exact opposite.

xsgenefuzz wrote...

we *see* that everything we love about the genre is being sacrificed in order to appease people who have no respect for the essence of RPGs because they don't *get* the genre.

Or maybe the RPG genre is advancing, but nostalgia holds you back?

How about this, Dragon Age 2, has more in common with the action/sandbox genre ala Grand Theft Auto than it does with rpgs. In fact, a lot of rpgs are going in this direction. Why? Hmmm, maybe because these are the kind of games mainstream gamers typically play.

Furthermore, I'm curious how anyone is okay with the recycled maps? The whole reason the game takes place in Kirkwall is because Bioware only had a year to complete this thing. They had no time to create expansive and explorable environments. Also, keep in mind that you're not always going to the same cave, it's that all caves look alike, all houses look alike, all underground passages look alike, despite being located in completely different areas. This is what is known as a rushed job. And if you support this title you're telling EA they can continue creating games with recycled environments and they'll get away with it.

It's okay to like DA2, I find myself loving the characters. However you should be able to take a step back and look at the glaring problems with this title and give it a fair critique. You, the consumer, gain nothing by telling EA to continue with business as usual.

If anything, this has proven my theory, no good rpg can be created in such a short time. Now I'm increasingly worried about Mass Effect 3. I probably won't waste my time or money it if it's just going to be more of the same.