I'll just give some initial impressions from my first 4-5 hours of playing this game. The following is completely my own opinion and experience of course, so take everything that follows as such.
First I'll give what I liked, I thought the game looked good, significantly better then the demo, the characters look fine and I enjoyed the look of Kirkwall, I thought it was a very visually pleasing city to walk around. I enjoyed quite a few of the combat animations (with some expections), even didn't mind the backstab animations of the rogues accepting it as a representation of a smoke effect to confuse an enemy and get behind them (and saw it in a similar light to how stealthing/hide in shadows has often be represented in cRPGs). I generally enjoyed the faster two-handed sword fighting, I definitely prefer the faster attack over the very slow on in Origins, and apart from being a bit to overtwirlly with their staffs I didn't mind mage animations that much.
The voice acting was of high quality across the board, and from what I've seen allot of characters seem interesting, and Kirkwall as a city seems to have some very interesting aspects to it. I enjoyed the quanari resdesign, I thought they came off well, and I think quite of few of the quests have been interesting and enjoyable to play through.
I also really liked that your companions interjected allot more in conversations during quests and such, and you could even call them into the conversation at times (I had Bethany help out quite a few times). This definitely expands the participation of companions in the conversations you have with npcs during quests, and did make those moments feel more alive.
All in all, Dragon Age II is a solid and decent cRPG.
However, as I've been playing through it, I've had a continuing sense of disappointment with the game, and I'll attempt to explain why below.
First of is conversation wheel and system. I already knew I wouldn't like the speaking PC much, but I accepted that Hawke was a bit more of BioWare's character in this respect and looked to just make Hawke more my Hawke. However I found this very difficult to do with the paraphrase system, as just with Shepard, Hawke often says things that seem completely different to what the paraphrase itself suggested, giving me numerous baffled moments with the character. This feeling has become somewhat compounded by the realisation as I've been playing along that apart from the investigation options, the three tones are often enough really just different ways of saying yes, rather the any meaningful way of changing the course of the conversation or helping me definine my Hawke. In fact Hawke seems to often just go along a pre-set path in conversations, and demostrates more awareness and knowledge of events on conversations and those around him (Hawke is male in my current playthrough) then I do, even though I'm susposed to be RPing him, and to an extent and supposed to be him ingame. However, I'm continually confronted with the fact that for me this is not the case, that Hawke is his own character, and I know very little about him, but am rather finding out about him as the game progresses just as I am about his companions and family. It feels like Hawke is a companion character that I just happen to have a bit more influence over.
I also don't really like the heart flirt option on the wheel, I know it wasn't really that hard to figure out the flirt lines in Origins, but this system feels far to simiplfied, there is simply no risk in romances yet for me at all in this system.
Linked with this is a frustration with companion interaction, for a long time during the game I didn't feel I had any real understanding of or connection to Hawke's companions or family. The game presents them as family members and companions but provides no real means to talk to them and gain any sense of who they are and establish a connection to them. When we first arrived in Kirkwall I thought I would finally have an opportunity to talk to them a bit and gain a sense of who they are (and in the case of Hawke's family, a sense of who he was to them), but that first landing at Kirkwall just railroaded me through game-initaited quest conversation one after the other, and then suddenly one year had past and I still didn't even have a chance to talk to any of them. Hawke however demostrated great understanding and familiarity with his family and companions in conversations from this point on, but it is an understanding belonging to the character alone, that I as a player and no part in (which helped reinforce to me the feeling above, that Hawke himself is not a character I'm developing, but his own, divorcing me from an RP experience all together, and made me feel more like I'm watching an interactive movie). I've been happy now to start having conversations with some of the companions at their homes and bases, but sadly even these conversations seem to just involve quest giving, with only the family quest allowing me to find out more about Bethany and Hawke's mother, as well as feeling more of a connection to them. Sadly apart from this it has been from the banters alone I've learned anything, and I have no part in those. Contrasted with Origins, where in the first 15 minutes I had a far greater understanding and feeling of connection to my companions (or to my family members in origins such as the HN and the CE, and friends and family membersin the Dalish origins) then I have in hours with these characters is something I've found to be particularly sad for me. I'm hoping this will improve as the game moves on.
I have also found the story to be rather scattered and lack any real focus or direction so far, the first year being heavily rail-roaded with no real opportunity to explore and now into the 2nd year the main quest function like a side-quest (and having no real distiction to me then the actual sidequests). At the moment I don't even really see why Hawke would want to go into the Deep Roads apart from some vague fear of Bethany's that she is more vunerable to templars in lowtown (to which I thought she would likely be more likely to be visiable in high town) and we needed the money from this trip, desite the fact we are making allot of money from a variety of quests in the city itself. This was made even worse when Varric suggested we find a way to make 50 sovereigns to take up a partnership with his brother which left me wondering why Hawke would need to do this when he had 50 sovereigns. I feel like I'm doing many quests because that is what Hawke did in Varric's story, with no real feeling for an underlying reason to do them, I'm hoping as the game progresses this changes, but atm there is no strong plot or narrative giving my any reason to do most things besides I need to do them, because that is what Hawke did. Now that doesn't mean the storyline has to be a 'save the world' story if BioWare wishes to avoid that this time around as a number of RPGs have had strong plots giving the PC some driving motiations without it having anything to do with saving the world, kingdom, city etc, BioWare's own Shadow of Amn in BGII was a good example of this for most of the quest, as is PS:T, Mask of the Betrayer etc. But here it feels the only thing tying things together is Varric's narration of what Hawke did. However I've yet to complete the game yet so there's a good possiblity I'm judging the story to soon, so I'll hope something grips me soon.
I don't understand why they change the interface from the first game with it's worn and old parchment scroll look, that just fit the setting so well and looked really nice, where as the current one, while ok, just looks bland compared to Origins interface.
I still am not much of a fan of the force jumping and warp-speeding of rogues and warriors (I was fine with force jumps in KOTOR 1 and 2, because only Force users could do them, however here non magical classes are apparently able to pull off this magical feat which feels odd). Also though Hard and Nightmare settings have you needing to pause and control your characters more, I see no reason or purpose to positioning my party, particularly as the game often just have new mobs appearing out of no-where during fights, making battles more about surviving waves of spwaning enemies then overcoming a tough, set group of opponents with tactics and positioning.
Hate the lack of customisation and inventory management of companions (and I think enough has been said in this thread about that that I don't think I need to add anymore). Please add it back in DA3.
And while I liked the Quanari I really hated the Na'vi elves in this game, and hated seeing what had happened to my Dalish Warden's clan, I am hoping for a mod to appear so to change that back for those of us who really dislike this redesign.
Well those are my thoughts on it, as I said above, all of it is just my opinion so take or disregard it as you will
, and despite allot of the critism I will say DA2 is a good cRPG, and if it had any other name to it, I would be happy with it. But since it calls itself DA2 I can't help feeling a strong sense of disappointment as I play it, as for me it falls significantly short of it's predecessor (with it feeling like Origins was the sequel and this game was the first one), I just have to pretend to myself that Origins never happened while I play it.
Modifié par Curlain, 12 mars 2011 - 09:40 .
Retour en haut
I found some comments by the characters hillarious. People wanting more nudity, romance etc, that's what porn and real life relationships are for. I personally liked it even tho it was sluggish in the beginning. Stick with it and it may suprise you. 
