1012 réponses à ce sujet

[sniggy]

@body completely agree with what you said. i played da:o over and over again with different characters. i started da2 a few times (the beginning starts being horrible repetitive after a while), but once i have played through it, i dont feel like continuing.

it doesnt seem to matter much what choices one makes in the game.

[Champion1]

Honestly I love this game. It keeps the essence of Dragon Age going in the story, even though it's only loosely related to the first game. Some parts were a bit dark, but that's to be expected from "dark fantasy", and it wasn't like it was anything that made it hard to sleep at night. Some plot developments did feel a bit rushed, like a character that you just met dying and the other characters acting like it was a huge deal. I expect this was especially true for people that hadn't played DAO and saw returning characters die.  The plot did feel a bit more (or a lot more in some places) linear then DAO, however.  Some "big" choices didn't seem to matter at all.

On the actual characters, it felt like they definitely fit into the Dragon Age universe as well as the ones from DAO (and the expansions). They all felt very alive, voicing their viewpoints, but also reacting realistically to other characters, not just saying one thing and completely ignoring what was going on around them. Varric, Fenris, and Merrill were my personal favorites. I especially liked how the party banter would build on itself, effected by what two characters said to each other before, even over a time-skip.  I do wish you could ask them more questions to get to know them faster/better, but that wasn't a huge loss to me once you got to Act 2 and did a Companion Quest.

The time-skip system itself felt a bit less developed though. Why always three years? For some of the quests, it didn't make sense for such a long time to pass with no developments, and then have everything happen at once along with the huge plot points. It felt like things were forcefully jammed together sometimes and being made to fit so there were only a few time-skips, especially on secondary quests.

The new armor system didn't bother me. It worked and it stuck to the character's class so they were a viable combat addition. I gotten to Act 3 but haven't gotten the upgrades for everyone yet so sorry if Bioware did this, but I was hoping for changes in the outfits over the years, or at least a new outfit appearance once a character had all the upgrades. Seeing everyone (except Aveline) wearing the same thing for 7 years felt very unrealistic, especially with the clothing that didn't look anything like armor or a jacket.

I like the new combat system. I don't even care about the lack of auto-attack, it kept you moving and thinking. It felt like you mixed in a dash of newer Legend of Zelda games into the original DAO combat, and that's awesome to me! I especially liked how the environment (walls, etc) was incorporated into some encounters (an ogre getting its head stuck in a wall it just ran into for example), that made the fight feel more alive. It was a bit weird with melee classes how they kept bouncing themselves to just outside the range of their abilities, like I would attack and be moved back so I couldn't shield bash without actually moving myself forward, but once I figured out what was going on it was easy enough to compensate. The fights are also hard enough, not too easy or stupidly
difficult, while the harder encounters still require a thought-out party balance to survive.

Overall, I love this game. While I hope future Dragon Age games aren't exactly the same, I hope they stay very close!

Modifié par Champion1, 17 mars 2011 - 12:31 .

[Zeleen]

so far I love the game - I especially like the re-do of the various races... elves don't look "human", but, where are the dwarven females???

[Generatio]

I am going to keep this brief and a bit disorganized:

- Do not reuse areas and pass them off as a different area. If I am going to the same place, using the same area is fine. Using the same area for a different place is not. I might tolerate this in a small modding project, but I expect better from a studio of Bioware's resources and experience. It was definitely the biggest strain on my willing suspension of disbelief, and annoying to boot.

- The characters were very well written. I liked every single companion, especially Aveline and Varric. This is by the far the strongest cast any Bioware game has had for me.

- I give you HUGE credit for making all the LIs theoretically bisexual. Even though I am a straight male, I appreciate that you catered to every gender and sexual preference despite the inevitable hatred and homophobia you will have to weather. Kudos to you Bioware, you are helping the entire medium break out from it's fairly sophomoric dealings with sex and sexuality.

- The changes to the combat were for the better. The leveling system is also much better than the "choice-lite" Origins model. However, I do wish to see the skill system return, hopefully with improvements over the Origin's system.

- In Act three, it made no sense that my mage-supporter Hawk was forced to kill the mages conspiring against Meredith. I felt like there was far much railroading going on the final act, and that my actions made only a slight difference.

Overall, I absolutely loved this game, despite it's flaws. This was a great story, set in an interesting world. I can't wait to see more.

[Marillius]

Just finished the game and thought I'd drop in my 2 cents.

I'll start off by saying I'm a big Bioware fan. Both ME's both DA's KOTOR, NWN, all good stuff. I will say that for a majority of this game, I was in fact pretty dissapointed. The game opened strong, and finished strong, but the middle left a little to be desired. The time jumps were a little jarring to the story, and it didn't even feel as if the time had really progressed. Everyone just seemed to sit around for three years waiting for you.

The characters seemed well developed, you could learn as much or as little as you want about them. And when you decided to go deep, there was some real depth to their stories, and it was fun exploring their respective backgrounds. Maybe I just didn't do it right, but no matter what I did for Merrill or Varric, they just REFUSED to change their clothes. On that note, I like the idea of not micromanaging an entire party. Rings, belts and the like, but the NPC's choose their own clothes. I liked that. And rewarding players new outfits for completing personal quests, also liked that a lot, just like Mass Effect 2.

Combat was very well done, for the most part. Pacing and gameplay were nice in combat, when you weren't doing well you got mauled. If you controlled your team efficiently, and used cooldowns appropriately, you really felt smart, outwitting your enemies quickly, keeping mages and whatever powerhouses the enemies had locked down, felt rewarding, not just mashing keyboards and crying. Where I felt combat fell through though, and I've read this sentiment elsewhere, is the respawning waves. That seemed frustrating at times, and downright unforgiveable at other times. You'd very carefully position tank/melee dps in front, casters/ranged in back, and next wave you get 2 powerful melee enemies spawn on top of your weak ranged and get torn a new one. So you'd reload and then preemptively move them before that wave came. Seemed a bit unneccessary.

I touched on the story earlier, I'll go in deeper now. As I mentioned, great opening, greater finish. The side quests felt extremely tedious, and I would get frequently bogged down with the sheer number of them, and forget who I was working for, and what the heck I was doing. They didn't flow very well, they semed all mish mashed together, and really lacked a sense of direction or purpose. The time skips almost felt unneccessary. It didn't seem like much progressed in the city over the years, and no layouts really changed. It does hurt the story, in my mind, when things like that happen, since everyone seems to just go on pause for 3 years, and we all pick up where we left off.

I was really unhappy with the dungeon design. This was a triple A title from a well known developer, in one of your premiere franchises. And there were only maybe a dozen or so dungeons/areas made. A few doors opened or closed around the place, all the same, with very little variation. I cannot stress how much this dissapointed me, to see how little effort was put in to this area. I'm not a level designer, or an artist, but really, more effort should have been put into that area, I feel.

Overall, I did like this game. I can generally glass over any variety of small flaws if two things are great, the story, and the music. With those two intact, I can really overlook a lot and enjoy a game. I felt that while certain elements of those were well done here, there was too much detracting me from calling this a great game, it's good, not great. I hope someone reads all of this, and really offers some constructive counterpoints, I like a good discussion.

TL;DR good game, not great, liked the ending, fix the dungeons.

[DiabolicallyRandom]

 Rather than go in to a lengthy diatribe about my misgivings on the game, I think it would be better to include the below quote from the Shacknews review (found here: http://www.shacknews...anchor_25500990 )

But all the quips, moral choices, combat improvements, and great characters can’t mask that this game just feels smaller. In an industry that aims to outdo itself with sequels, the journey doesn’t carry the same epic sense of scope. The Hero of Ferelden saved the world in Dragon Age Origins; the Champion of Kirkwall in DA2 merely nudges some politics. The game hints that there are larger factors at play, but we never get to see them for ourselves. There’s something to be said for giving us a smaller, more detailed slice of this world, but I wish Hawke felt like more than a footnote in its history.

This pretty much sums up how I felt after finishing the game. It was a "good" game, but it left me wanting.

[Kilshrek]

Finished one playthrough with 2h warrior, doing another with dual wield rogue now.

Liked :

• The companions, which is the norm for a Bioware game I suppose. Merrill especially, because she's all sorts of adorable when she doesn't go on about blood magic and such. Aveline's quest was probably the best out there, the dialogue hilarious.
• The story and the connections, there was a big bad guy(?) in the end I suppose, though not your usual sort but samey. There are bits of the story I absolutely hate, but that comes later. The whole rise to pwer thing is a change of pace, but one I don't hope becomes a habit.
• Voice acting, solid stuff all round, and I don't think there is a person out there who can say they dislike Merrill's voice with a straight face. "I think I saw sparrows in the rafters". I also wonder if there's a thread out there collecting votes for Varric to be made a Paragon of Manliness.
• The dialogue, since there's plenty of it, in beautiful banter form. Isabela/Varric + anyone else = funnies. Some of the sarcastic/humorous options are also pretty good. "Potion shop, remedy.." the so bad it's good sort.
• Cameos and nods to events from DAO.
• Smooth and relatively bug-free gameplay. A few bugs aside I never had a problem with the game.

Disliked :

• Hawke's "too late" syndrome. Whenever someone dies it's because of a story contrivance to force me to make up my mind about something. Carver/Bethany in the intro not so much because it's "necessary", but then later moments, and these are just off the top of my head, like Hubert's caravan, Mother, the Blood Mage's wife, Seamus, Pol, the Qunari "delegates", those poor miners(lucky I got them that raise). I get that you want to force us to think that mages are bad, but Hawke's family has magic. Bethany is a mage. Being called the Champion of Kirkwall is a pretty hollow thing when the Champion has a poor personal record of rescuing people. It is very vexing to know that you cannot change these outcomes no matter how hard you try.
• The music, or rather a lack of it. Not that the tracks you hear throughout the game are bad, but I never thought I'd miss the theme of Orzammar or the camp theme. The music playing when in the Hawke estate is probably the best in the game, which shouldn't really be the case I think. Combat music was probably the most obvious, since it jumps out at you whenever you fight, which seems to be a fair amount of the game.
• Coming to combat, and I'd say I hate it but it may be a bit strong. Waves. Oh dearie me, a loading screen tip tells you to position your party tactically, but what's the point in that when the next wave throws your positioning out the window? First state : Enemies up front, obviously you send your melee fighters in and have the ranged ones hang back. Deal with the enemy and then the next wave arrives, with enemies on both ends. So melee is stuck up front and the squishies have to deal with melee/ranged enemies from behind as well. And then you have fortitude, which means that ANY hit the squishies receive knocks them back or staggers them. With a quick hitter this means you've just lost that squishie. The most annoying thing I've ever seen really, my archer or mage gets hit against a wall, gets up, gets hit again, rinse and repeat until dead. Until you get Mythal's Favor(you silly North Americans ) fights become very, very careful affairs. Boss fights deserve some mention here, they seem more drawn out than is really necessary.  The Arishok on Hard he took me 30 mins to kill, I can't imagine fighting him on Nightmare.. Whoever thought giving him a million health and 50 potions needs to play that section without cheating.
• Locations and their lack of variety. Can't really say much that hasn't been said about this, but I suppose it's necessary to add to this 'review'. That achievement for visiting 10 caves in and around Kirkwall must be someone's little joke, because there aren't 10 'different' caves. Even Sebastian's quest is not spared! Parts of the 'main' cave do surface. It would also have been nice to have a city other than Kirkwall to visit, because I can't imagine spending 10 years in one city. Heck even the Warden got to travel to two major cities in a year.
• Time jumps, jumping three years at a time without any interesting pieces of story to fill the gap is slightly disappointing. Not really the greatest thing on the list surely but it would have been nice, and the diary entries do not count.
• A painful lack of potion/item variety. Sure there are plenty of items but they're not exactly a varied selection. Here's an amulet that gives you 5 mana/stamina. Here's another one that gives you 7 mana/stamina. Whut? This streamlining business seems to have hurt the variety of items we get.
• edit : The camera and mouse during combat. Non-detachable camera and snap-to mouse when I want to plant an AOE spell/ability is... not very nice to work with.
• Oh GODS those fingers! As if the ginormous spiders weren't bad enough, everyone out there has these grannie fingers. Not cool guys. And giving away Ser Pounce-a-lot? May you be forgiven Bioware.

Feel free to ignore that last point, it has little relevance. While it may seem that I have little good to say and much to complain about it's simply because the good stuff needs little more to elaborate it. I like it, this is why. The dislike bits need a bit more elaboration otherwise I'm just a hater.

Also in an interview with Eurogamer Mike said that the game wasn't made to appeal far and wide, and I think that's slightly disengenuous especially since later he does add that those who disliked Origins came back and said they loved DA 2. The game was obviously made to appeal to a wider audience, but I feel this was done at the cost of the existing audience. Not that we're boycotting the game or anything drastic, but in changing things that did not need to be changed I think some goodwill has been eroded. I certainly think DA 2 is not the game DAO is, and that DA 2 could have been so much more.

But thanks for the game Bioware, rest assured I will be playing it for a while yet. Now I'm crossing my fingers and hoping ME 3 hasn't been converted into Modern Effect 3, now with Multiplayer!

Modifié par Kilshrek, 17 mars 2011 - 02:59 .

[Cyberstrike nTo]

This review is going to be a little different because I got it on both the Xbox 360 and PS3, I will do an overall review of the game then have a pro/con section for each console. The final rating will be for the game as a whole.

Dragon Age II is the sequel to Dragon Age: Origins. The story is told in a flashback structure by Varric, a dwarven merchant who is one of your companions who has been captured by the Seekers of Truth a group of Templars who investigate the events surrounding the Champion of Kirkwall (and apparently the disappenence of Hero of Ferelden from DA:O as well). It seems that the whole world is on the brink of war and the Chantry is in pieces. 

You play as Hawke a human escaping the destruction of Lothering by the Darkspawn, Hawke escapes with her/his mother, sister Bethany who is a mage and brother Carver who is a warrior. You can play Hawke as a warrior, rouge, and mage. If you play as Hawke a warrior and rouge Carver dies in the prologue and Bethany dies if you play as a mage. Along the way out Hawke's mother suggests that they go to Kirkwall a city-state in the Free Marches and then they meet Aveline a female warrior and Wesley her Templar husband who gets injured by the darkspawn (and he dies as well at end of the prologe) they agree to go with you. After an ogre kills Carver or Bethany, the group is surrounded by darkspawn and then a dragon appears and kills the darkspawn then transforms into Flemeth, the witch of the wilds from the first game sporting an all new look. Flemeth agrees to help the Hawkes and Aveline to get to Kirkwall in exchange they must drop an amulet to a clan of Dalish Elves near the city. Once you get to Kirkwall you find out that Hawke's uncle has squandered the family fortune and Hawke, Aveline, and the surviving sibling must work for either a mercancy or a smuggler for one year to get into the city.

The story then jumps one year later and Hawke is trying to get on a Deep Roads expedition and after you meet Varric who suggests that if Hawke gets 50 sovereigns (gold pieces) he can convince his older brother to let you be a partner in the venture. Of course getting that much money is easier said than done. Also you get quests that allow to recruit Merrill a Dalish Elf who is a blood mage, Fenris an elven warrior who is also an escaped slave and doesn't like mages to much, Isabella a raunchy pirate captain stuck in Kirkwall looking for a relic. Anders, the smart ass mage from (Dragon Age: Origins-Awakening expansion) who isn't much of a smart ass any more he's possessed by Justice another character from DA:O-A and there is also a DLC character Sebastian Veal who is prince from another city-state whose family has been murdered.

The mages are growing more and more sick of being mistreated by the Chantry and in particular the Templars and with the almost fanatical Knight-Commander who leads them in Kirkwall. Also a group of Quanrai have also crashed in Kirkwall, whose ideas don't mesh well with the Chantry. And Hawke is caught in the middle of all this.

The story's flashback nature doesn't give it much room for choices as the folks at Bioware thought. While it's a nice try it just doesn't work for this kind of story and the story's jumps in time from year 1 to year 4 to year 7 events that would've been better shown are written in the game's codex (like Aveline's wedding to a new man it would have been nice to see the wedding and not just read about it) or if you have a romance with Isabella who leaves after the events of year 4 again we get a codex entry about her leaving Hawke and Kirkwall and then a quest to meet her at the Hanged Man (a pub where Isabella and Varric hang out) to get to talk her and make up.

The 5 romances (Isabella, Merrill, Anders, Fenris, and Sebastian) Isabella and Merrill are bisexual, and it wouldn't surprise me if Anders and Fenris are also bisexual. Sebastian seems to be the only heterosexual romance in the game.

The art style has also been redesigned especially for the darkspawn, the Elves, the Qunari, and Flemeth. While the Hurlocks (darkspawn foot soldiers) look awful they did get new walk that makes them feel deformed. The Qunari look awesome as does Flemeth even if no reason in the game as too why they look different.

Combat is much better this time around it's more tatical, visceral, and the classes actually feel and force gamers to play differently .

Like Mass Effect 2 you can import your DA:O save files and this will affect dialogue and some quests but it's not as great as the import feature for Mass Effect 2 was and you can't change your party's armor only Hawke's while the character do change cloths (except for Isabella and Varric) at various points in the story where the characters change directions. If you don't take Bethany/Carver on the Deep Roads venture Bethany gets captured by the Templars and is sent to Gallows (the name of building where Kirkwall's Circle of Magi is housed) and Carver joins the Templars to get out of older brother/sister's shadow. Merrill gets a suit of armor if she becomes Hawke's girlfriend. While armor upgrades are found throughout the game for all their various outfits the fact that you can't change them is very annoying to say the least.

The game's biggest fault is the constant reuse of same maps over and over. I knew this was very likely because of the game being set basically in the same  city-state and a few outlining areas for 10 years but this game make the first Mass Effect look varried by contrast.

Also like Mass Effect games Dragon Age II uses the dialoge wheel and I think it works better here than in the Mass Effect games. Hawke's voice actors do an OK job but IMHO they lack the engery and passion of Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer who are the voice actors for the female ad Male Shepard in the Mass Effect games. The rest of voice actors do an out standing job. The characters are very well rounded and they are all  easy to like for the most part and there are plenty of DA:O and DA:O-A cameos and call backs.

Xbox 360 pros: It saves and loads faster.

Xbox 360 cons: The widescreen format looks off and there are cutsecens of character popping and strecthing it's as if they don't want to be widescreen. The achivements for The Exiled Prince DLC don't unlock when they should and Bioware is looking to fix it. The text looks blurry and is hard to read on an SDTV. There have been reports of corrupted save files as well.

PS3 pros: The widescreen format looks correct, no strecthing and flashing and poping. The text is easier to read on an SDTV.

PS3 cons: Load times and save times are longer. This seems to be problem with Bioware's games on the PS3 and while it saves and loads faster than DA:O and ME2 it seems to take a longer time on the PS3. There are also the occasional freeze on the PS3.

Final thoughts: It's not a grand epic adventure like Dragon Age: Origins it more of a personal epic but it does set up a lot of very interesting and potentional directions for Dragon Age 3 but it feels like it was done on a smaller budget as well. The voice acting, combat, and the new art style are most part very enjoyable. The story's flashback struction and retcons will turn some people off but this is a game that feels rushed at times and it shows it flaws too much. Still if you're willing to give it a chance it's enjoyable it's own right and it shows that EA and Bioware are willing to experiment and take chances with their games and try new things. I give it an 8.5 out of 10.

Modifié par Cyberstrike nTo, 17 mars 2011 - 02:32 .

[PantheraOnca]

Don't want to make a thread, and this seems the best place for this:

I am unfortunately going to be one of "those guys" who complain about how the game may have been rushed (I HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE being that guy, this is the first time i'm doing it).

I just finished my second play-through and this time I sided with the templars. The story when siding with the templars is much smoother than when siding with the mages. The reactions people have and the quests you receive all make more sense. The mages seem less evil siding with the templar than they do when you side with the mages.

Let me say that again in a different way: The mages are ****s when you side with them. Not to you, but in general behavior. When siding with the templar, their actions are understandable and even sympathetic. The fact that orsino turns to blood magic at the end even makes sense. It makes no sense whatsoever when you side with him, you beat the templar wave, and then he just gets all slashy on himself.

Best Served Cold makes sense when you take the templar side, the fact that meredith sends you a letter asking for help makes sense, the reaction by the templar and mages to being spotted by you makes sense. When you get a letter from meredith asking for help when you just told her to STFU makes no sense. When you tell orsino you'll help him out and the mages say EXACTLY WHAT THEY SAY WHEN YOU SIDE WITH THE TEMPLAR doesn't make sense.

I hadn't been paying attention to press releases or anything for DA2. I saw it get mentioned on penny-arcade and started thinking about it, I ordered it a while after that. I never heard about how it was "rushed" until I had beaten it the first time and came on the boards to talk about it. Now, after my second play-through, I feel that there may be some validity to those claims.

It seems like the mage side of the story was developed later or something? and that parts from the templar story just had to be used since there wasn't time to write the mage portion properly. I think I saw someone from bioware post that they didnt have control over time tables. Give me an address to write to. I will hand-write a request that you be given more control over the timetables you have because I now feel cheated.

The options in my mind are that the writers at bioware have lost quality, or that they were rushed. I felt the templar sided story was actually very compelling, and that the arishok was a superbly written/designed/implemented character. This leads me to believe that the writers HAVEN'T lost there edge, so the steep decline in the mage-sided version must be due to something else, namely a lack of time.

Why would orsino do that? Why would meredith write you for help after denouncing her? It just doesn't make sense.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!

Still a fan, just kinda miffed at the moment.

[VenetianLunacy]

Hi everyone, just thought I would add my two cents as I've just finished the game.

What I loved:

- Excellent story. I enjoying the storytelling perspective, and the mystery surrounding the Champion before we even begin the game.
- My favourite origin was the Circle Tower, so I felt quite at home in Kirkwall, and the tension between the mages and templars really appealed to me.
- Anders romance was fantastic! (yes, these things are important to me). Best romance in any Bioware game, in my opinion. It felt quite passionate and well-written, well done! Not really a happy ending I probably would have /liked/ to see... but sometimes I think Bioware does not believe in happy endings, or maybe that's just the impression I'm getting =P
- Cameos were excellent. It was nice to see familiar characters (even if their faces looked significantly worse).
- Voice acting was amazing! Both male and female Hawke sounds incredible, and overall the cast did a fantastic job.

What I disliked:
- Re-used environments (everyone else commented on this quite a bit). I would say that this was a big let-down.
- Abrupt ending, without any sense of closure.
- No epilogue... How did our choices affect the world? They seemed to hold no weight whatsoever...
- Some elves looked better than others, but overall I was not very happy with the change. They kind of reminded me "Avatar", to be honest.
- I began to think on DA:O and the great length of time that I spent in the camp, simply listening to my companions' backstories. Looking back on DA2, this was greatly lacking. Even after completing the game, I barely know anything about Aveline... What was her past like, what are her memories... all the little things that would make me believe that this could be a real person, and I could genuinely like them. I think DA3 will need to address this concern. Party banter and companion conversations are vehicles of immersion - they are what provide a respite between grinding and main story objectives (which were not so clear in DA2, as many others have said). In essence, I looked forward to every little bit of conversation I could get with my companions, but after 1-3 lines, it was over and they would return to their one liner.
- Maybe a teeny-tiny happy ending? At least an epilogue mention?

7/10

Modifié par VenetianLunacy, 17 mars 2011 - 04:15 .

[Kadi]

I beat DA2 yesterday morning on me xbox invested 65 hours i think in it, and am excitedly going through my 2nd play through as a warrior, mage was my first class.

Likes in short:
Story, quests, combat, character and creature designs, map, inventory, music and voice acting were all brilliant. the cutscenes were great aswell. my 3 favorite things of DA2 were:

1:Aveline, voice acting on her was great, her character was strong and interesting, and great to interact with.
2:The City of Kirwall, it felt alive and bustling. it was big enough to be amazed and small enough to not get lost easy. the architecture was great too.
3:Multiple dialogue options, though at first its looks daunting and small compared to Dragon age origins, I preffered it, using the simple mass effect dialogue choice circle, with little images showing you how hawk will express himself/herself in multiple ways i loved it.

Dislikes:
lack of variety in dungeons. not enough companion interactivity - gifts, conversations, past stories. and thats about it.

as a whole the game was really fun and gripping, cant wait for the third. weldone n thanks bioware!
hope we get an awakening like expansion, lots of dlc (none like darkspawn chrons).

Modifié par Eleventhchild, 17 mars 2011 - 05:40 .

[Champion1]

This is just something to add to my previous thoughts. To me, DA2 felt a lot smaller, and a lot less "epic". I think a lot of that was due to the fact that most of the time you had no idea where the game was going as a whole. In DAO you knew you had to take down Loghain, then deal with the Blight, and as a green-as-green-can-be Gray Warden that's about as epic as it gets. There's weight and length, and in every step you could actually feel yourself getting closer to a goal. In DA2 it's less that you feel like you're getting closer to a goal, it feels like your just getting closer to the end, if that distinction makes sense. Act 1 was good, your survival more-or-less hinged on getting on the expedition. Even at the beginning of Act 2 though, you really started wondering where everything was going.  You knew it was about settling things with the Qunari, but nothing was really happening until the last second and Hawke really wasn't changing anything.  Then Act 3 came and you could see what you needed to do almost immediately, but it felt like you just sat on your hands.  Meredith needed to be put down or taken out of power, and as the Champion it felt like you could go get that done, but you don't really do much until all hell breaks loose.  There's no progression, you go from 0 to 60 in 2 seconds, instead of building up to it, which the rest of the game really didn't do, or if it did then it was lost in the more important plot of the time.  It also felt like there were only three seconds between Act 2 and 3, not three
years.

Modifié par Champion1, 17 mars 2011 - 05:43 .

[WetBlue]

 Although I enjoyed DAII in my first play-through, I feel less satisfied, and far less emotionally attached to my game, than I did in DAO. 

You have made some impressive improvements technically, and it was fantastic to have a character that was fully voiced. Honestly, I didn't mind not being able to choose between human/elf/dwarf ... I was always concerned more with the content of the story. Sadly, the story is where I felt cheated! Yes it was fun, yes the flesh was there and the crux was apparent, yes it was good fun, but like a bad ride at a good theme park, I walked off thinking ... thats it?? It ended far too abruptly (I'll get to that in a minute), the scenery was almost nauseating after walking through the same cave, or through sundermount, or through lowtown, or darktown, or hightown for the fortieth time! 

I feel like someone rushed you ... it feels like you had the story and all the possible outcomes nailed very early on, but then were forced to tell your story, or any story (lets say the Iliad) in my living room because the porch outside simply didn't matter, or worse, existed. Second, within seconds of Varric's conclusion to his (my) story I knew that either a DLC or a "DA3" would be required to get the total satisfaction of concluding that particular chapter with Hawke. 

In the world of Harry Potter such a technique may work, as there is no personal investment. In a RPG ... well, no I'm sorry it's just cruel to do. I believe the "Princess Bride" concept is a novel idea that can be played off of in a video game, and in many ways you did that very effectively ... but to use it in that way in this format with a slap in your face "its over!" ending screams, "pay me more money and I'll give you what you want!" I do understand that DLC and sequels are the future, but in my opinion you can not totally interrupt the story arc in any one chapter without severe consequences. One who plays the game through-and through is not properly rewarded at the end. 

There are three "Acts" in DA2. It felt like there should have been, at least, a fourth one and I know there are brilliant people at Bioware working on it now trying to finish it up ... but I am pissed that you took away my sincere desire to feel a conclusion! In some ways, although not exactly, it feels like I have to buy a new DLC to find out how the suicide mission with Commander Shepard in ME2 works out! It's infuriating!

This was a great relationship that ended badly, and I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out why???

There were many other good things which I have not fully mentioned, and were, in my opinion, improvements over DAO. In many cases, I throughly enjoyed it. However, the repetition of scenery and environments, and the awful conclusion which I feel makes me hostage to my desire to see an ending to this chapter leaves me stunned, and not in a good way. If you never buy a single DLC for Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2, at least you'll get a satisfying and conclusive experience from playing it. This is not so with Dragon Age 2 ... not in my opinion. 

I'll tell you what I really liked about DAII, but only if you reach out to me and acknowledge that you at least appreciate my criticisms of what, otherwise, was an almost ... within thumbs reach ... classic game. You missed it by "that much." 

Todd    

[sgreco1970]

So, all in all, despite just a tiny minority of posts, everyone here (myself icnluded) has roughly the same review of the game. Choppy quests, reused locations, short game, no real choice, bland relationships, problematic storyline, unaffected Kirkwall, and so forth. I know its probably asking too much but I'd dearly like to see a developer respond to us on these. I'm not asking for you to put your head in the noose, nor am I asking you to prove why these decisions were right, because there's too many of us noting the problems for them to be right. But I would really like to hear what the thought process was behind these issues and some sort of assurance that DA3 and other future Bioware titles won't continue this trend. We're here because we love Bioware, not hate them. We want to continue being die hard, lifelong fans. Tell us, Bioware, what happened?

[Yootje]

I'd like to add some more minor points to my previous review (as I am assuming it's someones job to go through all of these and make a list of what everyone said, or something):

I think the replay value is greatly enhanced by having either Bethany or Carver in your party. Those two really work.That was a great decision. I'm not quite through my playthrough with Carver, but I like him as a character very much (I can't stand him as a person, but I think he's well written).
However, I agree that the choices often aren't really choices. I'm all for some inescapable events, because history is not determined just by Hawke, but this is a bit too much. It really lessens the replay value.

Other than that, I think there is not much character development. Particularly in Anders and Fenris, you would hope that, depending on your behaviour and their experiences (Anders nearly killing that girl; Fenris learning the truth behind his markings) they would change their tune somewhat. Kind of like how you could harden Leliana and Alistair in DA:O, or influence Garrus in ME.

I felt the story really took a turn for the worst after Act 2. Before Act 2, you had the templars, mages, Qunari and the Chantry and the interplay between those four was very interesting and could have carried the story much further. But then you 'solve' the Qunari problem in Act 2, and the Chantry's only role in Act 3 is to serve as a plot device for a terrorist bombing. Act 3 was a pretty tired old 'one insane group vs. another insane group' thing, which couldn't really hold my interest. It was so simplified when you compare it to the rest of the game, as well as to DA:O.

About the romances: much as I applaud Bioware for including homosexual/bisexual romance options in their games, this was a bit much. Mostly in the case of Anders, actually. The other characters we didn't know and could all be introduced as bisexual, fine, no problem. But Anders was an established character. He always seemed a bit of a womanizer in Awakenings, and changing him to bisexual (and hitting on your male Hawke so very clearly straight away) seemed arbitrary. As if he hadn't changed enough already - different writer, different VA, different personality. I honestly would have preferred if you'd just introduced a new character instead of changing Anders this much. There didn't seem to bve a point to it. The end of Awakenings (whether or not he and/or Justice died) has no effect on him either. Why was Anders there? Actually, I had expected this game to have more ties with Awakenings. Not really a disappointment, but definitely a strange surprise.

Also, I would like to mention some of the things I didn't mind: I didn't mind not being able to choose the armor for your companions. I actually liked that they all had their own look. I didn't mind that you couldn't choose to play an Elf or Dwarf. That is just a choice for the story you're telling, I have no problems with that.

And finally: where are the female dwarves? No female Qunari I get, seeing how the Qunari have a strict women-in-the-kitchen policy. But in DA:O, there were female surface dwarves. It's sad to see you changed that. It makes me think of the ME games, where somehow, female aliens are nearly non-existent (or non-recognisable, which is just as bad, but that's a discussion for the ME boards).

Modifié par Yootje, 17 mars 2011 - 01:29 .

[Kovnic]

Just finished my first play through on PC as a 2hander Warrior. I have been watching the forums explode between the release and finally getting the game myself, and after playing have decided I am gonna weigh in and give some feed back.

The TLDR version:-  I think that the complaints are justified BUT exagerated. I enjoyed the game alot. DA2 is good in spite of its faults, DA:O is the better game of the series.

Now for the long bit....

The Good

• The overall story was awesome. Everything I have come to expect from a Bioware game. Was a bit slow to get going, but once I got past Act 1, it grabbed me. Thats not to say act 1 was unnecessary, as I understand why it was needed from a story stand point. It just wasn't as captivating as the later acts.

• Characters were great, they had a lot of potential (However, see "The Bad" below for more) . The banter was a step up from DA:O and helped to define their relationships with each other a lot more. That was something that was lacking in DA:O that DA2 fixed. Voice acting on Isabela and Merrill = Awesome.

• The "Sell trash" button. THANK THE MAKER!

• Instant map travel between points. I loathed the "Walking" on the DA:O map.

• The Framed narrative. It was a risk, and I wasnt sure if it would pay off. I am glad to say I was pleasantly surprised, for the most part....couple of minor things (See "The Meh")

• Star ranking on gear..but not for the reasons you may think. They were a good indication of what  I could sell/trash without worrying about checking the stats first. With so many different stats on items called "Ring" or "Belt" the stars system helped get rid of the crap quickly. Other than that, I did not use the stars for picking my gear at all.

• I liked the combat overall. A few annoyances with it (see "The Bad"), it was a much better pace than DA:O

The "Meh"

• The Framed narrative worked on the whole, but left a lot of gaps. The characters however, did not miss that time. So while THEY may have developed their relastionships or made changes in their life in the "down time" that we dont see, I didnt. Giving the NPC's AND the PC a "life" outside of what we do is all well and good from a story stand point, but for a game, it made the PC feel like it wasnt "mine" and made it harder to connect with the NPC's. Wasnt a BIG deal, but did put a bit of a "Meh" feel to the whole thing. 

• The "Waves" in combat, with the "Beamed in" respawns. This was done MUCH better in DA:O. That said, while it did break immersion, it wasnt a big enough deal to spoil the game for me. It just looked a bit...cheap.

• Exploding bodies? really? Adolesent boys  may have liked this...shame the game has an 18 (mature) rating.

• Male Hawkes voice is not generric enough.  The guy did a great job, dont get me wrong, but when I tried to make my own character the voice just did not fit... at all. Thank god I had the Black emporium so I could swap back to default Hawke face! (Have not tried Fem-Hawke yet)

• The Dalish Elves...Try not to mix celtic-esque cultures so much, especially when it comes to voice acting! Are they Welsh or Irish? Pick one and roll with it! They are NOT the same thing... lol

The Bad - These have longer explanations as in my opinion they need to be worked on for DA3. Expanding helps to try and clarify "what exactly" the problem is that needs fixing.  Good things (top) are self evident and as they shouldnt be changed (IMO), need less clarification:-

• Isometric/Top down view in Combat. I know it gets brought up a LOT, but it really is important when playing on the PC.  It is WAY too hard to see what is going on in combat with the Camera view in DA2. The targetting is a chore. The only way to click-select a target seemed to be to click the target circle at their feet or near to their legs...that made it easy to "miss click" and end up with no Target. If we had top down view it would fix that.  I played the PS3 Demo, so I can see how it is less needed with the way combat works on the consoles, but on the PC? Leaving it out was a mistake.

• Not being able to stop and talk to the companions was, for me, a really big problem. I LOVED the way you could chat away with your friends in the camp (or any place else) in DA:O. It was a really well thought out, well acted, and unique way to not only learn about the people helping you, but to "bond" with them. Being able to hold a scripted but varied conversation that changed over time really helped me to invest in the DA:O characters..it made me care what happend to them, and helped me to understand why they did what they did in the story. All of that is missing from DA2. Party chat is limited to (awesome) banter that has no real depth other than comic relief.  Visting them at their homes is no better unless it happens to be when they have "summoned" you via a quest prompt for a WAY too scripted and limited "chat", that ends up just feeling forced. The characters are great, they have interesting personalities, are well acted (For the most part) and have interesting backgrounds...but...the way it was delivered just made me not care.  These are not my friends "because I took the time to get to know them", these are my friends "because the game tells me they are".../sigh.

• The Chat system. When I read about the changes to this I thought it sounded really cool, and I was all for it. However, now I have played it, I am just going to out-right say the new chat system blows. I am finding it hard to explain, so if this is a bit muddled, my appologies. Ok....In DA:O I get asked a question (Or I ask a question). I have no idea how the NPC will "Take it". I can guess most of the time from wording, but the tone is often hard to pick up. That may seem like a bad thing, but its actually NOT. Part of the fun of DA:O was the minefield that was chatting to NPC's...a mispoken word taken the wrong way, picking the wrong topic for that particular NPC's personality or background and it had almost instant and REAL in game effects. It made it more "real", varied and added to my replay factor. In DA2, not only do I know what I am going to say (roughly) from the text, but I also know exactly how they will take it thanks to the "Tone/personality" icons. As the NPC's all pretty much shove their background and world view down your throat, it takes away all sense of surprise from conversations. It adds to the scripted feel, and makes the game "feel" a lot less immersive and more, well, linear.

• The Love interest. Ok..I only have 1 play through, so it may be too soon to call this. That said....on my playthrough I "Romanced" Isabela (She has all the best lines, both spoken and drawn, so go figure...). Well, I would like to say we "romanced" it was more like - "I like you, do you like me?" - Sex - "Here is an insight into my background" - Kiss- The end. WTF was that??? There was no sense of "The chase" as thanks to the annoying chat system, you know exactly what to say to score! NOTHING changed afterwards other than the odd mention of it in Banter. Maybe it was just Isabela...she does have a rather "open" view on these things. I will wait and see what the other LI's are like. I just hope they are better than this one!

• Other than when things reach boiling point at the end of Act 2 and the end of Act 3, the rest of the "Main" quests just feel like Side quests. There is no overall sense of direction, and the main points tend to get lost as a result. Other than a very small handfull of missions and conversations, most of the choices I made while questing did not seem to have any impact on the story at all. 

• Re-used maps. Ok, granted, it all happens in 1 city, so it kinda comes with the story, so I could forgive the city maps being the same every Act. But 1 Cave map, 1  Factory map, 1 Mansion map and 1 outdoor map for 90% of the games quests? Really? Thats just lazy. very  very lazy. At the start of Act 2 I thought "Wow, this is a bit of a grind!" By Act 3 I wanted to stop playing...it was just a real chore to get through to see the ending. I will not be able to play this as mush as I did DA:O for that reason alone. I read the "excuse" for this in the interview.  To para-phrase - "We had to choose between Varity or Depth, and we went with depth"...that is weak. Your Bioware, people expect both! Honestly, take another 6 - 12 months next time...

• Armour for companions. I picked up SO MANY useless bits of armour and died a little inside everytime I sold one I couldnt use. It has been suggested in another thread, but I am going to say it again here as its a good idea.  If you want to keep a set "look" for the companions, thats fine, but at least let us add the stats from found items to their set look armour! They would work much like rings and belts do now - I:E you can equip them but they dont show up on the character. That way, everyone wins.

Ok, if you read this far...gratz! Final thoughts - DA2 is a good game, but not one of Biowares best. I enjoyed playing its mostly, and feel  it did not deserve as much "hate" as its gotten since release, but I can understand it considering how good DA:O was. It does have a lot of flaws, most of which I feel are down to lack of development time. Another 6 - 12 months adding polish and fleshing out the weaker plot points and this could have been another Bioware classic. As it stands...I'll just say, good effort! It was fun but you must try harder - we know your better than this!

Modifié par Kovnic, 17 mars 2011 - 12:27 .

[Pathim]

I've seen several people mention how great the graphic are.... hmmm.  That was one thing I didn't touch on in my review.  I have to say that I find the graphics lacking.  One look at a close up and you see the face looking like it is either rotten or melting.  I mean the brows actually seem to be melting and dripping into the person's eyes.  The animation especially on characters is lacking pretty much completely.  I came across Zev last night.  Not only has he been redrawn to look like he has been starved, then injected with botox (spelling) so that he can't make any expression, but the gestures that were so expressive in DAO are not there.   I felt cheated.  My general feeling about DA2 is that the creators, designers, programers were lazy or not up to the job of making the game.  For not only is the story disjointed without a real purpose to make you feel satisfied that you accomplished something, and the maps just copy and paste things with no showing of thought as to it being a different spot, but the programers, and so on, didn't even bother to animate the thing.  Ask your self if you lived in a world where everyone just stood there with stone frozen faces when they talked wouldn't that be a dull place?  Part of the charm of playing DAO was the expressions and animations of the companions. 

[Janko1200]

Until i played this quest: http://social.biowar...4/index/6607826 i thought the game is not as good as Dragon Age 1, but still worth playing, but now i have uninstalled Dragon Age 2 without finishing it, because of the following reasons:

- The high respawn rate destroys the immersion and the tactical part of the game
- The combat is boring, because of the long cooldowns, the high costs and waves of standard enemies
- The quest design is sometimes great and sometimes bad (http://social.biowar...4/index/6607826)
- Many skills are useless (Dispel Magic, Panacea (40 % cost for +50 health regeneration), ...)
- The recycled areas destroy the immersion and the need to explore the game

Modifié par Janko1200, 17 mars 2011 - 01:51 .

[woytaq]

Oh good, just what I wanted freshly after finishing the game. I played DA origins and awakening, on pc and now DA2 also on pc.

The companions... I have really mixed feelings about them. On one hand, they have their own personalities and they build relationships with each other over all those years. However comparing to companions from Origins all the interactions and back story looks poorly. Even if if there actually are more quests that involve them. The lack of interactions, the possibility of talking to them more often and actually getting to know them is something that really hurts this game. The same can be told about other characters in the game. Hawke lives in a city where he/she rises to power and yet you can't even talk to poeple in the streets, most quests came to you by mail instead of from people you know, who come to you with a visit or whom you're visiting yourself. I didn't really felt like an outstanding member of society, but rather a mercenary who is hired by people via mail. How many interesting plot points could be resolved during a public meeting, a private party, or at the tavern.
I was also disappointed that i couldn't upgrade my companions' armor, but I got used to it. I would however suggest to allow adding more then just those few upgrades.

The dialog system is an interesting improvement, at first I wasn't sure if it's a change for the better, but I got used to it very quickly. But... it also made the role playing part less interesting. It's not really a problem with the dialog system as much as the dialogs themselves. Most of the time it felt like there are few options lacking. I also had few situations when the dialog option didn't really reflect what I had in mind when I picked it. A tip, maybe a little preview for the sentence would be nice? I know it's not possible to please everything and have mulltiple buts in a game, but more complicated choices would also be nice.

The gameplay looks similar to Origins, which is a good thing to me. I know that most developers have to take into account the fact that most people will play the game on consoles, but I really liked the more tactic feel Origins have. Especially the isometric view. Also, the game is much easier then Origins and playing on Normal I managed to survive most of the fights with no casualties. It made the game a little bit boring. The hordes of enemies were weird too... I mean, I understand that Hawke is awesome and all, but with that body count Kirkwall wouldn't have any problems with too many refugees... as a matter of fact I think it would be quite the opposite. Besides, it was boring. I'd rather have 10 well armed and durable enemies I have to fight for 10 minutes rather then 30 respawning tugs coming at me in waves from nowhere. The same goes for shades, demons and dragons. In Origins fighting 3 shades at the time was entertaining, in DA2 fighting 20 is boring.
The tree view of the spells looks nice too, something that origins lacked. I have nothing bad to say about the spells and multiclass combos, it was a very good idea and I hope it gets promoted to future dragon age games. Crafting was improved too, at first I couldn't get used to it, but in the end it was a good idea.
A really disappointing part of the game were the animations used in conversations. I know it's not really an important part of the game, but it made the game look rushed. Recycling of locations doesn't help too. I don't know if it was a time issue or what, but please, it really kills the otherwise excellent experience when one is exploring a cave that was already explored 3 times, or visits another identical warehouse or mansion. Floating swords and starves that pass through chairs are another problem, as well as body parts passing through objects. I'm pretty sure it's not a big problem making those animations work well. And the sex scenes... if you can call them that... please, next time, make different ones for male and female models. Otherwise, the game is really pretty, the models and textures, on highest possible settings, look really nice.

As for the story, I can tell only as much as I discovered, but it's very uneven. The dialogs are really well done, the story and narration are great, but again, there are some details that could be much better. It all goes back to the companions again. Allowing them to be more independent and interactive at the same time would do wonders for this game. If they could be influenced more by Hawke to the point of changing their minds about certain subjects, or if they could for example build relationships between each other based on Hawke's actions. Adding more then just templars and mages to the main quest would also be interesting, although I'm sure there are things that can't be changed in order to fit the future events. But allowing Hawke to build a small merchant fortune or actually have profits and influences among Ferelden refugees because he/she ownes the bone pit would help greatly. The Kinkwall nobility would be a good side in the conflict as well, sadly we didn't really get much out of this plot point.

All in all, it's really good game, but could be much better. I know it was an experiment of sort, I hope it worked out well for you. You made it as a start of something, I hope we'll get the continuation soon
hope this helps.

[VenetianLunacy]

Yootje wrote...


Other than that, I think there is not much character development. Particularly in Anders and Fenris, you would hope that, depending on your behaviour and their experiences (Anders nearly killing that girl; Fenris learning the truth behind his markings) they would change their tune somewhat. Kind of like how you could harden Leliana and Alistair in DA:O, or influence Garrus in ME. 

I completely agree with Yootje. I think this was greatly needed. It made me feel that no matter how hard Hawke tried to prevent some things, she/he were really powerless to change the lives of those close to her.

[Solitas777]

sgreco1970 wrote...

So, all in all, despite just a tiny minority of posts, everyone here (myself icnluded) has roughly the same review of the game. Choppy quests, reused locations, short game, no real choice, bland relationships, problematic storyline, unaffected Kirkwall, and so forth. I know its probably asking too much but I'd dearly like to see a developer respond to us on these. I'm not asking for you to put your head in the noose, nor am I asking you to prove why these decisions were right, because there's too many of us noting the problems for them to be right. But I would really like to hear what the thought process was behind these issues and some sort of assurance that DA3 and other future Bioware titles won't continue this trend. We're here because we love Bioware, not hate them. We want to continue being die hard, lifelong fans. Tell us, Bioware, what happened?

I bet EA pushed Bioware to release early and we saw a marked decline. They don't realize Bioware is as much a brand as it is a software company. I pre-order bioware games because they were some of the best ones I have played. ME2 and DA2 missed the epic and intelligent stories I was hoping for and I'm really dissapointed because now where can I go to find  a quality RPG of KOTOR or DAO calibur?

[jussyr]

So I've now played through DA2 twice, hitting all the sidequests that seem in character, and am ready to give my impressions. First run was done as a female sword & shield warrior, generally sympathetic to the Templars (though unwilling to let innocent mages be killed/abused in front of her) who romanced Anders as a rival. Second was a male blood mage who was very much pro-mages, romancing Fenris as a rival (I definitely saw the Valen influences there, by the way). My housemate played a male mage, pro-mages, who romanced Isabela as a friend. Skip to the last paragraph for a summary.



Bugs:

Didn't run into as many as I feared, though still had a few that were problematic, immersion-wise.  Crashed twice, occasionally had it freeze up while NPCs were talking, though alt-tabbing in and out fixed that. Fenris fell through the floor once, but he jumped to me once I got far enough away. My imported Warden's choices seemed to all be accurate, though I couldn't get the quest with Nathaniel to show up in Act 3; started it via the console, but it was a bit buggy, and he seemed to think I'd spared the Architect. Also, in my first game, Varric said at the end that Anders stayed with my Champion, in spite of the fact that she'd killed him, and after his Act 3 quest, Justice, he kept saying he had to talk to me about something privately when clicked on after I'd turned him down at the last stage. Also had some problems with Merrill's Act 3 quests – got the scene of her crying over the Dalish before I'd done any of them, and had the rest of her conversations in front of a broken mirror. No problems with her in
my second game, though my housemate wasn't able to start the last of her conversations that act at all. The same act also had a quest about rescuing someone from the Wounded Coast – we both found the bandit leader, who just stood there and didn't do anything. Oh, also I can't log in anymore.



Mechanics/Interface:

Went off nightmare about 10 minutes in; hard was plenty hard enough for my first few runs, though I'd still have liked friendly fire to be available. Normal was much too easy, with the exception of a couple fights (my tank had to go down to casual to fight the Arishok, and my mage didn't do the single combat thing at all after the first try, but that's more talent/spell choices on my part), but I can see where some people would prefer it. My mage found it much easier overall than my warrior; I'm not sure how helpful using a tank really is, except for a few boss fights.  Combat in general does tend to get rather tedious, with the unending waves of enemies, not to mention frustrating. It's also a little odd to have enemies seemingly warping in from nowhere. From time to time my people seem to just stand around in fights rather than doing anything until I manually get them started; fine if I notice it early enough, very annoying if I don't. Also, I got stuck on the bottom corners of the stairs a lot.


Obviously there was a lot of reusing of environments within the game and animations within Bioware games in
general, which I disliked – thinking 'hey, my character runs and drinks like Shepard, and that Templar is standing like my NWN characters did' tends to throw me out of the story. I liked the art style on the whole, except for the hand models; even the elves grew on me over time (except poor Zevran). The conversation wheel wasn't as bad as I was expecting, though I wouldn't call it good; had to reload a few times when my characters said something they simply... wouldn't. I liked in principle the idea of tracking which type of response I used most often and using that to determine responses on own, though I'd have liked to see tracking by companions/non-companions, or even among each individual companion; my character tended towards different approaches depending on who she was dealing with, and having her randomly be rude to Isabela didn't fit. You had to type out all the dialogue options for the captions anyway; couldn't you have given us the option to choose ME style or DAO style? If Bioware patched this, or someone else modded it, that would be awesome.


Some parts of the more streamlined interface I liked, and some I didn't. The 'move to junk' and 'sell all junk' buttons were great. I'd have liked to be able to choose whether I wanted to manually pick my companions' armour, rather than having it locked in. Auto-moving important items into your inventory after a boss fight was nice, though notifying me of the fact would have been better, so I don't take 10 minutes trying to figure out why my dragon didn't drop the armour I was expecting. Being able to get into a shop without having to talk to the shopkeeper, and the fact that my cooldowns, hp, and mana were near-instantaneously reset after a fight was great.




Story/Characters:

On the whole, I was favorably impressed. Loved the two romances I did; ended up outright crying after killing Anders in the first. This is the part that I tend to be most interested in, so it'll be what decides how much I end up replaying. Compared to DAO, the characters seemed less well developed (though I think that's simply due to it being shorter in general, rather than any fault with the writing – what was there tended to be quite well done, though there were a few conversations I think really should have been there which weren't). It also seemed a fair bit darker, with more shades of grey in your choices and the people you interact with; also a plus, in my opinion. I'd have liked to have more opportunities to converse with/confront companions directly, rather than waiting on them; I don't care how much he didn't want to talk about it, my Champion wouldn't sleep with Fenris and then go three years without discussing it.


I felt the roleplaying possibilities were much too restricted, to the point of breaking immersion. In the first run, the inability of my Templar type to hand Bethany over to the Circle immediately was mitigated by the fact that she eventually got taken and I left her there, but I don't see how this is going to work for someone who's either more of a hardline Templar or very much anti-Templar; maybe if I'm friends with Anders he'll offer me a quest to rescue her in Act 2? It seems unlikely, however. As well, I was very disappointed that I didn't have any option to kill Merrill; my character would have drawn her sword the instant she used blood magic, and even if she was feeling especially diplomatic that day, she wouldn't have taken her along at the end. And then being forced to give her another chance after betraying me in the Fade? Not being able to turn in the woman who gave me the Underground Railroad quest, or spy for the Templars? Being forced to help the Qunari mage leave the city? This all really restricted my ability to roleplay consistently, and that's not even getting into Anders the abomination. Incidentally, I'd liked to have been a little nicer about killing him at the end, rather than saying he needed to pay,
stabbing him, and walking away while he died. She did actually love him, just felt that the demon was in control and she didn't have a choice. He also fell for me a little fast; I met him what, a day ago, and he's responding to my flirting with lines about how he'll break my heart?  Oh yeah, and I'd have liked the option to say 'sorry, I was wrong, I want to side with you guys now' to Meredith after what Orsino does.  Even if she obviously would turn me down.


For my mage, I was constantly thrown out of immersion by the inability of anyone other than Meredith to actually notice I was a mage, and my companions' inability to notice the blood magic I was tossing around every fight. I use spells right in front of Emeric and Cullen, and they have no comments? Worse, they talk to me about how mages can't be treated as people like “you and me,” suggesting they really didn't notice?  Fenris isn't going to have a conversation with me about the fact that he's in a relationship with a mage (or Anders that he's in
one with someone who took Templar specialization)? I'm not going to get rivalry points for using blood magic in front of those two, or have anyone acknowledge that I'm a blood mage, ever? This, I think, was the biggest flaw in the game that I've run into.


I liked the banter, flirting, arguments, etc. amongst party members, though like in DAO, I found that they seemed to have run out of things to say by Act 3 and we all ran around in silence; some sort of partitioning of discussions into the acts, rather than just adding a couple new ones in the latter two acts, would have been nice. Voice acting was great, and I think this is the first time I've actually seen one character interrupting another done well, without a huge pause in between their lines.  Having the random people populating the city say some stock phrase if
clicked on would have been better than making them completely uninteractable. They also really need to react when a battle is going on in their midst, rather than just walking through it while talking about the weather or whatever; yeah, thanks for helping me with these muggers, Mr Guard. Make them join in or run away, depending on class.


Miscellaneous:

Cassandra and Cullen should be DA3 companions; Cullen's really developed a lot as a character over the
series, and I've long thought we need to be able to have more hardline pro-Chantry types as companions. Loved Cassandra's little crush on the Champion; speaking of crushes, Fenris and Isabela flirting was cute, and Anders trying to convince me that I should go for someone more open-minded than Fenris made me laugh; I'll have to
see whether something like that happens with everyone you've ever flirted with, or if it's just him. I'd have liked to be able to keep the Qunari mage, too. Neither Alistair nor Anders seemed to be aware of the fact that they met before. Having the final part of the game start immediately when I went to the Gallows after accepting the letter was annoying; I wanted to talk to Cullen about Aveline first.  Sebastian was annoying and I wish I could have killed him and dumped his body in the harbor. Preachy little hypocrite. His outburst after the Chantry blew up also broke the tension a bit. And something about his eyes was really creepy. Oh, and I love you guys forever for making all the important romance options available to both male and female characters.



Overall, 8/10. Fix the immersion-breaking points I mentioned regarding roleplaying Templars and mages, get rid of the dialogue wheel, and just generally extend the companion interaction a little more, and I'd probably count it as my second favorite Bioware game, after BGII.  No waves of enemies and less reused environments/animations would be nice, but it's not what I'm primarily concerned about.   As it is, I'd put it behind DAO and NWN:HotU as well.

Modifié par jussyr, 17 mars 2011 - 06:11 .

[Vekelos]

Overall I enjoyed the game but it was still a let-down. The combat was fun, but the final product didn't hit me as an AMAZING game the way Mass Effect 2 did. After I beat ME2, I was practically forcing it on my friends and now most of us consider it one of the best games ever. Here I'm hoping my friends will play it so that I can discuss the ending with them (mainly what happens with Anders) but several of them have tried it and are unimpressed at best because of the uninteresting plot and the repetiveness of the environments. I slogged through these issues because I expected the plot to pick up at some point. It didn't until the very end, and then leaves on an unnecessary cliffhanger.

I love the lore of Thedas, but nothing really happened. Mages v Templars? Didn't we get enough of that in one portion of Origins? Also, I felt like the 3 acts had very little to do with one another. The final boss of the game is mentioned once in act 1 and I had completely forgotten about her by the time I got to act 3. At the intro to the deep roads, Verric does some foreshadowing by talking about what they found down there, and I was expecting the plot to really get moving at that point. But they found a stupid idol that just makes people crazy apparently. Another missed opportunity was Flemeth. She had such a cool introduction and her reappearance was interesting, but her reaction was eseentially, "Thanks for making this delivery, now I'm going to where important stuff is happening".

I'm sure that more will be revealed in DLC or DA3 that makes things in DA2 more sensible, but that in itself is bad times. Some genres can get away with huge plot holes until the next sequel because the plot is just a reason to blow things up and overall it's unimportant. RPGs, however, should focus first and foremost on telling a complete, enthralling story. You can leave some room open for expansion, but the main story, the reason your character is going through hell and back, should be obvious and resolved at the end. Plot twists are good and encouraged, but at least give a goal in the beginning to lead up to that point. If you can mix the action of DA2 with the polish and storytelling of ME2 and Origins, I'll be very happy.

Final point, don't pander do the more action-oriented Call of Duty crowd. I'm only going here because I read somewhere that's where your sights are, and as someone who works in retail I can tell you now that you can't win them over unless you make a game just like it. They always ask me for good games, and will then bring it back saying, "It's not Call of Duty". There is no pleasing them, and you'll ruin your fanbase in the process. DA2 felt like it was kind of your first attempt to try to appeal to them, and I think the fan reaction speaks for itself.

[Aanna]

My first thought on finishing DAII is that Mr. Gaider got more than his standard tithe of tears from me on this one. 

Mind you, I cried for half a day after my first playthrough on DAO (after falling head over heels in love with Alistair and then watching him sacrifice himself in my place), but DA2 had me crying at least once an Act.  It was unremittingly dark and painful, and it felt as if everything the Champion touched turned tragic.

-Spoilers-

And then, although I was increasingly sure that I couldn't save him, my LI Anders forced me to kill him.  So I cried. For an hour.  And then I realized that Anders was finally at peace and was genuinely happy that his love's hand was the one that released him.  So I cried more.  It is NOT easy to explain to a 5 year old why mommy has red eyes and is sniffling.

Please, next time can there be just a couple successes that feel like true successes?  I know this is dark fantasy, but it's really tough playing a game and being this emotionally spent throughout the entire thing.

Hopefully Mr Gaider is gratified that his work produced so many tears, because it's costing me a doozy of a crying-headache. 

[jussyr]

Aanna wrote...

And then, although I was increasingly sure that I couldn't save him, my LI Anders forced me to kill him.  So I cried. For an hour.  And then I realized that Anders was finally at peace and was genuinely happy that his love's hand was the one that released him.  So I cried more.  It is NOT easy to explain to a 5 year old why mommy has red eyes and is sniffling.

Yeah.  I cried and then was generally sad for two days after rival-romancing Anders.  Well done on that one, Bioware, emotionally draining as it was.