But though it's not the whole game, I really have to get it out of my chest. The fighting is pure, raw, utter, atrocious sh*tty garbage. It's a disgrace to look at and to play, and I feel dumber each time I have to fight something.
Animations are utterly ridiculous, the mages and rogues in particular, they are some kind of idiotic dances filled with stupid moves that make me just /facepalm - jumping around, waving weapons uselessly. Dragon Age was supposed to be the "pseudo-realistic and gritty" franchise, this circus is the total opposite. Any immersion and any "seriousness" is killed outright with the party of clowns that look like a children's parody of kung-fu movies.
I'm especially rattled by this because I find "realistic" moves much more classy and endearing than over-the-top idiotic acrobacy, and because they used the pretext of "cool moves" to butcher class (like removing two-weapon fighting for warriors) with the argument that it's a tradeoff to not have the "boring moves" of DAO. And then we get this nauseating display of retardness. Please, give me "boring" any day over this.
The pace and speed is also ridiculous, with people slashing away with huge swords like if they were made of paper, with very choppy movements (supposed to reflect quickness ?).
Exploding corpses all over and the mass-AoEing add to the general feeling of over-the-top stupid/parodic action movie.
So, the rendering is trash, the immersion is zero, the idiotic quotient is OVER NINE THOUSANDS. Maybe the tactical side will save the day ?
Scratch that. There is nearly no tactical idea even in hard.
First, as it was widely said, no Friendly Fire before nightmare. It makes just a shower of flame and ice land right in the middle of the your character without any consequences. You can guess how it helps with the beat-them-all factor above.
Then, the very design of the fight is downright ugly. It can be summed up by 99 % of trash coming in waves, spawning everywhere and destroying any idea of actually trying to think tactical and positioning your characters.
You have swarms of foes everywhere, clashing horribly with the settings (dozens of bandits in every corners of the streets, jumping from roofs and spawning from nothingness, please).
Bosses are hard, but it's more "Street Fighter hard" than "tactically hard", and the trash is dumbingly easy.
They also have kept the "instant healing out of combat" from DAO, which was already excessively "arcade", which makes fight feel quite meaningless also, as it's exactly the same if you end up with 1 hp or full hp (you're insta-healed in the next three seconds anyway).
Finally, the UI has been justly trashed. No isometric camera and constantly reseting AI makes using more than character an annoyance, and trying to target the ground from more than three metres a pain.
In the end, I just select everyone, clic on one mob until he dies, and repeat it until everything is dead on-screen. It keeps my party together, which avoid the "the fragile guy I left in the rear had been ganged upon by magically appearing wave" and the lack of FF and commonplace of AoE means I can just spam everything without thinking.
In conclusion : fighting is a pain, it's just some kind of bad marriage between a simplistic beat-them-all and an avorted attempt to make fighting tactical, only taking the worst of both part (lack of twitchy gameplay from tactical, lack of thought, immersion and just-rush-in-the-group of beat-them-all) and making every fight a bore or a pain. Everything below Nightmare is just totally dumbed down, and Nightmare only make the ridiculousness of ultra-action design even more jarring.
And sadly, not only fighting is repulsively bad, it's also even more proeminent, plenty of it everywhere. Bad, and in greater quantity. Oh joy...
I'm considering putting everything on "casual" just to be able to rip through any fight quickly to get rid of it.
There is some things I like in the game. There is some things I dislike. I'll keep the overall opinion for later.
But the fighting, which was supposedly the core of the changes and was the justification for many of the most controversial ones, is one huge, total, utter FAIL. I can't imagine how someone could have thought of it, even less how he could have dared to propose it, and my brain cries and hurts thinking that not only it was done, but a whole lot of people ENDORSED it.
No cookie for you, Bioware, I'm at a loss for words to express just how bad you dropped the ball on this one.
Modifié par Akka le Vil, 13 mars 2011 - 02:11 .
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