I just finished my first playthrough, coming in at a little over 42 hours and playing as a female DW rogue on PC. I'm guessing a lot of what I'm going to say is not new, but I figure I may as well add my voice to the crowd either way. I'm going to try to avoid direct comparison to DAO; however, as a sequal it is unavoidable in some cases.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Things I liked:The story (9/10) - Not as "epic" as DAO obviously, but I enjoy character-focused stories. It's one of the reasons I mostly enjoyed Mass Effect 2, despite many of its undesireable (for me) aspects. Also, I liked the frame narrative presentation style. It felt unique and lent a fresh aspect to the game.
The UI (7/10) - This one's been getting a lot of flak for some reason, but I didn't feel it was inappropriate to the setting, and I thought it looked clean and simple. That's a lot more important to me than having a highly-stylized UI, which more often than not makes things confusing and hard to find. Of course a more artistic UI that is equally as effective would be better, but that's very rare.
The ability trees (8/10) - Yes they were simple, but having ultra-complex skill trees doesn't necessarily add a whole lot in my opinion. They were certainly more interesting than the 1-2-3 progression in DAO, and even in other, better (IMO) games such as NWN and KOTOR the feats aren't exactly laid out in a complicated fashion.
The Easter eggs (9/10) - Ultimately superficial, but they add some entertainment value and made me laugh.
Hide-a-helmet (10/10) - Yup, another superficial thing, but I'm glad they finally included this option. I like being able to see the character I spent an hour perfecting.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Things I was apathetic about:Voiced characters (6/10) - Some of the voice-overs were good, some were mediocre, and some were poor. Either way, I don't really care if my character speaks or not. I feel similarly about the facial expressions, both in general and in this game (I guess I'm too used to older RPGs where the graphics weren't good enough to display such detail).
The combat mechanics (6/10) - I will admit that the combat was fairly entertaining. Seeing my enemies explode was amusing, but that's actually why I'm not rating this higher. Although fun (for the most part), it was *so* ridiculous and over-the-top that it just got kind of silly after a while. I expect some fantasy aspects to combat in a fantasy game, but I'd also like to maintain at least a little realism. It was especially dumb looking when an enemy I was targeting ran away, and I repeatedly kick-flipped after them. Just run up to them ffs.
The areas (4/10) - Some areas were quite well done (the room in one cave with the glowing ceiling), but for the most part I felt they were a little barren and needed more decoration. Kirkwall especially felt empty to me, with only some random groups of people standing around talking and a few guards patrolling. Nowhere is this more evident than the marketplaces in Hightown and Lowtown, which you'd expect to be bustling places with many people, but ended up with only the merchants hawking their wares to empty streets. I also felt that the city was very monotonous, with little to differentiate various parts from each other (excepting Hightown from the rest).
The ending (5/10) - Although admittedly exciting, I didn't feel like the choices I made really mattered in the end. Yes, the ending cutscene explained more how what I did affected the world, but in the part I was actually able to play, I felt rather ineffective in my ability to change people. I can't say much more without giving away spoilers, unfortunately, so I'll leave it at that.
DAO character cameos (5/10) - I won't say anything about specific ones to avoid spoiling anything, but I thought they felt rather forced and unnatural for the most part. I'm fine with including them, but they really should be more integrated if they're there.
The side quests (5/10) - Some of these are actually quite good, but by-and-large they just felt like filler to me. Normally that wouldn't be an issue, but since they're such an integral part of the first act they really should have been ramped-up. Rather than having many short and simple quests, I would much prefer to have a smaller number of longer, deeper quests with larger rewards.
Lack of companion customization (5/10) - Of course I'm
referring to their armor here. It's not a huge deal to me, and it was
kind of neat that they all looked unique, but it was frustrating when
some great piece of gear dropped and I had to just sell it off.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Things I did not like:The re-use of areas (0/10) - This has been talked about enough. Suffice it to say that I find it simply unacceptable in a game like this, at least in the amount it took place.
The fights (3/10) - They were incredibly repetetive. All boss fights followed more or less the same pattern (smack boss around to a certain HP %, kill adds that spawn, repeat). Few actual tactics were required other than simply killing everything as quickly as possible. The wave-after-wave of red shirts was particularly annoying and makes little sense (what with them popping out of the ceiling/wall/thin air thing and all...). I'm pretty sure the number of mercenaries and thugs I killed was several orders of magnitude more than the actual number of citizens in Kirkwall. And yes, I played at least a small part of the game on each difficulty level just to see how things changed, so that was not the problem.
AoE targeting (1/10) - Getting a little specific here, I know, but the snap-to AoE target selecting was incredibly annoying, especially combined with the lack of an overhead camera. If you don't have to select a specific enemy to focus an AoE ability on, it shouldn't snap-to (or at least make it an option). It makes it very difficult to aim your spells/abilities properly, and may actually be my number one pet peeve about the game.
Lack of race-choosing (2/10) - I give this a few points because I realize the narrative style probably makes this more difficult to implement, but I think it should still be possible.
Ambiance (3/10) - This is a little vague, but I'm basically talking about the way my characters and the environment interact. For example, when I'm throwing down in the middle of the city with 20 assassins and blood mages and tossing fireballs and summoning lightning storms, I don't expect the NPCs to sit on their asses in the corner like they always do. I mean, I took two apostates (and then some) to see the Knight-Commander of the Templars...shouldn't she have at least looked at me funny?
Time passing (1/10) - I'm not averse to the concept of the story taking place over a number of years; indeed, it's kind of fun to see how things change over time. And that's the problem: nothing changed over time. All the environments were *exactly* the same. All the characters were *exactly* the same. I mean, people can change a lot over 7 years, so I should see some wrinkles appear or something. I felt like I'd just gotten off the boat when the game ended, at least in terms of the physical aspect of the game.
The dialogue wheel (3/10) - I tolerate this in Mass Effect because, let's admit it, ME's main focus is not exactly the role playing. It's not that I think it gives me fewer options or anything (although sometimes it seems like it), but rather that I hate that I can't see exactly what I'll be saying. Even with the (rather useless, IMO) "tone" icons, there were some instances, some of them significant, that I totally misinterpreted what my character was going to say. Some of the time it was just an ambiguity of the paraphrase, but other times I honestly don't know how they thought the paraphrase was supposed to convey the meaning of what was actually said.
Speaking in absolutes (3/10) - By this I mean that there is often no middle ground when dealing with people. It's either angelic, smartass-that-can't-take-anything-seriously, or total douchelord. This is especially awkward when dealing with your companions. I realize that not every option can be presented, but even adding one "reasonable" line in key situations would be a vast improvement.
The loot/junk (3/10) - I do like the ability to send things to a junk section and sell that section with a single click, I just don't think I should have to do it so often. Aside from the actual "junk" items, I thought there were way too many filler drops. I can't imagine the number of Fire Damage+4% rings I sold. Similar to side quests, I would much rather get fewer, more powerful items (even if I'm going to sell it rather than use) than a bunch of crap that I'm just going to junk. Please note that I didn't have inventory problems, so that's not affecting how I feel about this.
Rival system (3/10) - I understand what you were going for with this, and it can be fun to do whatever you want without worrying about gimping yourself, but with this system I just felt like there were no consequences to saying whatever I wanted. Part of the fun in DAO (for me) was playing my companions off each other and having to balance what I wanted to say with what I could get away with saying (kind of like life, no?). Even still, it seemed like there were far too few opportunites to gain rivalrly. Note that I played primarily with Aveline, Anders, and Merrill - not exactly the companions who got along the best, and I still thought it was absurdly simple to gain friendship points.
Party member selection (0/10) - In DAO you could deselect party members in such a way as to be able to move your PC without them following. There were a number of situations in DA2 where this ability would have been very useful, and I'm not exactly sure why you removed it.
Non-combat skills (0/10) - I like having them, and there weren't any. Again it comes down to the idea that my character can have more of an impact on the world. It also adds some suspense, so that rather than simply stepping through a conversation tree with the result a foregone conclusion (I honestly wasn't surprised once with how a conversation turned out - it was pretty obvious what you needed to pick to convince someone of something, which the dialogue wheel made even more obvious), there's some uncertainty as to whether you'll be able to sway an NPC to your side or if you'll have to make up for your lack of charisma (for lack of a better term) in some other way.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Overall I would give the game a 6.5/10. Despite its many (sometimes significant) flaws, I still enjoyed playing it, and the story kept me entertained for the most part. For comparitive purposes and so you know my biases, I would give DAO an 8.5/10, ME1 an 8.5/10, ME2 a 7.5/10, Morrowind a 9.5/10, Oblivion a 7/10, KOTOR a 9/10, NWN2 OC a 6.5/10, and NWN2: MotB an 8/10. If I think of anything else I'll come back and edit this post.
Modifié par jgreinke, 18 mars 2011 - 03:56 .
Retour en haut
The disappearance of abilities and subsequently less possibilities on dialogues. When playing through DA:O I loved to use my persuasion to accomplish my goals, was really disappointed that this was not included
you guys No matter what happens I want to thank you guys for all the years of 10,000+ hourso f gaming.
