4 réponses à ce sujet

[GregoriusMaximus]

Look, I've seen a lot of people complaining that the critics of DA2 haven't elaborated on their criticism - so this is my take on DA2:

LIKED:

Real-time combat: Much as I like D&D and the whole 6-seconds thing I actually grew to like this. Keep it for the next.

Special skill trees for companions: This was a nice touch, and made party customisation more fun

DISLIKED:

Junk items: These
were just pointless. I actually quite liked having items in DA:O that
were obviously junk in terms of gameplay but whose usefulness was
nevertheless left to your discretion. Having items pre-labelled as junk
just makes them a nuisance and makes the game more mechanical.

Lack of aesthetic variety in equipment: Too few skins for gear and weapons.


Lack of overall items and equipment: Too
few items in general. A much greater variety makes looting and
equipping more fun and less of a chore - by about half way through the
game I was barely even bothering to look at what I picked up.

Lack of variety in item abilities: In
previous Bioware games a lot of the items had interesting individual
abilities and unique attributes; this wasn't really the case in DA2.

Stats:
Not really sure why, but I wasn't really interested in trying out stat
combos by equipping specific gear etc. Thisprobably ties into the
previous point - there wasn't enough variety in equipment - but I didn't
really feel that most of the items were having an effect on my
character's abilities. The stats system was also confusing sometimes;
many of the values I simply ignored as it was difficult to work out what
they did and how much of an effect they were having. The system
in DA:O, or the one in D&D, makes far more sense.

No little picture icons for items:
Following on from this, having no little picture icons next to items is
also a loss. The icons that were in the game were there to indicate the
item's gameplay use - which again makes the game feel more mechanical
and less immersive. I think little things like this are important in
making an immersive game.

Inability to equip companions:
Well this was a real bummer. Equipping companions is an important part
of managing your party. Ican't imagine why anyone would take this out.
People moaned like nothing on earth about lack of party control in NWN
and the same thing goes for equipment. cRPG players love having as much
control over the party as possible. 

Equipment stars: Didn't
ever work out what on earth these meant. Somebody told me it was gear's
usefulness in terms of your level - if so, that's pretty
patronising. Part of the point of having gear to equip is working out
what is good and bad. Putting great big stars next to it is unneccessary
and again just makes the whole thing feel mechanical and 'dumbed-down'.
Maybe this is symptomatic of the jumbled stats system - it was
difficult to know how much various stats had an effect relative to one
another so working out "good" gear from "less good" was kind of
hit-and-miss.

Simplified crafting: I much preferred
the old enchanting system. Also, it would be nice if there was the
ability to have a blacksmith craft you customised weapons and armour -
at least in the same sort of manner as DA:O

Mage prestige classes: I
played a mage, so I can't comment on the other two archetypes, but the
specialist classes were dull. I actually respecced away from having a
prestige class in the end - the force mage in particular was pretty
useless despite sounding cool. I for one miss the battle mage (or
whatever it was called). It would be good to have more prestige classes
and to bring back the storyline requirements for them. It didn't really
feel right that I could just become a blood mage at will, there should
be some reason I've learned it, even if it was just "ask Merrill".

Removal
of map skills and spells: Not sure if that's the right term, but
what I mean is the skills from Origins that allowed you to craft
potions/have more tactics etc. The loss of these just contributed to the
fact that the game was too combat-oriented. Also, spells and buffs that
could be active outside of combat that help the party with things
outside of combat (even just a group haste spell or something) would be
cool.

Lack of race options: I know this was a plot issue, but it would be nice to have the ability to play different races.

Lack of class diversity: The
three archetypes were less like archetypes and more like classes
themselves. I think it would be better if you could do more to
distinguish your character from the archetype - ie if there were more
ways to play each of these. 

Waves of enemies: The manner
in which combat was so clearly demarcated from non-combat was kind of
annoying. Worst was when you could see your enemy in front of you, but
could not attack because you hadn't walked over the trigger yet. Enemy
encounters in general were kind of repetitive; greater variety would be
nice, especially with enemy special moves. It would be nice to have more
variety in terms of some encounters being with a few strong enemies and
some with swarms of weak ones.

Bisexuality: Well, I'm
actually bisexual and I don't really get too worked up over RPG romances
but it was kind of annoying the manner in which the romance options had
obviously been tailored to be androgynous - that is to say; they'd been
written so that they could apply to either a male or female PC with
minimal dialogue changes, presumably to save time. It meant that parts
of the romance dialogue seemed odd and many of the 'flirts' that the
party members engaged in seemed to almost come from nowhere. It
detracted from the characterisation of party members; it would feel more
realistic if party members had more individual and distinct
personalities.

Conversation wheel: Didn't care for the
standardisation of responses - nice, funny, nasty etc. - nor for the
fact that Hawke would often say something that didn't seem to correspond
to what you selected. I would prefer a wider range of dialogue options;
and for those options to have more of an effect on the outcome of a
conversation. On top of this, lengthier conversations would be more
interesting. Also, what you say during a conversation should have an
effect on what your companions think of you - this applied only during
some conversations, so it was difficult to determine when to consider
their reactions and when not. For instance, I could sometimes go on
about how great mages were in front of Fenris or how what an ass the law
was in front of Aveline; and they wouldn't care... but then the next
time they would be offended.

Map repetition: C'mon... this was just lazy.

[i]Overall lack of immersion/game too combat-oriented: A
lot of this game felt like a chore. Everything "streamlined" was done
with the goal of teleological efficiency, but that isn't really the
point of a cRPG in my opinion. Things like equipment choice felt like
they were a nuisance, getting in the way of the story and the combat,
rather than an important part of the game. I don't think RPGs are really
all about the combat; part of the immersion of these games is doing
things that have no real value in terms of the story or character
improvement but are just there to add flavour. As I said before, it
looks like the biggest enemy of this game was time. I hope Bioware just
take greater time with the next installment and make the whole
experience a lot more deep and detailed and a lot less like walking
through a painting going from quest to quest to combat to combat.

[JosephCurwen]

Excellent post, hope it gets some attention.

[GregoriusMaximus]

Probs not I suppose it needs more man-giraffe-dog or "gays ruined the game"

[bill4747bill]

Actually Gregorius, there have been plenty of posts about what people do not like.

I have listed off a few of my dislikes in DA2 in a few posts, but I find the game to be great fun to play.

I am a total Dragon Age Origins Fanboy, and the extreme negative reactions I see to DA2 make no sense to me, but then again I don't expect everyone to like the same games.

Of course, there are plenty of people that trash DAO too.

[GregoriusMaximus]

My point was more that everyone seems to be complaining that critics are just "trolls" who have no serious gripes with DA2. I wanted to give voice to some of those gripes