I played the PC game on nightmare difficulty with a female rogue (started with daggers, switched to archer). My playthrough took about 50 hours total and I think I finished almost everything there is to finish (excluding achievements), except for one sidequest that didn't work.
So here goes:
Character Creator
The chargen was comparable to the one found in Origins (minus races of course) and allows you to create a decently unique and good looking character. I enjoyed almost all of the new hairstyles, the devs did a good job with those imo.
A minor detractor could be that you're not allowed to customize the preset default Hawke and that you can't use the bloodsmear tattoo on your custom character. I don't see why you would restrict this if you're allowing people to customize anyway, but it's a minor complaint.
Performance
I played the game on high settings with high res textures and DX11 turned on. Gameplay was smooth overall, however, there were some hiccups now and then that are hard to explain. Some of the cutscenes 'hanged' halfway through and the game had some hiccups here and there. Performance was also slightly worse toward the end of the game.
Overall it was good.
Trying to put it on very high settings didn't really work out for me as the game didn't run smooth any more, but my PC isn't the best anyway.
UI
Nothing to really complain about, improved over Origins. Some elements could be made more appealing however, like the portraits and health bars.
Graphics & World
The graphics have noticeably improved over DAO, effects are appealing and slick and I like most of the new models.
But (and this is a major but), when we're talking about the world of DA2, there are several major flaws imo.
First off: the textures and environments really lack detail and "feel" in my opinion, Kirkwall does have a defining look but the problem is that that look just isn't very interesting: the beige marble really tires quite quickly and the textures of walls, steps and so forth really aren't very pretty (Hightown is ok in that regard, but Darktown and Lowtown especially fall short).
The environments outside Kirkwall, like the wounded coast, are also too generic and lack a defining feel like the Brecilian forest or the Korcari Wilds had in Origins.
An exception to this is the Deep Roads section, I felt like that improved over Origins.
A second issue is of course the way all the environments are repeated a lot over the course of the game, the lack of detail also makes this issue even more apparent. I understand that the story of DA2 is about one city state and one specific place in the world, but I honestly got tired of the environments after Act 1 already, and that was only after one third of my playtime.
The biggest offence in this respect might be the way parts of the same dungeon are used over and over for different quests and different places.
The linearity of the game that some are complaining about is also there, but this is really unchanged from Origins.
For me, this was really the biggest flaw in DA2: I felt like you could have done more with Kirkwall, like you could have openened it up more and have shown us a more detailed and complete look.
The problem isn't the artstyle, I like the artstyle, it's what you do with it. Look at TOR from BioWare Austin and then look back at DA2, or even just look at DAO itself and compare the environments.
That aside however, I have to praise the new direction with armor models and the new look of the Qunari, there is something defining and impressive!
Combat & General Gameplay
Where the world is the major disappointment in my book, combat is the biggest improvement.
I really really enjoyed the combat in DA2 and would even say that this is probably the best single player party-based RPG combat I've ever played.
The combat allows for very complex encounters and tactics while still delivering an action packed experience.
The boss fights in this game are also plain fantastic, the "Ancient Rock Wraith" in particular was one of the hardest single player fights I've seen in recent years and also one of the most satisfying ones ever.
Playing on Nightmare, I'd say DA2 was quite a few steps more difficult than DAO on the same difficulty and much more fulfilling. I got my ass kicked several times and came up with quite a few moments where sweat streamed from my forehead as I was kiting with a character to take that last assassin down or when there were but a few seconds left on that ressurection grenade.
A minus might be that the balance between classes was a bit borked. Specifically between melee and ranged.
I started out with a dagger rogue but had to switch to an archer in the aforementioned Rock Wraith fight, not because my melee rogue was inherently underpowered but because there are just way more interrupts and stuns and so forth that can hamper your character when in melee range.
You only get items that grant immunity against these effects late in the game and at that point I found that the archer became much more powerful DPS wise than the melee rogue, in comparison: at level 23 I auto attacked for 300 damage crits in my dagger build while I got 1000 crits with my archer very routinely, these could easily spike to 1500 damage or even 2000+ when the enemy was debuffed.
The added utility of knocking an enemy back that the melee rogue doesn't have was also a plus for the archer.
As for loot: I enjoyed that there were more sets and looks in DA2, this has also improved a lot. It would be nice to see some more unique sets of gear appear earlier in each arc however, as it stands you only got to complete them near the end (exception being the Champion set, which I really liked) of most arcs.
I felt like you got too many filler items however: there were belts and rings and amulets and so forth in almost every chest and box that I opened, these filled my inventory with too much useless crap.
The star rating system for items was nice but rather unnecessary, as I ended up looking at stats anyhow.
Story & Quests
The story of DA2 really took a pretty different direction than DAO or even any other BioWare game up until now. It was more of a political story, a story that tried to dig deep into one situation in the Dragon Age world.
I appreciate what the writers did with this as I felt that the story was overall more complex than Origins and that they are really looking at new ways of presentation.
The question however is: does "complex" mean better? In my opinion, the answer is no.
Dragon Age 2 doesn't have the "instantly likeable" thing going on that Origins had, because it loses a lot of the epic and wide scale of Origins with its focused story.
In that regard its not really clear after playing the game where the storyline of DA2 really "fits" in the overall scheme of things within the Dragon Age world, not a good thing.
A lot of things that were really at the center of DAO aren't picked up in DA2 either, most noticeable example being the grey wardens. This further reinforces the disconnected feel of DA2's storyline from the previous installment.
No one likes cliffhangers BioWare. The ending doesn't help with that much.
Another minus is the characters. These are simply weaker and much much less interesting than in DAO or even ME. When I want to turn of the sound whenever Anders is speaking after playing for 25 hours, you know something is wrong.
More humour and less drama and constant bickering over the same things would be nice.
The characters are also a bit flat in general and none of them really change much during the course of the game, Isabele and Merrill being possible exceptions as they got emotionally involved and changed.
Pacing is another thing that DA2 doesn't quite get right imo, this is most apparent in the emotional scenes that involve the death of this or that character. These really don't feel as gripping as they should be.
This is mostly caused by how combat and storyline don't find a good balance, many of these scenes go like this: "Oh my god no someone died!!!" Now go kill 5 waves of NPC's and a boss!!!"... "Oh my god no!!! why did he have to die." *stands in a room full of corpses*.
These emotional moments should be given a little bit more buildup and should be handled a bit more slowly imo, some of the reactions that Hawke had were also not very involving.
There are also big positives however: the dialogue wheel works very well and I enjoyed the voiced protagonist. It took some getting used to but lady Hawke's voice did grow on me and I really came to appreciate the VO as the game went on.
I do find that she could have been a bit more emotional and involving however: make her shout, wheep, rage and cry more! Right now she's sort of a buddhist monk next to the overly whiny companions.
Another big positive is that many of the choises are less compromising and more complex than in DAO: I rarely had to think about my choice in Origins but in DA2 I came across some really tough ones that I did not expect, well done!
As for quests... I like that some sidequests went pretty deep into Kirkwall the surroundings, more so than in Origins.
However, there are way too many chores in this game. All the letters and messages that ask you to kill groups of thugs and rescue hostages really don't add much at all to the game.
Companions
I talked about story already, but companions have to get some special attention.
Let me flat out say: I don't like where you went here.
First off: the armor thing. I don't like it... I actually do very much like that every companion now has a unique look, I just don't like that you can't equip stuff on them yourself. If you want to get them unique looks, get them unique outfits at different points in the game, but don't make it so we can't equip stuff on them.
When I talked about gameplay, I talked about getting a lot of trinkets I couldn't use. When I'm talking about armor, I'm saying I threw away a metric ton of stuff, enough to equip a medium sized army. Because my rogue could never ever use mage or warrior stuff.
This tremendously degraded the average usefulness and satisfaction of a loot drop. Because most of the time, when I got something, I couldn't use it.
I know, it's always more fun to equip your own player character anyway. But still, being able to equip that named item on a companion instead of throwing it away is something that gives you much more satisfaction, being able to boost up your party to the maximum power level is something that is very satisfying and lost here.
Second off: not being able to talk to your companions in the world. This is costly for your relationship with them.
I did not like this in ME2 either, because it strictly puts the time that you can spend with them inside those moments where you return to your homebase and away from the action, it doesn't allow you to get their reaction on a certain situation.
In Mass Effect, this is mediated by the frantic shooter action that is constantly going on, but this is not there in Dragon age.
Also, as I said before, companions are generally too whiny. I especially disliked the direction Anders went.
Final Thoughts
Now, I've said a lot of negative things, but don't let that fool you, I think DA2 was a good game. I also think however, that some parts were rushed a bit or where not taken in the right direction, such as the world and the companion characters.
These things make it so that DA2 generally packs less value than DAO did imo.
For a next installment, I would like to see the epic narrative return. DA2 wasn't unsuccessful exploring the framed narrative and the small scale focused storytelling, but I think the tone of the series was set much differently in the first game. That's also why I have a bit of trouble with the name Dragon Age 2, because there really isn't much of a linear connection here.
Positive lessons can be learned from DA2 though: I think the focused storytelling would be very nice when done specifically to explore the stories of your companion characters allowing you to see parts of the world from their point of view.
Also, BioWare said in one of those videos that the focus of the ME series was commander Shepard and that DA was about the whole world and time period. But I think that the tale of the Grey Wardens and the Blight was really put at the hearth of the series in Origins, therefore it was a bit weird losing that in DA2.
The combat was a real treat this time around though and should really be continued and refined in the future.
As for an arbitrary score, I'd give DA2 8/10 for pure enjoyment, because I really did enjoy the heck out of it. But looking at some flaws like the world objectively, I'd give it 7/10. Mind you, that is still a very good score in my book.
I would have given DAO a 8.5/10 in comparison.
Overall, I think BW needs to take their time some more with a next installment. I did feel like this game was rushed in some places. I didn't touch upon the music in my review for example, because it honestly went rather unnoticed in my playthrough (so neither bad nor good).
Modifié par Eledran, 19 mars 2011 - 04:14 .
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