Rules:
1. Lay out your opinions orderly so they can be understood easily (no 3 page rants plz!)
2. Please respond to 1 subject at a time for back and forth discussion to make it easy to glance over and understand.
3. Don't waste anyone's time with posts without something constructive to say or debate on (pointless arguing)
With that being said, let me give my opinion. I'll start out with successes, since no one wants to listen to just negative comments.
1. Dragon Age 2 was very stylized compared to the first. Flashy looks, flashier combat moves, and the beginning of the story was very well made in order to draw in the player to the story. Some companions were a lot more flashy and stylized as well. It looked like the dev team spent more time on the style of the game.
2. The combat Abilities were cleaned up and presented in a much better way, and offered more choice in the direction you wanted your character to go in. Respeccing pots at the black implorium were also great for redoing companion's talents in order to mold them into what you needed.
3. The turn of Dragon Age II's storyline from the original hero, to a different place/person breathed some fresh air into the next expansion. This also saves content that i am very interested in for later installments (I.E Story twists from Dragon Age Origins' DLC)
4. The soundtrack and ambiance of the game was still as excellent as ever. Voice acting for main plot characters were good for the most part.
This next part i will dedicate to what they failed in. I debated on whether it should be "failed" or "needs improved", however, since most of what (in MY opinion) went wrong in Dragon Age 2 was perfected in Dragon Age 1. There was no need for "improvement" as it was already there, thus those things" failed" to be brought forth to DA2.
1. The overall world immersion for DA1 beats the crap out DA2. Obviously a lot more time was spent on DA1 in order to set a firm foundation for the series. That being said, from a longtime fan of bioware storytelling, it seemed to me like a different bioware team made this game, using a "Dragon Age Developer Kit". DA2 failed to draw me in past the beggining chapter. Most of this had to do with reusing of maps.
Yes, I understand that you can only pack so much content in a single disc. All the people that I know who buy Bioware games (around 60 in all that i know/talk to regularly) buy them because Bioware games are the Aston Martin of RPGs. We want a deep immersive story with tons of lore/content. I feel like this was very lacking in DA2. This could be that Bioware decided to milk out more money by providing richly developed DLC, or that the product was rushed out way before it was ready, due to financial recession, or other demands. Because of this I know that a lot of the people I know (as well as myself) will always still play DA3 when it comes out, because the games are still very good, but will be cautious of outright buying the game. Especially when Gamefly is so easy to use. Thus, you are cutting your own foot off on sales.
In Dragon Age 1, the world was so immersive, and the story line for each "area" played out so well. DA2 felt more like i was completing "check the block" missions, rather then discovering and exploring a storyline. Also, the reuse of the same maps, and going back to the same areas over and over made the experience feel cheap and lackluster. This also made me want to rush through the content out of annoyance, rather then spend more time reading lore, and "experiencing" the game.
Fixes? Understand that the reason Dragon Age 1 was so successfull, was that the story and the world was so immersive, that it was a joy to play. I hope in the next Dragon Age you decide to value content over higher end graphics. There is a certain level of graphics where a player stops caring, when compared to the content.
2. Character and companion development. I felt that fore the most part, the companion personalities fell flat. I don't mean to be mean here, and I will provide examples. Leliana. You could tell from the content that whoever developed this character had invested a lot of time into her. Leliana was a companion that really made the game shine. If the same love and care was given to develope the "personaity" of each companion, it would be amazing. I am not talking about "liking" her as a companion. Some people have found her absolutely boring/annoying, but the amount of detail in developing her personality was excellent.
Fixes? Perhaps more companion concentrated quests would help this. I just did not feel connected to the companions. Sure, Isabella was crazy/smexy/cool, but was there enough content between the main character and her to make me feel connected, other then she was a hot pirate girl? (13yo hormones activate!!).
3. Combat. Now, you will probly say "combat?" pssh, it was solid. Next! With that being said, while i had no major issues with combat, a few things could make it way more enjoyable. First off, all your companions had all these talent trees with awesome stuff! On casual mode, the enemies died too fast to actually use any of those cool moves. On Normal mode it was slightly better, but you can out of mana/energy so fast, and regained it so slow that you were either stuff with no cool moves to use, or chugging energy pots left and right. On hard it was the same way. The Healing mechanics just couldn't keep up. Nightmare difficulty the battles took so long, and you were out of energy and mana so much that it was BOOOORRRRINNNNG. You spent 45 minutes kiting stuff around and basically watching your guys hack n slash with no strategy other then "don't die".
I feel that if the Officer mobs (Revanent, Demons, Lt, ect) took longer to tear down/kill but didnt do as much damage, this would make it a little more exciting. In order to maintain the urgency of killing them though, they should bring decent "buffs" to their minions/trash mobs. I feel that this would also make encounters more strategy based. I.E Do i take out the trash mobs with the huge protection bonuses? Or do i take down the boss providing those buffs first? Should I take out that Officer last, when he is giving all these trash mobs +10 fire damage to each of their attacks? or +haste?
This will also bring up my last point on combat, which is the urgency/importance debuffing played in the game. The stacking class combos were great! (Brittle/stunned/disoriented/ect.) but i also played through the game as a healer mage, and I barely spent any time debuffing magic effects or buffs. Just random niche encounters or bosses only. I feel that if offensive debuffing played a more important role, it would up the fun factor.
4. Choices: I would like to discuss in game choices. While in game choices did have effects such as losing companions (won't get into it more then that due to spoiler alerts) i didn't feel my choices really had any changing effect on the world around me. The first year you spent "paying off your debt" to get into the city was a missed opportunity to bring more story into the game that provided choices that would change and mold your main character.
It also was a missed opportunity to bring in guest appearances by DA1 characters, or people from DA1 character's pasts as well. In the end, I felt that if I chose to be a smuggler or a mercenary to pay off my debt, i would atleast get to do a few missions with those themes. Even if it was just 4-6 short story missions that provided me choices that would mold how the city and those within would interact with you. Content is the key to keeping your customers happy (in RPGs anyways).
5. Perspective: In DA1 you got to mold your physical appearance and race into whatever you chose. This supplied you with multiple choices, experiences, and perspectives on the story in DA1 that provided weeks and weeks of replay value. So much so that DA1 and its' DLC lasted me nicely up to DA2's release. The singular approach that the dev team took provided me very little replay value. Yeah, i can replay it as a different class, but there were no epic quests to unlock talent trees, no new starting areas. There was just the same linear story line, with the same 20-30 small map locations and their own linier paths. DA2 felt so dumbed down and stripped of the challenge to explore and experience DA2 in your own way that it was enfuriating at times.
A side from what I just said, there didn't seem to be any hard counters to different class types. I feel that if there was, it would give me a reason to use my other campanions more often. Most times i just used the same 3 companions and let the others grow mold. If there were certain missions were enemies were hard counters for 2h warriors, or rogues, and i had to bring more then 1 mage, or possibly 2 rogues in order to counter what I mentioned above, i could actually use multiple campanions, instead of meeting them, shaking their hand, and locking them up in "gather your party" pergatory for the rest of the game.
SUSTAINS
Ok, now that i've beat up the game enough, I can comment on things that were brought over from DA1 into DA2 that were good and need to be sustained:
1. Companion to Companion dialogue. This was a great feature and keeps the entertainment value up duing lulls in fighting.
2. Different dialogue choices. The most obvious, different choices with the voice acting to go with it helps immerse people in the story, and makes people feel like they are playing a polished, finished product.
3. Your choices from the last game carries over to the next game. Makes it worth while to keep your old game files around, and change the world based on your past choices.
4. Setting up the story line for the next game, and adding DLC to slowly build up on upcoming events.
Finishing out my post, I would just like to say that I am merely putting out my opinion in a postitive way to help any future developing of DLC or DA3. I am not posting to bash on people, Bioware is by far one of my favorite developers and continues to be. I also understand that not everyone feels the same way as I about DA2. These are my opinions, and so I don't think that they are the be all end all for game development. I didn't post all my comments on this post, because it was huge already, and I hope discussion starts up here, and even better ideas. Lastly, I wish to thank Bioware and their staff for another great game to pass the time away! Can't wait for ME3!
Retour en haut
It was very sad. I was very excited about DA2 and it was a disaster. Sorry, Bioware, try again and stick to what worked the first time!!!
