Ramza_1 wrote...
I think one of the reasons DA2 is less enjoyable is that Hawke is powerless. Many people have made the point already that nothing he does matters. In act 3, for example, you can choose to side with the mages or the templars, but it makes zero difference in terms of gameplay or results to the world. You still fight bajillions of blood mages demons, Orsino still somehow becomes the Harvester from the DAO golems dlc, and you still fight meredith.
Act 3 felt empty and hollow. Choices barely mattered and we come to find out that the most important character in the game is one of your companions not the PC. Just bad story setup and design. Everything around it wasn't so bad. But yes the ending made little sense.
Also, I noticed that in DAO all the human enemies used the same ruleset as you. Enemy mages used the same spells, had reasonable hp for a pc mage, and the challenge was in their AI. Emissaries, for example, were really scary when they would use fireball on your clumped up group. The enemies felt like a threat, but also could be delt with because the rules they functioned by were the same as yours.
I noticed that too. I don't think I ever saw an enemy toss a fireball my way. They used some similar Force Mage like spells but yeah, no hexes, no mark of death. That made combat more tactical and tactics is not the name of DA2.
In DA2 it feels more gamey, less like your beating a foe and more like overcoming a silly mechanic of the game because the enemies play by different rules than you; the bosses are ridiculous hp sponges that sit there and wave their swords around generating some weird aura while you stab them in the face for 30 minutes. The mages sit there with their hp sponges and cast ineffective charging spells rather than just using fireball like you do. Also everyone is a paratrooper.
As I said above there's little to no need for tactics. Maybe at nightmare but avoiding your allies attacks shouldn't be a replacement for actual tactical combat. What little tactics were involved were basically in making the scripts for your companions to follow so that you could take advantage of CCC's. Thats what happens when you push a button and something awesome happens. Tactics tend to involve more than one button.
The problem here is that DA2 was moved from an RPG to an "Adventure Game with RPG Elements". Now thats fine for the most part. Some people don't like traditional RPG's that move slow because it feels like your computer is handling a bunch of character sheets instead of a core set of numbers. There's a balance that needs to be struck that allows new players to ease their way into the genre and allow RPG traditionalist the challenge they want, all while still telling a compelling story. DA2 fell short on both a compelling story and compelling game play. Don't get me wrong, it's not the worst game ever, but for long time Bioware fans, we expected better.
Furthermore, almost every foe you kill in DA2 is characterized by some kind of extreme. They are all completely fascist templars, insane blood mages, greed-possessed thugs, and all are one-dimensional and unmemorable. There are no truly great adversaries with complex motivations. I swear every mage is whiny or insane, and all sound victimized. If you play through with a sarcastic Hawke overtone, you will notice that there are MANY lines where all hawke does is say "your insane" or "great, another crazy" or "why is everyone I meet crazy". The reason this is so is because there is basically nothing else appropriate for hawke to say.
You know whats even better? Sebastian pointing out in the end that none of this needs to go further, they have the terrorist right there in front of them yet no one does a thing. It's not even as if Hawke threatened to protect Anders, Orsino, Meredith, Fenris, Aveline, all of them just turn away. Thats just bad writing/storytelling. SyFy has better scripted plots for their basic cable shows.
You don't feel powerful unless you use skill and wit to overcome worthy foes. There ARE NO worthy villains in DA2. Mages act like wimps or are insane. Even end game bosses, like Orsino and Meredith, are just one dimensional crazies. Orsino would have been a much more interesting boss fight if he had just behaved how an archmage should- by using every spell in the damned game intelligently. Please see the end fight against Irenicus in BG2 for an example. I felt badass after beating irenicus.
I will say this, I thought the Qunari story line built up to a worthy foe. The Arishok duel and getting to that point was the peak of the game. Corypheus in Legacy was a good hard fight, but it wasn't hard because of tactics it was hard because your companions have ****** poor pathing AI. Still more fun than most fights in DA2.
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