65 réponses à ce sujet

[jbrand2002uk]

DPSSOC wrote...

keesio74 wrote...

DPSSOC wrote...


1 dimensional companions - There's nothing to any of our companions in DA2 they have their thing and that's it (Pirate, Slave, Guard Captain, etc.). Which is really sad because Bioware is normally great with characters, and they couldn't make me give a damn about any of these people.

Let's see... in DA:O we had goth chick, la femme nikita french chick, drunken lewd dwarf, smooth hypersexual mediterranean, old wise woman, etc. 

Honestly I don't see how DA:O characters are so complex and interesting and DA2 is 1-D. I liked and disliked characters from both games.

Development.  Over the course of DA:O your companions attitudes can shift, Alistair can become a bit more cynical, Morrigan can learn the value of friendship, etc. it's all fairly standard and cliche but it's there.  Sten's a good example, when you first pick him up he doesn't hold a very high opinion of you (he's shocked to find out that you're a Grey Warden) but over the course of the game you can earn his respect.  You don't get this shift in DA2 (IMO), Fenris in Act 1 is an angry slave and even after killing his former master in Act 3 he's still an angry slave.

Wrong Wrong and Wronger still in DA2 if you are a mage Fenris is angry at all mages true but with good reason however by the end of DA2 while he is still angry at most mages he can openly admit that Hawke is an exception to that preconception, even saying that it will be an honour to fight at his/her side 

Sten is no different in this regard his attitude towards you may change slightly yes however by the end he is still a Qun worshipping kossith who speaks in total doubletalk nonsense.
If anything criticising DA2 for flaws that are also present and that you blatantly ignore in DAO does you no favours if you wish people to take you critique seriously quit with the Doube Standards 

[GavrielKay]

I thought DA2 was OK as a way to spend some spare time. The first play through was ok except for the reused maps and crazed waves of enemies.

When I replayed DA2, the reused maps really started to be a problem. The lack of unique environments made 2 play throughs feel like 6. Then you start to realize that taking different dialogue options hasn't changed anything. There are too many places in the story where you are swept along by the plot railroad. The overly cartoony graphics and extremist companions made it feel cheesy, like a B movie. DA:O had plot demands as well, but I guess most of them were making me go where I would have gone anyway.

DA2 shoved me down paths that made no sense to my character. For example, in Shepherding Wolves, I really wanted to kill Petrice. She set me up to die in order to start a war. Not cool. And yet, I stood aside and watched her walk away to continue her plots. It completely broke character immersion for me. Same with Cullen taking Bethany to the circle. And Meredith sending me to collect rogue mages etc.

This, in contrast to DA:O where I could work through dialogue and find I could save Connor and Isolde, convince Zathrian to break his curse, spare the Circle of Magi etc. These were choices that allowed proper role playing and were sadly lacking in DA2.

[keesio74]

jbrand2002uk wrote...


Wrong Wrong and Wronger still in DA2 if you are a mage Fenris is angry at all mages true but with good reason however by the end of DA2 while he is still angry at most mages he can openly admit that Hawke is an exception to that preconception, even saying that it will be an honour to fight at his/her side 

Yup. And there is Merrill... give her enough tough love and she'll realize that the mirror screwed up her life and her clan and smash it. Honestly that scene may have been the best scene in the whole game for me. The satisfaction i got when she smashed it was more than when I finished the game. Talk about the ability to change someone. You can get Isabela to come back or bail on you forever depending on if you built a relationship with her.

[ShadowLordXII]

I say that it's hype.

I have both and while Origins is the superior game overall, I though DA2 was a good game and did a few things better than the first one.

The companions are actually self-active and do things on their own, kind of like they're each heroes in their own story. The approval system was a bit more dynamic and more reflective of how the player treated them as opposed to the first one where gifts can make everything better most of the time.

But, Origins wasn't really hyped all that much and DA2 had a lot of hype going into it due to being the sequel to the first game. Hype is always a double-edged sword, it increases preorders and sells but can lead into disappointment. It was the same with the Mass Effect series and the Halo franchise.

Hopefully, DA3 won't be hyped to where it's harmed whether it ends up not being quite as good as Origins or better...wait...too late for that.

[DPSSOC]

jbrand2002uk wrote...
Wrong Wrong and Wronger still in DA2 if you are a mage Fenris is angry at all mages true but with good reason however by the end of DA2 while he is still angry at most mages he can openly admit that Hawke is an exception to that preconception, even saying that it will be an honour to fight at his/her side

Hmm, 3 mage playthroughs never got that, maybe I skipped passed it by accident (it happens). 

jbrand2002uk wrote...
Sten is no different in this regard his attitude towards you may change slightly yes however by the end he is still a Qun worshipping kossith who speaks in total doubletalk nonsense.
If anything criticising DA2 for flaws that are also present and that you blatantly ignore in DAO does you no favours if you wish people to take you critique seriously quit with the Doube Standards 

Like I said this is all my opinion, based on my experiences with the game, whether or not people I'll never meet take my opinion seriously isn't really a concern of mine.  In 5 playthroughs, some varying greatly from each other, I never noticed any shift in character attitudes.  Also I was never snapped back the way I was in DA:O.  That could be a time thing though since I started my second run of DA:O right after finishing my first, my second run of DA2 was weeks after I finished my first.  With DA:O I found myself thinking, "I forgot Morrigan was such a *****." because over the course of the game that had changed and I was still expecting that kind of behaviour from the character.

It's not a double standard because my experiences with the games differ.  I never saw any shift in DA2, I never got dialogue from Fenris suggesting he no longer lumped my Hawke in with the rest of the mages,   Had I said, "DA:O was great Sten starts off not liking you but you can earn his respect.  All that happens in DA2 is Fenris stops hating you for being a mage."  That would have been a double standard.  What my experience was, what I'm basing my assessment of the game off of, was that you could eventually earn Sten's respect, and Fenris never stopped including Hawke in his opinions of mages.  You can argue that I missed something, that my conclusion is flawed and based on incomplete knowledge, but don't presume to know what my experience was.

Now assuming you're right and I missed something or didn't have enough Friendship or Rivalry then I retract that criticism of the game, I'll load up some old saves and see if I can't confirm it.

[GavrielKay]

DPSSOC wrote...
Now assuming you're right and I missed something or didn't have enough Friendship or Rivalry then I retract that criticism of the game, I'll load up some old saves and see if I can't confirm it.

It is true that on the friendship path (I don't remember rivalry, so maybe there too) Fenris will eventually come to admit that mage Hawke isn't so bad.  I think this has less effect on the game overall than Sten's transformation because we get so much less interaction with the companions in DA2.  By the time you get to the point in the game where Fenris respects Hawke, you have maybe one or two conversations remaining with him.

I don't know if it was the fully voiced PC or just the same lack of time that caused it, but the reduced companion interaction was a big part of why DA2 was less immersive.  I felt like my companions got to know each other better than I ever got to know them.

[Firewolf99]

Err... I think DA2 is better than DA:O.

It's just... the story in DA:O is a bit cliche, what with the "save the world" and "Evil Gobli- I mean Uruk H- I mean Darkspawn" enemies. And I never really bonded with the voiceless Warden, whereas I liked Hawke. I preferred the Dialogue choices in DA2 too.

I couldn't really sense a massive difference in the combat, except moves felt more powerful in DA2. I didn't play on that high a difficulty anyway, because I prefer the story to the game-play of RPG's like this, so maybe I'm not the best person to judge...

Yeah, I'll accept he reused maps thing was a massive issue in DA2, but then again, DA:O's encounters were a bit samey: I kept getting that damn Dwarf retailer.

Also, I didn't feel there was a reduced character interaction: if anything, I felt there was more, what with three companion quests per character. And yeah, you did talk to them less outside of missions, but then again, it's sometimes irritating to wade through lots of boring lore just to get to the interesting stuff. And the DA2 conversations actually had some momentum to them, whereas all the party camp conversations in DA:O were your bog standard, "Lets stand opposite to each other whatever we say!!!"

I think a lot of gamer's paint DA:O with rose tint (Wow, mixed metaphor much?) because of nostalgia. Ultimately, DA2 was designed with a different idea in mind than DA:O, and this meant that gamer's didn't see past the differences as a creative decision and saw them instead as mistakes.

Now, can someone explain to me why there's no Dragon Age 1? Seriously,that's always confused me...

[LobselVith8]

GavrielKay wrote...

DA2 shoved me down paths that made no sense to my character. For example, in Shepherding Wolves, I really wanted to kill Petrice. She set me up to die in order to start a war. Not cool. And yet, I stood aside and watched her walk away to continue her plots. It completely broke character immersion for me. Same with Cullen taking Bethany to the circle. And Meredith sending me to collect rogue mages etc.

I agree completely - why can't Hawke kill Petrice when she's alone in a hovel with one single templar? Especially when she makes it clear she wants to start a religious war with the Qunari, even if it means killing innocent people? The people who killed as a result of Petrice can be blamed on Hawke's inability to deal with Petrice then and there. He simply stands there like a piece of furniture.

Merrill is proactive about the plight of the People and involves herself in reconstructing an elven device that she thinks can sway the balance in their favor; Aveline focuses on dealing with the problems facing Kirkwall as Guard-Captain; Fenris, even as an escaped slave from Tevinter, locates and makes contact with his sister (who is in Tevinter); Anders is involved with the mage underground since Act II, until it's destroyed in Act III,  but is still helping people in his clinic; Isabela is trying to stay alive, and then works towards getting her own ship in Act III. All the companions seem to be proactive, while Hawke basically seems to be passive until someone asks him to do something.

The same is true with Cullen taking away Bethany at the end of Act I, where Hawke (once again) does nothing - despite the fact that Hawke knows Circle mages are being made tranquil illegally at the Circle of Kirkwall. He doesn't even try to stop two templars. Hawke's passive stance when his younger sister is being taken away to a place where he knows she might be made tranquil illegally really made me detest his passive nature. He kept seeming to be less and less human as the story progressed.

Meredith's demand that Hawke kill three mages made little sense. Considering that Meredith hasn't imprisoned Hawke for three years because of his status as the Champion of Kirkwall, where he seems to have popultarity among the people (to the point where they built a statute of Hawke at the docks), why would Hawke care now about her threatening him?

[Ianamus]

Personally I didn't "hate" DA2, but I thought it was very mediocre. It was an OK game, but I didn't think that it was anything special, and comming as a sequel to a game that I loved (Origins) It was slightly disappointing. 

The reasons why I disliked the game more than Origins were mostly the re-used areas, inability to equip armor on companions, waves of spawning enemies from nowhere and only being able to speak to the companions when the plot allowed. The story also felt a bit dull and unmotivated at times, particuarly in act 3, and almost required you to become attatched to Krikwall, which was hard when it was dull, stagnant and ridiculously full of blood mages. 

That said I didn't hate the game, it had some good characters, like Aveline (I had wanted a strong, independant non-LI female warrior companion and she was exactly that) banter was also very good, although I felt that actual dialogue options with the companions was very limited, particuarly a lack of non-romance dialogue. It just fely very bland overall. 

Fortunately the developers have pretty much said that they will be "fixing" most of these things for the next game. I'm not going to get my hopes up (I'm tired of being disappointed by Bioware games), but I will probably buy Dragon Age 3, and I think that theres no reason they won't be able to create a good game. 

I actually hate Mass Effect 3 a lot more than Dragon Age 2 on the whole, even though I found the majority of Mass Effect 3 more fun. Dragon Age 2's ending was alright but not great, like the rest of the game, so I didn't mind it so much, while Mass Effect 3's was sub-fanfiction level bad. 

[Tsarapihelas]

Because they streamlined the RPG elements ala Mass Effect 2.

[ImperialHeir]

Good question.

Although I act like a hater a lot of the time, in reality I'm pretty indifferent. I don't usually get passionate about these kinds of things because I'm a logical person, and logical people know complaining isn't going to get us anywhere, really, unless we do it in a good manner. Thus, I will present my case without hate.

I think the root of the problem is the fact it's a sequel to DA:O. On it's own, with maybe only a few changes, it could've been a good and solid game. But people expected a sequel, not a totally new game, with a new conflict hardly exposistioned on in DA:O*, and of course, exposistioned badly if compared to the previous game. In this case, it's nowhere near on par with what people expected. And when people's expectations take a hit,  they RAGE! to their heart's content. 

*Do not even begin using the Circle Tower as an excuse. It was a few idiot mages sabotaging the whole tower. That does not count as exposistion, because it was contained easily. Also, there's a huge trust between Greagoir and Irving. In the Magi origin, Irving has books on blood magic on his desk to hide them from apprentices. If Meredith found Orsino had done that, she'd claim he was a blood mage and annul the tower.

[gonzalez.melissa53]

RPG... roll playing game. It's a story that you as the player can manipulate. In DA:O the story line was amazingly flexible. You could be a hero of steely moral character or the worst sort of villain. DA2... not so much. Don't get me wrong. I love both games. I'm happy with many of the changes and find myself still excited by what we might see next. BUT! I can see how DA2 might have been "rushed" and there is a huge margarine for improvement.

[Vexille]

As some others have said... I just felt like a spectator... Hawke kinda just kinda floats through the game without leaving much of a mark.

I thought Hawke was by far the worst player character that bioware has ever given us, now Hawkes not horrible, but after playing the Warden, Sheppard, Revan... Hawke just came across as a big loser who constantly has bad **** happen to him.

Im desperately hoping (even though I know its unlikely) that the Warden returns as the PC in DA3... and if not at least give us a hero who isnt a giant loser I mean really... Hawke should have a raincloud constantly hovering over his head

[Edrick1976]

The game was basicly made me want to move (my character hawk) to somewhere else. I mean after my mother died I did not see the point in staying in this city, I never realy cared for the hole templar/mage deal at all. I felt like the ending was way to much a poke of what happened at 9/11, the use of the same old backgrounds when you went somehwere it was all basicly the same. The ONLY 2 companion that I really liked where the ones I could not have as a love Interest (3 if you count my sister that brother was an jack ass). The need to keep pressing the A button to attack (not sure if they fixed that issue or not but I have not played in a long time). Act 3 was in my opinion extremly rushed, The peake of a game should not be Act 2 out of a 3 act game. Half of the time I felt like what is the point of these quests. I cant find that "button of ASSOMMNESS" I was promassed.

THese are some of the things I could remmember off the top of my head here is a link of a good revew of DA 2 I dont agree with everything he had to say but still a good revew of the game.

=

Modifié par Edington, 23 avril 2012 - 02:35 .

[jsadalia]

ME3 maintained my interest all the way through: the reason so many hate the ending is that they were emotionally invested in the outcome. I never felt that way with DA2. Frankly, it got kind of boring very quickly. Same environments, same wave combats with different names. And a vital part of any game is purpose: what are you trying to do? Hawke's purpose seemed to be to wait around for things to happen. I never cared about him/her.

Can't help but feel the writers tried too hard to be clever in avoiding the classic "save the world from darkness!" fantasy and video game plot, and ended up with drab and kinda depressing moral choices instead. It's a classic plot because it's fun. Give me some evil to smite, damn it!

[GavrielKay]

jsadalia wrote...
Can't help but feel the writers tried too hard to be clever in avoiding the classic "save the world from darkness!" fantasy and video game plot, and ended up with drab and kinda depressing moral choices instead. It's a classic plot because it's fun. Give me some evil to smite, damn it!

I had similar thoughts on this.  What's wrong with saving the world?  I can do mundane chores in real life.  If I wanted to slog through trying to make myself care about a messed up city where an uncle lost the family home and my sister got carted off to prison...  well, I could save $60 and watch some crummy reality TV show.

Saving the world is a big part of what epic fantasy stories are about.  And if you want to avoid the cliche, I don't think the best way to do it is to have a "hero" who can't save ANYthing.

[Tenshi]

im not sure if this was said. but there were too much of a fight, VERY LONG and easy fights, dont get me wrong with word ,,easy,, but if you turn your difficulty harder than normal these fights will consume even more time. it gets very, very boring.
on the bright side, sarcastic/agresive/heroic choices in conversation were a very good idea. and story is not so bad.
though i personaly hate that fights take so much time in this game i kinda like it. hate is overhyped, its not so bad on its own. but its very bad as succesor to the name dragon age.

[Adoxographist]

All comes down to personally preference. End of story. Personally I liked DA2 but didn't like DA:O

[Luigitornado]

I put off buying DA2 for the longest time. I'm going through it right now, and it isn't that bad. Prob cause I wasn't expecting much.

Modifié par Luigitornado, 29 avril 2012 - 05:49 .

[ananna21]

1.Reused areas.
2. Dull environments.
3. A city that we were suppossed to care about but didn't.
4. Hawke being so passive that I eventually though of her as the same Yahtzee thought of the protagonist in mafia 2
5. Constant hordes chasing me.
6. Had to be a mage with healing powers if I didn't want to take Anders.
7. The city not changing the slightest over the time-skips.
8. Not sure what Hawke wanted so badly that he wished to stay in kirkwall.

Modifié par ananna21, 29 avril 2012 - 07:21 .

[Cyne]

recycled dungeons, lackluster story, cliche characters, repetitive combat, poor pacing, fewer rpg options.

da2 was great in some ways though:
voiced protagonist, novel non-hero concept, gay and straight romance options, fluid combat, auto leveling, better skill trees, faster loading times

[ananna21]

Oh and the fact that there were no female dwarves.

[hussey 92]

combat got really boring after a while

[vicendor]

I also give it a 7.5 out of 10

some things to harp on however are...

-Reuse of Areas
-Wave after Wave of mobs
-Not as much companion interaction I would of liked...
-And a few other things that people have all ready posted about

I did not mind the art style myself.