ibbikiookami wrote...
*sigh* What do you dislike in DAO?
Well sir, let's start with equipment. And I know people's opinions will vary wildly on this, but here are my own thoughts. I'm 32 years old, and the older I have gotten, the whole "find better equipment" thing is less and less appealing. The reason being is because it has really started feeling like busy work. I search all the chests and I get five new weapons. Okay. Now I need to go to my inventory and scan to see which one gives the highest fraction of damage. Aha! This one does .000238 points more of damage. Okay, now let me check my old weapon and the other new weapons against those of my companions.
There's no challenge to it; it's not like you're doing tactical positioning, or using abilities, or in this case, even managing your money (resources). It's just an issue of opening up the Excel spreadsheet and comparing and contrasting. And then you walk further on, find a new weapon, and then do the accounting all over again.
That's been a huge element in RPGs -- WoW comes to mind, with its "+.000285 to Intellect" stuff. I just find it dry, and soul-crushing, and busy work. A good friend of mine likes the whole compare and contrast, so good for him. But that's one reason I preferred DA2, and how I just had to buy companion armor upgrades. My god I preferred that. It was so much nicer.
Oh, and people refer back to Baldur's Gate, and I didn't really have a problem with that, because I preferred the more basic "+1 sword," "+2 sword," over breaking down the weapon bonuses to minutiae. So I liked DA2's gear options.
As mentioned in that other thread you responded to me in, I also prefer DA2's storyline. I like that it wasn't a run-of-the-mill "save the world" plot, and I liked the episodic nature of it. I appreciated the change of pace. I won't go more into that since I already made a lengthy post about all that. And by the way, I think the idea of trying to conquer or destroy the world, as you suggested, sounds awesome. That would be another plot to try out, not necessarily from Bioware, and I would love to see that in effect. It's one reason why I kickstarted a certain RPG where the premise is trying to bring about the apocalypse.
I liked that the main character was voiced. I wasn't entirely sure about the main character being voiced when I first tried Mass Effect, but I've really grown to love it. The voicing really helps with the immersion, as it helps to make the main character seem more alive, versus just standing there, slack-jawed, telepathically communicating.
One of the biggest points of contention is the combat. I remember when I first tried the Dragon Age 2 demo, before the main game came out, and I was put off by the ninja combat. Hawke was flying around and twirling in the air, and I was just like, "What the f...?" But, after playing DA:O and DA2 over again, DA2's combat has really grown on me.
I just finished replaying Awakening yesterday. For me, the combat in DA:O went like this: "Move five feet, pause. Heal party member, pause. Move character into flanking position (no tactic script for that), pause. Move mage out of melee scuffle, pause." Meanwhile, all the characters are jogging as if moving through molasses and slowly, slowly swinging their swords.
Obviously DA2 takes the extreme opposite approach, with characters swinging around Final Fantasy 7 Cloud broadswords at the speed of light. It's the reason why I was put off initially. But the tactics remained the same in DA2 -- I still needed to guard my mages, I still tried to flank, I still needed to manage my party's health -- but I found that I wasn't needing to pause every half a minute. The tactics system was definitely improved in DA2, but that doesn't need to be unique to DA2; they could import that tactics system regardless. However, the speed difference, the fact that I wasn't needing to pause, move forward, pause, attack, pause, really helped the flow of combat and helped to keep the immersion.
I just replayed DA2 as an assassin, my first time trying that. The visceral feel I got from watching Hawke frantically slice up enemies was great. I also love the way mages use their staves -- it's very cinematic. Compare that to DA:O, where they slowly, slowly bring their sword down. Hit. Slowly bring it down again. The one thing I loved and miss from DA:O combat are the executions, when party members would slice off enemies' heads and such. That was very enjoyable.
I think that's a good word to describe DA2's combat: cinematic. It's definitely more cinematic than DA:O, and I found I preferred DA2 because of that.
I liked how much cleaner and streamlined the ability trees looked. I generally prefer more options -- more options are always better, I say -- but with the mages, there were certain spells in DA:O that just weren't worth using. It was better to just cut them out. And again, the ability trees looked much cleaner in DA2.
The DA:O skills were mostly worthless, and a flawed attempt to add more depth. I tried playing a poisoner in DA:O, and despite putting points into poison, I found I could manage just fine using the poisons I would find in loot. Crafting really wasn't necessary. Same with potions. The one thing I did like from the skill tree was the stealing, as I enjoy stealing in video games. Pickpocketing was nice. But oh well.
Anyway, those are some of the things I preferred. There's still more. Also, I don't want to seem like I'm glossing over DA2's flaws, because there were very real flaws. The repetitive, re-used environments. My god. When I recently replayed DA2, I was once again struck at how egregious and lazy those maps were. God they were bad. Also, the waves of combat, with enemies jumping from rooftops and coming out of sewers and popping out of bowls of rice; just blah. Although replaying DA:O, I was surprised at how much wave combat was in DA:O, particularly with the deep stalkers. So that was annoying as well.
Modifié par Scelous, 11 avril 2013 - 03:33 .
,and no traps and scouting were not pointless.As I said before it it helped me a lot in many encounters.
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...Though I will admit during some battles like the ones during"The Battle of Denerim"traps don't really come in handy.So I guess we're both correct in a sense 
