Dragon Age 2 - Not As Dumbed Down As Mass Effect

Dunno if this been posted already, taken from another forum:

Two reviews of DA2 from german magazines:

PC Games gave it 88, pros and cons:

+ very well told hero story
+ varied followers, each with their own stories
+ great dialogs with moral decisions
+ exciting boss battles
+ martial-arts-fans should have great fun with possibly the fastest (or fast paced) battles in a fantasy game

- …but old-school RPG players might have their problems with the flurry of activities in battles
- limited class progression with fixed skilltrees
- poor level design with one-to-one copy-pasting of whole quest areas (do they mean, some areas are a carbon copy of each other???)
- unsatisfying ending

Gamestar gave it 87, pros and cons:

+ thrilling storyline
+ great dialogs and quests
+ coherent / consistent game world

- some fiddly battles
- less epic as DAO

Someone roughly translated the "disappointing ending" of the article in the thread:

"The adventures of the main character hawke are told by the dwarf Varric during an interrogation by Cassandra, who introduces herself as a Seeker of the Chantry. She wants to know everything about the Champion of Kirkwall. The cutscenes, which combine each of the games chapters, make it obvious, that this interrogation takes place after the actual events of the game. With every scene the tension and the curiosity rises and you feverishly await the games resolution - but nada.

There is a closing cutscene, which will cause a "look at that" from people who played Origins, but anything connected to Cassandra remains completely unanswered. Of course this can be seen with a wink of the eye and a guaranteed "to be continued …" , but we weren´t satisfied with this form of a cliffhanger."
 
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I really hate the way every major publisher game has to end in a to be continued. If your game is good you can sequel it, you don't need to set it up.
 
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"poor level design with one-to-one copy-pasting", sounds awful, but nothing new for Bioware i guess. They also have a ugly tendency to either fill otherwise empty areas with crates (KOTOR, ME) or barrells (fantasy rpgs). It was maybe excusable when games were created by a team of 5 persons, a big studio like Bioware should be able to do better.
 
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I want variety and not just action rpgs.:movingon:

Me as well - but if I want no more action, then I can at least turn back to those fine adventure games, yet … ;)
 
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Kinda reminded me of Prime Junta´s wonderful review of The Witcher where he´s basically given the game 16/5 :).

Wow.

I`ve just spent two evenings with The Witcher. Took me half an hour to figure there are major issues with combat. Now, it`s not evidently broken or unplayable - but still, it`s very unusual and controversial at least. I`d say "lame" for assorted reasons but it`s not the point here.

The point is, this ""wonderful review" dedicates literally one sentence to the subject of combat. By comparision - a whole paragraph to sex (pretty stretched justification for what really is some mild titillation by the way). Another one praises such significant gameplay devices as namedropping Raymond Chandler.

This wouldn`t be a problem, if something as important as combat - that most of the gameplay revolves around - wasn`t completely omitted. Author was so taken with his vision of The Witcher as a revolution in gaming that he skipped over one of it`s fundamental mechanics. But, going in-depth would upset this vision - so he didn`t. (Similarly to going mum over how it`s huge chunks are console influenced - but of course this would be an inexcusable faux pas here :)

The Witcher is a great game with a significant flaw. That`s all there is to it, all that needed saying, and then he could go on extolling it`s virtues. He could even give it this 16/5 then - it`s a relative opinion and I don`t really have a problem with it.

All this boils down to the pro-Europe/edgy/mature/pro-choice ;) bias - if you pardon the great simplification here. I found the Gothic fanboys quite amusing -interesting species - but since this seems to be an official line I have to say my goodbyes. We`re rather incompatible, and further posting on my side would veer on flaming, I guess.

And no, I`m not as self-obsessed to think anyone is interested. But (regardless of the above) I quite like/respect this site and most :) of the posters, so I thought I`d say something anyway ;)

So, have fun folks, annoying-type-no67621-bows-out ;)
 
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I'm sorry, but The Witcher didn't have "major issues" with combat. I think you meant to say that *you* had issues with the combat, which is fine. :)


This wouldn`t be a problem, if something as important as combat - that most of the gameplay revolves around - wasn`t completely omitted. Author was so taken with his vision of The Witcher as a revolution in gaming that he skipped over one of it`s fundamental mechanics. But, going in-depth would upset this vision - so he didn`t. (Similarly to going mum over how it`s huge chunks are console influenced - but of course this would be an inexcusable faux pas here :)

Here's a novel idea… perhaps he simply didn't have the same problem with the combat that you do. I know that might be tough to comprehend, since you apparently seem to know what everyone should or shouldn't recognize as good combat.
 
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The point is, this ""wonderful review" dedicates literally one sentence to the subject of combat.

You've missed the point of the review. We knew it was controversial at the time but - having been written two months after The Witcher was released and everyone had either played it, or read hundreds of other reviews - that something different could be written. Notice the title is "The Witcher a (Book) Review" - there's a reason for that.

At any rate…you're upset over a review from 2007, written by a volunteer community member? OK, bye.
 
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I'm sorry, but The Witcher didn't have "major issues" with combat. I think you meant to say that *you* had issues with the combat, which is fine. :)
Common everybody know there's a big issue with combats in The Witcher, it's so well know that even The Witcher designers know it and highlight they change the fights for the Witcher 2.

The point is even at hard difficulty you could make most fights just by concentrating on chaining well the sword attacks, that becomes tedious very fast.

But the Witcher fights wasn't bad at all, and even good once you tried use some more deep and diversified tactics mixing moving sword attacks, few chaining, mode changes, and runes plus few potions or even oils, and in fact this was also more efficient but more important, a lot more fun.
 
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Common everybody know there's a big issue with combats in The Witcher, it's so well know that even The Witcher designers know it and highlight they change the fights for the Witcher 2.

If "everybody" = "some", and "know" = "thinks", then yeah. The devs making changes to the sequel has nothing to do with that. They're trying to be more appealing in the same way Bioware is with DA2.
 
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If "everybody" = "some", and "know" = "thinks", then yeah. The devs making changes to the sequel has nothing to do with that. They're trying to be more appealing in the same way Bioware is with DA2.

Well you are really the first I quote that deny most fights was doable with a blind chained and timed clicking and that this is boring, even at hard level. But well ok let say it's subjectivity.
 
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The point is even at hard difficulty you could make most fights just by concentrating on chaining well the sword attacks, that becomes tedious very fast.

For you it became tedious. For me it kept me interested.

Believe it or not you can screw up a combo and that makes a difference when you are playing on hard and you can still take damage and die even if you chain your attacks perfectly.

I much preferred Witcher's combat system over other action rpgs like Diablo, Dungeon Siege or Sacred. With them you just click and watch your guy do his/her thing. BORING!!! I've had enough of that.

That's a major reason why I can't stand action rpgs anymore. Sure you can mix and match skills to perfect your character, but in the end you will more likely just be using one attack over and over again. The Witcher tried to mix it up a bit. You're still basically using only one attack type with a secondary attack thrown in from time to time, but at least it tried to keep it interesting instead of holding down the mouse button or click once and watch your character attack over and over again.
 
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I don't think Diablo is the logical game to compare this to. It's a completely different genre, in my opinion.

As has been touched upon, Diablo works because your build is your strategy - and you develop your character with a certain build in mind, as well as collect loot for that very same purpose. This means the combat in itself isn't too vital - though I personally think it's quite visceral and exciting.

The Witcher is more akin to "deeper" traditional games like Gothic, Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights, and so forth.

In that way, it was a really odd combat system, because it was - indeed - extremely action based.

Though the action was dreadfully identical throughout and it wasn't the lack of challenge I had a problem with.

It was the lack of variety during combat, and the complete lack of immersion in the fights themselves. The only real choice was "combat style" and that was redundant as the choice was obvious based on what you were facing. So, no tactical decisions of any kind - apart from the occasional well timed potion.

To me, there's absolutely nothing interesting about clicking when being told to click - and it leaves out all thought process. The challenge was the timing, true enough, but really - I might as well play Tetris if I wanted to have my timing tested in such a flavorless manner.

This is made worse from the way they did character building. There was really no reason or room for experimentation, apart from picking a "combat style" to focus on. This is stupid, because you have no idea what you'll be facing in the end - so you just pick something blindly. The only meaningful choice, as I recall, was what kind of spell you'd focus on.

I honestly don't think they had a very solid foundation in terms of the game mechanics.

However, they were very good at creating a strong atmosphere - and the writing was interesting, as were the characters. Those were the strong points of the game, if you ask me.
 
I remember finding the combat weird and particularly Geralt's stance holding the sword above his head seemed stupid but after a few hours i was all over it.
The game is basically streamlined in the same vein Bioware titles are but it was a great experience with the best story and ending I've come across in any RPG.
 
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I don't think Diablo is the logical game to compare this to. It's a completely different genre, in my opinion.

As has been touched upon, Diablo works because your build is your strategy - and you develop your character with a certain build in mind, as well as collect loot for that very same purpose. This means the combat in itself isn't too vital - though I personally think it's quite visceral and exciting.

From a purely combat point of view The Witcher is more like action RPGs than Gothic, NWN or the others. That was what I was focusing on in my comment.

The Witcher was a lot more fun than the others I mentioned because of the timed combat. I personally enjoyed it, but I am also sick to death of action RPGs and anything new with that style of combat is a welcome relief.

The potions and oils were rather interesting as well. I tend to horde them and forget to use them when needed in other games like NWN, but with The Witcher if you wanted to survive (in the harder difficulty levels) you had to use them. Especially if you loaded the Difficulty mod.

My second playthrough was done with that mod and it was like a whole new game. Potions and oils became even more important than in the "hard" level of the original game.
 
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From a purely combat point of view The Witcher is more like action RPGs than Gothic, NWN or the others. That was what I was focusing on in my comment.

The Witcher was a lot more fun than the others I mentioned because of the timed combat. I personally enjoyed it, but I am also sick to death of action RPGs and anything new with that style of combat is a welcome relief.

I assume you're referring to the ones in the post before your last one, Diablo and so on and not actually Gothic? The text is a bit confusing.
 
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i remember reading that Mike laidlaw said that they made the higher difficulty settings easier because they didn't want someone to turn on a higher difficulty setting by mistake and get frustrated (whilst not knowing why its getting harder).

and they say its not dumbed down, they're making the game flat out retarded. its kotaku anyway, an advertising front for vidya games.
 
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