Dragon Age 2 - Review Avalanche

Originally Posted by DoctorNarrative
Anyone reviewing a 40+ hour RPG on day one like that isn't very trustworthy.

Also knowing amazon user reviews I bet half the negative ones are all about the DRM.

I looked on Amazon, and that appears to be the case. A lot of "U NEEDZ INTERWEBS TO PLAY!!" followed by a 1/5 star rating. Yeah, I'd say that Amazon user scores are not a very good source to use.

Originally Posted by Nerevarine
I'll just wait for a real RPG to come along

Same here. I'm waiting for The Witcher 2 instead of this garbage or at least till someone here tells me exactly how good it is and why.

Nightmare difficulty might be its only saving grace, imo. I believe it was the only mode where the spells could affect your companions as well as special attacks. That's an absolute must in my opinion. Any of this FF off nonsense isn't worth my time.

I can't believe the reviewers had enough spine to be critical about this game. 8 still isn't that bad, but I was expecting 9 and 10 with glowing praises from all the mainstream organizations about how awesome the game was. It really must suck big time for the reviewers to grow that much of a backbone.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
That depends on your perspective. I'd agree personally - 8/10 is a fine score. I'm not sure EA would agree, though - one of their goals with the changes would have been to get 9/10 and 10/10s like Mass Effect 2. I think BN is right and while noone sane would say this is bad, EA might be mildly disappointed.

The question - assuming the trend in scores continues and sales would reflect the scores in at least not being much higher than DA:O - what conclusion will EA reach? That maybe such games need some complexity and that should be invested in? Or rather that they can't be streamlined as they should be, and so its' better to cut the losses and close the studio… If they ever pull an Origin on Bioware, it would be a sad day (whether one likes Bioware or not, they represent a unique style of RPG that would be sad to loose).

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
Same here. I'm waiting for The Witcher 2 instead of this garbage or at least till someone here tells me exactly how good it is and why.

Nightmare difficulty might be its only saving grace, imo. I believe it was the only mode where the spells could affect your companions as well as special attacks. That's an absolute must in my opinion. Any of this FF off nonsense isn't worth my time.

It seems a lot of people are very much enjoying it who did not like the demo due to the higher difficulty settings. Here is a comment from another forum by a man who was very disappointed in the demo:

Rest assured, playing the game on Nightmare difficulty makes a huge difference. I still don't like the limited tactical camera or the other changes they've made but the combat is still challenging and tactical on the highest difficulty setting.

And the game looks pretty good on the highest detail settings + hi-res texture pack. A lot better than the demo, for sure.

Originally Posted by DoctorNarrative
It seems a lot of people are very much enjoying it who did not like the demo due to the higher difficulty settings. Here is a comment from another forum by a man who was very disappointed in the demo:

What I am surprised by is that I had the combat at the start of the game then nothing but a couple of fights in the next few hours. The city is really interesting as well, I like the way they laid it out. So far I like the balance of combat.

Some first impressions and screens from Vince at ITS - rune, you'll be surprised, he actually seems to like it ("for what it is")
http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum…dseen.html#new

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
Some first impressions and screens from Vince at ITS - rune, you'll be surprised, he actually seems to like it ("for what it is")
http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum…dseen.html#new

Oh come on, I don't hate the guy. I don't even really know him.

actually the hard difficulty is just if fact that in many occassions as your team can get slaughtered in under a minute. i've had to do some quest before others as some enemies are rather tough and when more spawn…the game is geared more towards fast gameplay but its still highly tactical. also i was leary about the inventory setup at first but not having 6 levels of potions of runes saves a lot of "wasted" time in the long run.

also kirkwall reminds me a lot of neverwinter nights in that there were quite a number of sections in that city and this game has a bit of diversity when things change from day to night levels. the level design and artwork gets a lot better in my opinion than what is in the demo. the combat and horde models are worse in my view partially due to the fast pace of combat and the rediculous body part explosions but many of the levels are far better and the city itself makes you feel more like you are part of a larger city and countryside with all of the background detail.

the big suprise for me though is that the skill trees while quite different seem more in depth than i thought at first. with 9 different trees per class, not county the unique ones for each party member there's quite a bit of choices to be made and i've found my self holding off on taking them 'til i recruit those of similar class so as not to be redundant. also unlike origins you don't seem to get penalized for getting the companions at a higher level in that they seem to only take the first 3 skill levels unlike orgins where they would already be chosen basen on when you met them.

the overall story though at this point does seem much less interesting probably because after the first few hours you have a lot of freedom in what to do before the main story progresses which i haven't done yet.

So, what I'm curious about now is… those people who said "the demo is kind of crap, but it doesn't mean the full game will be the same". Have they started the full game, and what do they think? From what I've heard, the demo areas turned out to be "the Hawke origin story"?

The demo is basically the first 30 min of DA2. The "jump" in time in the demo doesn't happen in the game. Instead, there's a rather slow approach as you enter Kirkwall and get to know the city. This takes an hour or two, with very little fighting, which is probably why it was not included in the demo. No "action!!!!".

From what I've seen, it seems decent, but certainly not as good as Origins. Read a few more reviews (another Norwegian one among others), and they're all in the 8/10 boat claiming the story and the way it's told is great, but other than that Origins seems superior in most ways.

By the way: What happened to the voice of Anders? It can't be the same voice actor. This is not as bad as the Diego thing, but it still surprised me quite a bit.

Originally Posted by Rain Brinson
From what I've heard, the demo areas turned out to be "the Hawke origin story"?

This was known even before the release, so people dismissing the shittyness of the demo didn't sound reasonable.

I looked on Amazon, and that appears to be the case. A lot of "U NEEDZ INTERWEBS TO PLAY!!" followed by a 1/5 star rating. Yeah, I'd say that Amazon user scores are not a very good source to use.

DRM is one of the aspects of the game, as is the gameplay or graphics. This opinions are valid.
The game is getting bashed by users of Metacritic too, scoring 3.5/10 currently (!), with no complaints about the DRM.

Originally Posted by Daddy32
DRM is one of the aspects of the game, as is the gameplay or graphics. This opinions are valid.

I respectfully disagree. You cannot judge the content of a game poorly just because of DRM; that's not fair to the actual game. Bash the publisher all you want for including unlikeable DRM, sure, but no game should be judged by a publisher's DRM policies, as it's not at all relevant to the quality of the actual game.

Originally Posted by Nerevarine
I respectfully disagree. You cannot judge the content of a game poorly just because of DRM; that's not fair to the actual game. Bash the publisher all you want for including unlikeable DRM, sure, but no game should be judged by a publisher's DRM policies, as it's not at all relevant to the quality of the actual game.

Agreed.

Now amazon reviewers will tell you they are rating the "product" which includes the disc and DRM, which is a fair point. Still it is only part of the product, so a one star review is ludicrous.

Originally Posted by Nerevarine
I respectfully disagree. You cannot judge the content of a game poorly just because of DRM; that's not fair to the actual game. Bash the publisher all you want for including unlikeable DRM, sure, but no game should be judged by a publisher's DRM policies, as it's not at all relevant to the quality of the actual game.

You don't pay money for the content. You pay money for the product as a whole. While the game may be OK, you wouldn't recommend to buy it - therefore you give the product low review (although 1* may be extreme). You sure are welcome to judge the game scientifically aspect by aspect, but in the resulting rating, you have to cover all aspects of the game and not omit those not connected to the 'content'.
Additionally, as has ubisoft shown us, DRM can seriously screw up the enjoyment of the game - kicking you into main menu, discarding progress.

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
Nightmare difficulty might be its only saving grace, imo.

I´m playing it on nightmare (archer, party at level 6 atm).

It is its saving grace in terms of difficulty - so far it´s been rather difficult, quite a bit more than nightmare in DA:O.
In some encounters I was forced to various retreat tactics (running all over the map), and there were few fights I had to postpone for later.

There´s a good amount of problems though, mainly:

a) encounter design sucks
The game uses the "waves" mechanic all the time (in about 95% of encounters).
You start fighting against one group of opponents, once some are killed another group joins in (they often simply materialize out of thin air) and sometimes even third appears.
From time to time, this would work well as an element of surprise with a good potential biting player in the ass if too many resources were wasted, but having almost all encounters like that is a bore, in most cases feels unnatural and makes encounters more tedious than challenging.

b) applying AoE´s sucks
First, when using AoE abilities/spells, only enemies affected are those who are in the area of impact the moment the ability/spell "impacts", not the moment when it´s fired (as was in DA:O) - this makes firing AoE´s completely action-y and, given the overall speed, very unreliable.
Second, the targeting of AoE´s themselves is out of whack - the target circle keeps jumping around and you´ll get it only rarely in the exact position where you want it to be, in more confined areas (which the game uses rather often) it like, doesn´t work at all.
Third, camera is woefully limited, adds yet another layer to AoE suckage and, again, in more confined spaces it´s total ass. Absence of tactical view is a HUGE minus.
Obviously this is bad on all difficulties, but on nightmare where good positioning is crucial, this is inexcusable.
I´m not exaggerating when I say that half of the challenge comes from fighting with these three aspects.

I quite like DA2´s nightmare difficulty on paper (enemy immunities, party members bleeding to death when under 10% of health, rogues stealing party´s potions, enemies being affected by their friendly fire as well) and it blends well with some other changes (long healing spell cooldown, long cooldown on chugging potions, etc) but due to major control issues and repetitive, uninventive encounter design it just doesn´t work well in practice.
It´s pretty obvious the game was designed as action-y hack´n´slash and doesn´t lend itself well to the challenge nightmare is trying to provide.

As for the rest of the game, mediocre so far, though I´ve yet to see some major character/story development since I was mostly exploring the optional stuff.

From the newsbit :

With Dragon Age II, BioWare has turned the tables. The sequel’s action-oriented battle system is clearly tailored to accommodate Xbox 360 and PS3 gamers, and the hardcore PC faithful (at whom the original title was explicitly targeted) get snubbed with an inferior adaptation.

Is this true ?

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
From the newsbit :



Is this true ?

I have a suspicion that the anwer very much depends on who you ask…
By the way (german review):
http://www.gamona.de/games/dragon-ag…e,1906461.html
They are pretty critical, primarily of the heavy cut-and-paste design of many areas. but say the combat is still tactical. 80% in the end.

Aha, thanks. I'll read it through.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
From the newsbit :

Is this true ?

The PC version feel like a PC version to me.

Actually, so far I like DA2 better then DA:O. Ostagar was just boring to me, Kirkwall is much better.

I might change my tune later though (I'm just 2-3 hours in).

Seems the squeal is getting a lower score than the first one. I'll wait and see in a few months what the average user score is since its not out in all areas yet.