Dragon Age 2 - Kvetching @ Armchair Empire

Dhruin

Dhruin

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Matt Barton "kvetches" about Dragon Age II on his blog at The Armchair Empire:
At some point, you just have to decide what combat should be like in a CRPG. Do you want to feel like the guy swinging the sword? Or do you want to feel like the guy standing over a table full of miniatures, contemplating the terrain, troop movements, area effects, and so on? For me, it will always be the latter. That's why I liked Pool of Radiance so much; the combat looked like a tabletop miniatures game come to life. Oblivion seems to have come closest to putting you in the boots of an actual warrior in the field. Dragon Age 2 seems somewhere in the middle, with some armchair stuff but mostly concerned with making you feel responsible for making your warrior's arm move or your mage's staff shooting fireballs. Coming back to the military metaphors, DA 2 seems to make you a sergeant. You're giving orders, but you're also there on the field playing the game. So if we compare the three game types, Oblivion makes you a foot soldier, DA 2 makes you a sergeant, and the games I prefer make you a commanding officer, guiding the preparation and action but not usually in the fray. If you wanted to go all the way to general, seems like you need to shift into the strategy genre.
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I liked DA2's combat speed, my issue with it was entirely the wave-based enemy spawning which removed all tactical aspects. Well, that and the overdone enemy 'splosions.

And then in the greater game itself I disliked the repeated content and lack of choice and consequence, naturally.
 
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The wave-design was definitely THE weakest aspect of the game to me. Absolutely horrible decision, in my opinion.
 
I played the game, DA2, now for about 60 hours. And I've analyzed the combat waves; they seem to come in three type of phases.. First some easy foot soldiers, then some lieutenants (sp?) with some more foot soldiers, and at last, but not least, a commander or two, along with some more foot soldiers. In the second and third phase, assasin's will pop up, people will drop from roofs, come out from behind closed doors etc.

I've seen in a comment on the DA2 forum that in the combat with the rock wraith (in the deep roads), it reminded them of combat phases in an MMO. I never played an MMO, so I don't know if this is true? But could it maybe, just maybe and perhaps?, be such that the combat phases (and the wave combat) actually meant that at one point DA2 was considered to be either a) multiplayer or b) an MMO.

And the reason the waves and phases in combat wasn't tuned to the single-player combat experience could be because Bioware ran out of time to do this? Just a reflection...
 
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Ninety nine percent of the time respawning is incompetent game design, as there are only a small minority that can explain some respawning. As an example, Valve could/would/did get a pass in Half-Life, inter-dimensional transport.

DA2 having respawing and waves is laughable and the developers should be embarrassed to even be seen or talk in public, bad.
 
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