[PC] Dragon Age 2

First shot is at night. Most folks are sleeping or in the bar. Second shot is one small area of the worse-than-ghetto area.



ಠ_ಠ Not enough skin. I want ma money back!

 

I've been playing the game expecting to see absolutely horrid texturing. I haven't seen anything bad so far. Maybe my standards are low.. maybe people aren't playing with the high res textures enabled.

 

Games from Bioware are pretty much the only games I buy anymore or have time to play. This particular one is nothing but a dissappointment!

Consoles are absolutely killing gaming (and I mean all gaming, not just PC).

There is no reason the game has to play a certain way for consoles, nor any good reason why they need to dumb everything down. I'd be mad if I played this on a console!

Anyway, the last of the great rpg makers has just sold out, so yea I think this is the last game I buy from them.

 

There was a brief moment when it seemed like Isabela was poking my mage with a surprise, but thankfully it was just a knife.

Just came across a scene that acknowledged the visual change in Isabela. It'd have been funny except that (character spoiler)

Spoiler

King Alistair looks terrible, as in really crappy lighting on his head.

 

Everybody blaming the crappiness of this game on consoles. Maybe some things like the camera and certain graphical failings can be attributed to that, but mostly it seems laziness, rushed development, and poor design decisions are to blame. I mean the first game sold pretty well on consoles and it didn't suck.

 

Yeah and last time I checked the consoles aren't living and thinking entities that could be blamed for man made decisions, but it's always the consoles fault. How does one look at the situation and comes to that conclusion?

edit:

Makes more sense to blame one or some of these

-Bioware
-EA
-general consumer
-yourself

 

I think EA deserves most if not all the blame for this. DA1 was released on November 3rd, 2009. DA2 came out on March 8th, 2011. In between the games, many pieces of DLC and a full blown expansion have come out.

Bioware was just overworked.

I'm not counting ME2 and things related to it as I imagine those teams are mostly separate.

Edit: Typo fix.

 

Perhaps, but there are a number of things in DA2 that seem to have been taken directly from ME2. Such as:

1. Only being able to talk to companions in the 'home' location. In ME2 you can only talk to party members in their rooms on the Normandy
2. Receiving lettters (and being told you have new ones) is exactly the same as ME2s emails.
3. Hawke not wearing armour in
   Spoiler

   your mansion
   . In ME2 Shepard wears casuals on the Normandy
4. Examining things in
   Spoiler

   your mansion
   gives voice overs that is similar to how examining things in Zaeed's and Kasumi's rooms gives voice overs (yes this isn't exactly the same but to me its close enough
5. The drinking animation looks identical to ME2 which probably means it is the same

 

Mocap reuse is about the only thing I can cheer on there ...

BTW, what is the justification for your whole menagerie living with you? None of them wants some privacy over the years?

 

Some of those can be attributed to the lack of development time(The drinking animation, for instance). Others? I dunno.

 

The DA and ME teams are genuinely separate (there's a very small amount of reuse in the writing and cinematics/QA teams I think but that's it), however they're still in the same building and talk to each other. So some amount of influence is to be expected (sadly).

 

Finally finished the game yesterday. I think it's genuinely about what I expected - besides the awful camera and the ridiculously overused wave system, combat really isn't bad. I played on hard with minimal tactics so plenty of pausing and micromanagement (Male Mage + Merrill + Varric + Aveline mostly) and you'd have to be crazy to claim the combat can't be as tactical as DA:O if you want it to be. Unless you consider potion spamming and Cone of Cold abuse in DA:O to be 'tactical' in which case you'll have to excuse me if I don't take you very seriously.

The protagonist VO/dialogue wheel/paraphrasing is clearly worse than DA:O's silent hero system IMO, but at least there weren't that many cases where the paraphrasing or voice acting really annoyed me. The one thing I had a problem with is it wasn't always clear whether the 'funny' dialogue choices were laughing *with* someone, or laughing *at* him/her - although tone wasn't always clear in DA:O either, and that kind of confusion isn't very frequent in either game. The biggest disappointment was probably Anders whose paraphrasing was really bad sometimes, and this comic is more than justified: http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20110314

The companions are excellent overall (my favourite were Aveline/Varric/Merrill) although the dialogue is a bit too spread out (it was too front-loaded in DA:O but that's arguably a smaller problem to have, and David Gaider/Mike Laidlaw even seem to agree: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/304/index/6508275?lf=8). Flemeth is awesome as always, and the secondary quests are more interesting than in DA:O (they truly have a good story of their own, especially the one where you enter the Fade in Act 2). Unfortunately there are still more side quests than secondary quests, and these still suck big time and have zero replay value. Oh well.

The plot isn't as epic as DA:O, but it's also much more original than 'build an army to defeat an ancient evil', so it comes out pretty good overall in my mind. Some of the heartbreaking moments are very emotional (especially the one at the end of Act 2). Sadly the ending is disappointing (you know you've got a problem when Act 2's ending is more epic than Act 3's) but at least the last 10 seconds of the epilogue cinematic really make you want to know more (DA:O cameo and revelation about the Warden). It might be a cliffhanger, but at least it's a well executed cliffhanger.

Probably the thing that got the most on my nerves for my mostly-completionist playthrough is the massive amount of level reuse even for different geographical areas. It's especially annoying because of the crafting system which encourages you to explore every level instance extensively. At least they've admitted they shouldn't have done it in interviews, so here's hoping they don't make that mistake again for DA3...

My conclusion: 92% for DA:O, 80% for DA2.

 

Thanks for the well written opinion, quite useful for making a purchasing decision.

 

My thanks for that well written review as well. Instead of bashing about 'consolitis' and 'year 2000 graphics', you have given an opinion about the other (more important) aspects of the game. My decision has swayed to buying it in some time.

 

No problem, and yes, if you're not impatient and care about the DLC (DA:O's wasn't really worth it but hopefully they'll do a better job this time since it fits the framed narrative pretty well), then it would make sense to buy the equivalent of the Ultimate Edition when it comes out probably about one year from now. Or just wait for slightly lower pricing if you're cost-sensitive.

Also I guess one of the biggest problems for many people will just be overall combat speed. Closing attacks and faster ability activations aren't bad ideas in theory (they're arguably overdone), but the faster combat animations/movement is just a bit silly and I can see how people would instantly classify it as a hack and slash based on that alone. However in the end, it mostly just forces you to pause even more frequently. I can live with that but YMMV. Actually I think the current animations would look fine running 10-15% slower. It would be pretty awesome if there were mods to slow down combat a bit and add a tactical camera Here's hoping...

EDIT: Here's one useful camera trick for AoE abilities: you can select the ability then switch character with F1-F4 to target the AoE from that other character's viewpoint. Certainly not as good as a detachable overhead camera, but still better than nothing.

 

Presumably they will at least fix the camera in a patch so the camera works like the consoles for AoE targeting ... so you might want to wait for that at least.

At least if they aren't complete assholes who won't ever see a penny from me again.

 

Hehe, I see your point. The trick I mentioned just above your post makes it a bit less unbearable at least (I just wish I had discovered it earlier), but console-like detachable camera for AoE would be even better. Or heck, just detachable camera in general even if it isn't overhead! Let's not get our hopes up too much though...