Well said.
I don’t think that the full game is going to dramatically change things, unfortunately. Once you’re out of the exaggerated portion of the demo things are still pretty Exalted-like (great comparison!) and I expect the full game to play pretty much like that the entire time.
Here’s something to consider with regards to friendly fire/difficulty levels: Warriors do friendly damage with their weapons now, and the way enemies move all over the screen will make managing that damage difficult. We’ll see how it turns out in the full game, but as much as I want DA2 to be a tactical experience, I will probably end up playing the first time through on hard.
For the love of god, people, don’t play Dragon Age 2 on console. Play on PC! It’s better in just about every way. It looks better, runs better, controls better (from what I hear of the button-mashiness of the console combat), and if you want you can download it instead of buying a plastic disc.
I mean, except for the whole “playing it on my big TV” thing, which I totally understand, I’m hard pressed to imagine why I’d play the console version.
And I’m not one of those “PC games over console games!” people. I love consoles, and some cross-platform games are just better on them. I just don’t think this is one of those times. It definitely wasn’t with DA:O, and it looks like the PC is still the way to go in DA2.
I played it on the PC. Given the choice, I always play RPGs on the PC.
PC version.
My two problems with the game are minor on their own. I dislike the flashy fast leaping animations a little, and I really miss the ability to draw the camera back much further.
Problem is, when both of these problems are combined, I found myself losing track of the characters and having no idea what was going on half the time, unless I paused constantly just to catch up with my characters, not for any tactical reasons.
Also a nitpick that isn’t so minor to me but likely something I am alone on. I miss being able to select a character to give orders to…WITHOUT the camera being forced to zoom to that characters perspective and location. Sometimes i want to order my mage or archer to run closer to the battle or a certain spot my main character is looking at. Or I just want to order my mage to cast haste.
I don’t need the camera to move to that character, every time I want to give them a minor movement or target order. Is there a way to do this that I am missing?
I am undecided, I’ll probably end up buying it first day, or I might pick up the Warhammer 40k game, and try to hold out on DA2 until some modders maybe do some work with the camera, or the price drops some.
You are not alone. The locked-on feature of the camera is one thing that I don’t like about it. It makes it a lot harder to maneuver your characters and keep track of what’s going on. If you could zoom out farther, it would be less of an issue.
I would have thought a camera lock could be implemented as a toggle - do we have any hope for that, or is it almost certainly going to be as-is for the final release?
Well you can hope someone will mod it out.
I decided to play the PC demo after all, despite my misgivings, and chose a warrior character. It didn’t show off anything that I found particularly amazing though it didn’t have a lot of negatives either. The biggest problem, as has been mentioned numerous times already, was the tight camera. I hate having to constantly rotate my view instead of being able to pull out and see the entire battle scene to give commands. That was a serious step backward.
The demo showcased for me exactly why I don’t bother with them. It’s clearly not indicative of the way the game will play; the narrative jump to Isabella was so jarring as to break the entire experience. I have to hope that they cut out a big chunk of plot to get the player to the next battle. If anything, it was a combat demo with a bit of early story tossed in, as if that’s what Bio’s games were all about.
Sad demo = annoyed customer. Good thing I’m not basing my purchase on this.
I agree, I don’t know that it would have helped. But if I was a Bioware marketing dude, I would have made an effort to include in every advert, the name of the demo and the splash screen of the demo, that is was a combat systems demo.
As anything other than that, it didn’t give you any time with the characters, story progression, inventory or skills trees. Most of it was locked or snippets in time, that didn’t make sense.
Yeah, but come on. Almost all of the complaints based on second-hand reports by somebody who played the game at whatever show have been based around the combat. How are you going to demonstrate story progression and time spent with characters if those are things that are designed to be experienced over the course of the entire game? Otherwise we know there is inventory because we can see the screen, pick up items, and see stats on the character sheet. We get a basic idea about the skill trees. The demo gives you a fair idea of the feel of the game and the mechanics of playing it. For an RPG I don’t know what else you want, short of the developer crafting an entire self-contained mini-story just for demo purposes.
Like, say, a self-contained DLC which serves jointly as a prologue, a character introduction, and a demonstration of how the broader game would work?
Yeah, that sounds like it could be much more effective.
Mordrak
2052
It’s pretty easy to tell this is mostly combat demo and it’s in response to concerns about gameplay changes they’ve made. I think they addressed what they wanted to address and most people playing it will understand the context as it seemed relatively obvious when it jumps ahead in the story.
Without making it a lot bigger, I can’t really see them putting much more in the demo. And depending on the length of the game, I’m not sure they’d want to release a significant portion for free.
Though, labeling it as a combat/leveling gameplay demo wouldn’t have hurt.
Isn’t a prologue, character introduction, and (brief) demonstration of how the broader game works exactly what this demo was?
JZigish
2054
So I just played the PC demo, and the combat is fine but mindless but my bigger concern is the crazy linearity of it. I hope it opens up, because the demo plays like a less pretty less japanese version of FF13. Excellent combat (which FF13 has according to many people) cannot save an RPG if it’s linear and progression is no fun.
As a warrior my combat experience was to use my cooldowns as soon as they’re up (no reason not to), then spend the rest of the time watching them do fairly good animations. I would swap to my other characters, whose abilities were also used as often as they could be. I was given absolutely no information about the enemies, and no information about tactical positioning or any sort of teamwork effects. There may be some “tactics” going on, but from what I was presented in the demo it’s a diablo clone with a possibly-good story on top of it. Yey I guess?
I meant it as more of a general question, since many seem to share your views.
Regarding positioning, I think not having weapon range or attacks of opportunity in DA:O effectively reduced it to pointing and clicking. You don’t really have to plan ahead or weigh risks vs. rewards that much, just put the character where you want her/him to be.
Well, I gave the demo (PC) a shot. I’m honestly okay with most of the changes. If this is the direction Bioware wants to go, have at it.
The sterile UI is bland, but it doesn’t distract from the gameplay. The art direction bugs me and I prefered the darkspawn in the first game, but I can deal with it. The new talent system is okay. I prefered DA:O’s, but meh, whatever. The dialogue system is not ideal, but I can cope. I could even live with the more restrictive camera, if there was a little wiggle room to target something behind an obstruction, like say, an ogre.
There are deal breakers that slide this firmly into the GOTY bargain bin, however. I would be fine, even welcome, the more responsive combat, but ramping it up to super-ludicrous speed is way too distracting and ridiculous looking. Teleporting half way across the screen to close an enemy just hurts my brain.
Then there’s the overly large great swords whipping around like they are butter knives. A weapon with as much mass as the inflatable toys they were handing out last year just doesn’t seem like it would actually hurt anything.
All of that doesn’t scream “something awesome is happening!” What I hear the demo saying is “I don’t understand how physics work.”
If you bind enough motes into a Daiklaive, they hardly weigh a thing. So hey, no physics broken!
TimJames
2058
True. DAO wasn’t objectively a very good tactical combat game. But I’ll take what I can get.
Nesrie
2059
Maybe it’s my set-up but i saw “Loading…” a lot more on this PC demo then I am used to seeing. I expect that from a console game, but not so much from a PC game.
Mazuo
2060
Fairly certain they’ve commented that the frequent ‘Loading…’ was a demo issue only.
