Laidlaw said something else I wanted to comment on:
Finally, let me conclude by saying that while we are all aware of your concerns, I am very proud of what the team accomplished with Dragon Age II. I know many are advocating a “it wasn’t broke, why did you try to fix it?” stance, and I absolutely understand why. From my perspective, as someone looking to the future and the DA franchise, I think that DA II moved us into a space that has more potential.
I think the space he’s talking about is called The Witcher 2. But the nerd part of me hopes they will stick to party based combat just to even out the genre. We have sci-fi shooting, Bethesda’s open world games, Obsidian adding their own twist, and a boatload of fantasy with action combat. Drakensang is dead now, so where’s the cereberal tactical combat?
I guess I’m being picky in the midst of an embarrasment of riches.
It’s funny how i love tactical combat with modern weapons, from Xcom to JA2 to 7.62mm, but fantasy rpg tactical combat leaves me soo cold.
If only I had been so wise.
Yeah I should’ve mentioned that we’ve talked about this before. No one likes party combat so they’d rather have one additional fantasy action game among many. But the marginal value is much lower than losing the last tactical RPG developer.
Maybe they’ll surprise me and make something with both depth and mass appeal. Hey, don’t laugh.
I really enjoyed the actual combat mechanics in DA:2 (Caveat: I played on a PS3 w/ a gamepad because after I went through the PC demo I thought it was clearly a gamepad game.)
I agree the encounter design wasn’t the best, and I was disappointed there was only 2 really awesome boss fights, but I’d certainly take DA2 combat over DA1 combat any day. DA1’s combat got really bland after a while.
(Also, the leveling system in DA2 was a massive improvement over DA1’s incredibly obvious choices for everyone but mages.)
It should like they’re going to work on better encounter design and more varied levels in DA3, so that’s going to be a huge win. Let’s hope the end of DA3 isn’t another string of bat-shit insane choices made by characters who otherwise didn’t act like morons up to that point.
As did others, here and elsewhere, which is one of the reasons I grumble when people mention how universally disliked/inherently unlikeable it was. “Shallow because of encounter design” yada yada, to which I reply that DA:O wasn’t 3d chess. I’m not all that great a player and even I had to have house rules in DA:O about not exploiting the cheese potential in the mechanics.
And by the time I played Awakenings the delicious formula had become a weirdly ramped slog.
It’s things like this that make me try my best to stay away from objective reviews and comparisons. I make house rules and invent my own fun without skipping a beat, but I guess it bothers some people so I can’t really defend it. Then there’s game mechanics I could play for hundreds of hours that probably bore most people.
You guys might be right about the encounter design being the key though. I didn’t like Awakenings as much (along with the power curve). I don’t really care what the magic is from. I just want more of it.
I didn’t feel at all put out by or inconvenienced by the shortcomings in DA:O combat. It just seems like it’s the under-criticized benchmark for some over-criticism of DA2s.
After about 1-2 hours of DA2 I started getting into a really enjoyable groove with DA2 combat. I put the “dropping from nowhere” enemies behind a veil of suspended disbelief; I didn’t find the challenge too easy or too hard; I felt my pausing and doing a little “chess move deliberation” was necessary and satisfyingly rewarded.
That’s what I want in Dragon Age combat. Fun, not too shallow, and different enough from the previous games that I didn’t feel like I was entering hour 201 of the DA:O combat marathon. My criticisms of the game are entirely to do with unfinished aspects of the game - some of them glaringly obvious - and some noteworthy shortcomings in an often excellent story. The combat? If I could I’d have fewer enemies with more hitpoints if only so I never heard about it again, and make sure that reinforcements come from plausible “reinforcement doors” instead of just “spawning.”
The high res textures were an optional gigabyte+ download for people with beefy graphics cards. The demo not having them is therefore unsurprising. They do look a lot better though.
Haha, AWESOME, but I have my doubts. People that really love DA2 can just discuss it. For the record I never aggressively slobbered over every DA2 discussion and frankly don’t have the passion needed to engage in back and forth verbal spars about it. Yeah, I was probably one of the haters months ago when I was playing the damn game. If I happen to recite those feelings later after a really awesome RPG is released because I’m caught up in the course of the current discussion and want to feast on its innards…just deal with it. Unless there is some weird newfangled stature of limitations clause no one told me about.
As for reviews, I don’t really read them much. RPS’s take pretty much nailed it for me though. Case closed.
Curse you!
Nesrie
3051
I’ve managed to enjoy a lot of Bioware games too. Loved DA:O, after the demo and reviews, haven’t even thought twice about touching DA 2. The Witcher 2, sounds interesting, but it’s hard for me to get into such a male centric role… not saying that is a bad thing to have or do, just that it’s not for me.
Joe_M
3052
Honestly, that low res texture looks like someone snapped a photo of cat puke, imported it into the game and called it a day. I’m a fan of modern Bioware games because I enjoy the characters they create and stories they tell but dear god… I was never closer to cancelling my order than directly after my first experience with the demo. Reading impressions from the Dungeon Siege 3 thread, I wonder how some of these demos manage to make it through without someone raising a red flag.
Ultimately, I’m happy I bought Dragon Age 2. It has some issues, sure, but I had a very interesting time with my band of ruffians. If DA:O was a beautifully woven epic tale, DA2 for me was a much more personal story filled with very human tragedy, triumph and everything in between.
The only Bioware game I would go so far as to call outright bad would be the original NWN release. And even that would be qualified with “but the expansions are pretty good, as are many fan modules, despite the horrible limitations the engine saddles them with”. And I finished DA2. There are good things there. I just wish that they’d stuck closer to what they accomplished with the first game (not necessarily in terms of narrative, but rather in terms of gameplay) and that the third act wasn’t a left field poorly motivated heap of rubbish. I wouldn’t necessarily disrecommend it entirely. But next to games like Witcher 2, it should absolutely not be someone’s first priority.
Spoit
3054
Really? I thought DA2 was up there with console Mass Effect 1 in terms of having way too much trash loot (heck, a whole category of loot whose whole purpose it to just sit in your bag and take up space to be sold) and a lack of differentiation between different items.
But yeah, I delayed starting DA2 in order to finish off a DAO and awakening playthrough, so I might have been burnt out, but it really made the differences a lot more stark. And going from a fully modded and tweaked game to one that still had a bunch of launch niggles? It being like the first EA game to get the PC price hike didn’t help either
Equis
3055
By loot pacing, I meant there was a sense that getting an item more powerful than your previous one was a good feeling. Sure there was tons of trash loot, but no more so that Witcher 2’s random piece of wire that does nothing and is hard to sell.
In contrast, Witcher’s loot upgrade was almost schizophrenic. I work hard at crafting this nice piece of armor from monster parts after grinding levels and farming body parts. 5 mins later, wandering down the wrong path in a cave, I get better armor for a lot less work. Same with weapons. There are tons of swords in the game, and it is eerily possible to get the best possible sword early on and just junk all the rest, or wait far too long to either afford, or be rewarded a better sword. Witcher had just as much junk loot, but didn’t even bother with the category.
Razgon
3056
You know what would be fun? Assassins Creeds world building skills, biowares npcs and rpg system, and perhaps The Witcher 2 graphics and npc reactions and of course King Foltest.
that would work for me in a DA3
As someone who loathed DA2 combat because of how trivial it was on Normal and how annoying it became on Hard, its one-trick pony nature in tandem with its often insignificant premise as filler boarding JRPG status against whimsical enemy ala random encounters…further compounded by control issues, illogical spawn locations, camera limitations, AI fickleness, stupid kiting and pure speed…I cannot agree. It’s as if BioWare wanted to go full blown Action RPG but also tried to do tactical party combat resulting in both being executed poorly.
As for DA:O - combat is tactical real-time with pause ala Darklands/Infinity Engine/Freedom Force/NWN2. No compromises. Some people dislike it for that reason alone. It’s considered throwback or old hat now and probably has since joined Turn Based Combat in the graveyard. (All restaurants are now Taco Bell?) I like it because it covers that now niche combat inch. I micromanage every action of the entire party pausing frequently…a poor mans turn base fix of sorts. It’s satisfying. It has it’s problems with balance and cooldown duration inducing a higher frequency of pauses but I was either not bothered or avoided those issues. (used only 1 mage and was held back by an archer)
The Witcher 2 (and 1) more than most RPGs, does something I’ve always loved in RPG combat situations very much: Practicality. Monsters are in practical locations and often have a reason for being and/or needing to be killed. Combat by-an-large occurs with a logical premise or call to action. Random battles devoid of all logic for the sake of providing a combat opportunity is sloppy in comparison.
Quitch
3058
DA:O combat was boring because there was little variation in the enemy groups and the party skills were poorly balanced. The combination of the two led to most fights playing out the same way over and over again. Then combine that with the sheet amount of combat…
I loved the combat in DA:O, after I got the Improved Tactics mod, so those fights you talk of that were over and over, I did not have manage them. The only fights I had to stop and figure out were the bigger boss ones.
DAO combat exhausted me half way through. It was tedious, mages were so absurdly powerful that if you failed a resist against Force Cage the battle was essentially already over within the first second, and 95% of the fights were identical.
Now, in DA2 95% of the fights were still identical, but I didn’t have to download a 3rd party solution to making my party members behave and I didn’t turn a corner to have my guy murdered before I could do anything about it.
