Not sure how you guys are throwing this criticism at DAO feet when DA2 suffered from enemy variety problems and identical fights to a MUCH higher degree! Should I also mention Environments?
For one, DAO had different combat setups because they were hand crafted.
Case 1: Walking through a corridor - corpses on the ground around the room. Corpses animate, party is now surrounded. Re-enforcement join from nearby rooms.
Case 2: Walk into a room, archers in the distance. Melee characters charge, room is trap infested.
DA2 is just wave 1, wave 2, wave 3 ad nauseum in comparison.
Yeah, those criticisms are right on the nose of the worst of DA2 problems.
The fucking Rock Horror fight was a perfect demonstration of imblanace. I bring along one party and can’t even maintain them through attrition over multiple miserable attempts - swap out two characters (and go through all that shit again) and the dude goes down before he can finish his second phase …
For all the bs-ness about waves of enemies appearing out of nowhere, I’m enjoying the combat in DA2 a LOT more than DA:O. I’ve been playing on hard, and so far have been reduced to kiting in only one battle (dragon against a party that was not setup properly to take it on).
I guess I come from older school combat games where you are supposed to clean out trash as you go and then be tactical and swarthy on the boss battles. That is exactly how DA:O felt to me. I liked it.
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.
Well, not to harp on a game I did not play, but at least DA:O had the ability to modded. :)
The rock wraith is a “puzzle” fight; after I figured it out once my second and third fights with it were easier, and then very easy on normal. I can’t speak to hard but I’d be surprised if party makeup was as important as running behind cover during the AOE, running away during the TK draw, and running everyone into cover during the roll-attack.
That just leaves regular melee and a little bit of damage from the TK draw maybe; the AOE and roll attacks can be damage-free. Also most of the “giant/dragon/big monster” type enemies were a lot easier to heal if you only had the tank in melee and kept everyone else at range, even if it meant lower DPS from your rogue(s). That made the difference on some harder fights, although I also had Aveline built into an oldschool meatshield more than was really ideal.
Your post exhausted me half way through. It was tedious when you complained about fights in da1 being identical and then mentioned da2. The mage complaints were also funny as my 2nd play through was 2 warriors, 1 rogue and 1 mage and i cut through the highest difficulty.
Ok, i lied, i also read the second paragraph but even having beat da1 2.5 times, i still don’t know what you’re talking about when you say you needed a 3rd party solution to party members.
I also played on the highest difficulty level each time, using highly varied parties and never experienced a situation where i got hit by one force cage or whatever and it was an auto lose.
From what i remember, the rock wraith is overall HEAVILY resistant against magic so if you, like me, were an earth focused mage going in to that fight, you better hope you have a respec potion handy or it is going to be a LONG night.
The fight was insanely stupid though because it is an EXTREMELY long, mmorpg style boss fight that you can easily die if you mess up in the slightest with your kiting.
What, actual kiting? My main tank was taking damage the whole fight with the exception of the AOE, pull-in and roll special breaks, none of which I’d call kiting.
I didn’t care for the design of the fight my first playthrough because it was just too long, sucked up all of my health potions, and made me think “WTF am I doing wrong?” (Paging the Witcher.) Towards the end, though, I realized that part of my issue was they were expecting me to solve the puzzle and figure out that there was fire I wasn’t supposed to stand in, and special high damage attacks the boss signposted before initiating, and I had to actually do something about them rather than just heal my tank and leave my DPS on autoattack.
Adding in mid-fight trash spawns, mini-bosses, fires to not stand in, none of this is exactly original, but it’s an improvement on the “awesome” dragon fights of DA:1 which were comically straightforward.
I don’t see the Spirit Rock Golem thing in the Underdark as an improvement. That’s actually the only fight like that in the entire game and I’m glad. It drove me nuts having to huddle up all my finicky dudes with uncontrollable spasms behind those pillars during the massive AOE death spray sequences over and over again.
If the game was a full fledge action RPG where I’m simply controlling one guy (Paging the Witcher), that fight would have been fine.
maxle
3069
I liked that fight because it was like WoW. Boss had an interesting gimmick, spawns were in predictable, manageable places–huge improvement on the average encounter.
I’d prefer DA:O II, but Dragon of Warcraft is still better than what we got for most of the game.
So DA2 appealed to WoWers? Makes sense now. I hate WoW.
maxle
3072
I was talking about that specific encounter. Most of the encounters were ass.
That fight was the WoW pandering part of the game. I remember hearing an early preview podcast about how they made Wow-like boss fights for DA2 based entirely off that rock golem encounter, so they assumed their would be more like it. There really was only the 2 at the end…unless you considered the Dragon fight since there were adds and he would perch himself on the rock…but it was bugged for me. He wouldn’t come down and I ranged him to death all the while hilariously kiting his breath weapon by running in circle with the character that had aggro.
That is the best fight ever in a video game compared to the stupidity of the 1vs1 duel against a boss later in the game.
I stand by my belief that that fight is not possible without humorous amounts of kiting.
Jason Townsend: Maybe a sword/shield focused warrior lets you deal with them, but i am pretty sure the rock boss periodically randomly attacked someone every so often, nearly one hitting most of my people unless my kiting was strong (this is basically the story of most of da2 though, kiting is the best defense). Then there was hiding behind pillars when he did his explode or running back constantly when he did his black hole. These movement parts were made significantly more annoying due to how much they broke the ability to efficiently command your party as a whole.
If you’re talking about the end of Act 2. Yeah, that fight is among the worst in RPG history. I was amazed I was still playing a BioWare game during that fight.
Joe_M
3076
I suppose you might have to kite if you didn’t have any sort of tank character? I had my tank specced warrior on the boss with my party swiftly and painlessly collapsing behind pillars every time it was needed so the fight was fairly easy. I can see how someone who’s not accustomed to MMO boss encounters might struggle with it but if you’re reading these forums it was spoiled very shortly after release.
You actually played through that? I took one look at it, then promptly reloaded my save and bypassed it for the full party brawl (a mere two days ago - I’m knee deep in act 3).
I did have a solid tank, but the last go-through - when I knew the tells not just for the AOE but for the roll attacks, the teleport, etc - was pretty trivial.
There’s some added value in knowing not just what the AOE and roll warning is, but what it isn’t - because you can keep pouring on DPS and not run away because of a false alarm.
I wouldn’t say it was the “only” WoW-style fight. The Archdemon in DA:O qualifies, as does the final fight and the High Dragon fight in DA2. I’m sorry if people just associate MMOs with “bad in all circumstances,” but “don’t stand in the fire” and “miniboss distractions” are still an improvement on “1 damage guy vs. your main tank, healing and DPS.” That is the CRPG norm, and it’s inadequate.
The 1v1 fight vs the boss is, as it stands, “unplayable.” I consider winning by kiting - imo the only way - to be an exploit and illegitimate. But the game accepts it if you do it that way, and obviously if it was “literally impossible” they could just have a death cutscene. So I dunno WTF that was supposed to be. Game mechanics as some kind of metaphysical statement about the possible?
EDIT: Actually: What about the fight with Branka, or for that matter, the “recharging” in the Malak fight in KOTOR1?
Yeah, if you brought along the right party, that was all you had to do.
I had ample opportunity to figure out the puzzle over probably thirty-some attempts, being unwilling at the time to go back so far to try another party. I just couldn’t deal enough damage to keep my guys alive for long enough against the health drains.
Then I finally given in and go back in with Fenris and it is over at the beginning of his second phase, just by whacking at him madly … No puzzling needed.
