1861

Yeah, I am a chronic rogue player, because I can’t leave locked chests and doors alone.

1862

The biggest annoyance for me is the camera. Most of the time it feels like I should be able to pull the camera farther back than it lets me (probably half again as far). Is there a way to free scroll it? It makes it difficult to assess what’s going on. Of all my grievances, that was the most actively frustrating and it felt like it was working against me (with the resets) most of the time.

I know it’s only the demo, but the battles themselves even after the opening were pushovers and basically amounted to :enemies in front… oh no… enemies from behind… oh no… now continue down the corridor. Crowd control also feels a lot less important (even stuff like pommel strike) too, which detracts a bit from the experience for me.

What’s with Flemmeths craptacular stripper walk? Seriously, between that, the cleavage and the thong pirate, it definitely feels like it’s pandering more. The animation is a mixed bag too, with plenty of wooden marionette style acting still present.

Anyway, I find the UI ugly, which isn’t a huge deal, but it does detract from my enjoyment and reminds me of shareware games from the 90s that relied way too heavily on gradients. The fire effect still looks worse than DA:O, imo. I preferred being able to read my responses as well. In total, it doesn’t quite feel like what I enjoyed about Dragon Age.

Anyway, it runs fine on my machine (which is ancient by today’s standards) so there’s that…

Edit: Oh, is there a way to turn off the combat AI? Even trying to clear their tactics stuff in custom, my party still seemed to use their abilities as they saw fit… which meant sometimes when trying to get pause and get to a character they’d fire off an ability I’d want to manually target before I got the chance?

1863

The demo did do a good job of soothing my fears, namely that the combat would be mindless/stupid, yes it’s mostly “easy” because it’s the beginning of the game on normal. I’m probably going to set it to hard, which is fine. Dragon Age 1 was way too brutal on normal. There’s definitely a lot of abilities with more depth to the talent system (for non mages especially). The faster pace makes the combat a lot more fun. I also really like the amping up of rogue/warrior powers to make them more on-par with mages (Who were insanely overpowered in the DA:O).

On the note of difficulty, there’s a good quote from the gamespot walkthrough about how difficulty is compared to origins:
“On normal its very comparable on consoles, probably a little easier than normal shipped on PC. Hard is about on par with hard on PC in all cases. As we see it, normal means we want you to play one character, kinda ‘your guy’ optimally. Build him right, get new equipment, armor, all that kind of stuff. When you move up to hard we’re asking you to play your party optimally. Either through tactics you’ve set up ahead of time, or pausing and playing, as Dan [the demoer] is moving around here. Either of those is really a valid approach. And then Nightmare, we’re asking, well, “Good luck”, we’re asking you to have good luck. Personally I play on hard, I know the game very well, and I find it a really solid challenge. Everyone saw we had difficulty spikes in Origins, and we’ve tried to tune those out as well, they could be frustrating; to be suddenly mauled by a thousand wolves.”

(http://www.gamespot.com/shows/now-playing/?event=now_playing_dragon_age_ii20110222)

1864

This is amusingly my fault. I still had AHK set up to swap around mouse button behavior for another game so the controls were doing precisely the opposite of what I wanted them to do. Without the wonky controls the game still has poor targeting but it’s tolerable with some pausing.

1865

I just tried the PC demo. Ugh. Combat is a twitchy, raspberry-jam filled mess of characters sliding around while the mage performs her baton-twirling routine. And I much preferred being limited by stamina rather than cooldowns. I won’t be getting this. It’s too bad; there seems to be a good game trying to get out, but it’s either hidden out of view of the awful, restricted camera or buried under all the dreary awesomeness.

1866

We’ll see about the difficulty. There’s more to it than increasing enemy HP and the damage they do to you. I want a challenge that makes me think.

I don’t know what they have in store so I can’t dismiss it yet. Fortunately, I’m on board with the backup plan of turning my brain off and kicking ass.

1867

Things I liked:

  • The overall responsiveness of the combat. Those of you who claim not to remember a shuffle in DAO need to go back and play it again. I really appreciate this and hope it becomes the new standard for traditional RPGs. If anything I find that the responsiveness makes the game feel closer to a turn-based system, since I’m not watching a bunch of idiots shuffle around all the time. I click, characters do.
  • Darkspawn re-design is pretty great. I’m in favor of being less orc-y and more undead, as it seems to fit the concept a lot more. Not a fan of the spikes on the armor, though.
  • The animated cutscenes are cool. I hope there are more of these and that they’re a lot longer.
  • Graphically the game is much better than I was expecting based on pre-release material. There are still some problems with it, but overall I’m stoked with how DA2 looks.

Things I didn’t like:

  • The cutscene/dialog loading! What the fuck is this? I know Bioware said it won’t be in the final game, but Bioware says A LOT of things. I am not holding my breath.
  • A lot of the combat animations are too silly for words. Stop cartwheeling around and stab someone you nonce. Use that knife that you apparently stole from a dead Klingon. It’s also kind of weird to play a very serious character who gets all grim on his mom after she’s watched her son die and then gets into a fight and starts flying about like a circus acrobat.
  • The voice acting is almost universally bad. Every fourth line or so the characters turn a bit british, and then just like that it’s gone.
  • Shifting dialogue choices makes you sound like a crazy person, just like it did in Alpha Protocol. I realize this is just going to be the nature of the beast, but surely we can do better than this. I hate feeling like I have to pick one choice to keep a consistent voice --to me it’s the biggest drawback of the dialog wheel system-- and DA2 seems no better from other games in this regard.
  • Derpy derp faces. It’s still too easy to tell who is a story character and who isn’t by their face, but at least the story characters have an equal chance of looking kinda downsy.
  • The armor design. Christ, the armor design. SPIIIIIIKEEESSSSS.
  • The framed narrative bits don’t seem to serve any legitimate purpose to the pacing of the story, and in fact detracted from it in the few small interactions from the demo. This could be a HUGE deal in release, or not. Will have to see.
  • This game is retardedly easy. Hopefully hard and nightmare really step things up, but the difficulty has to come from things that I don’t think are going to change.

The huh?

  • Did I just stab Wesley right in his platemail?
  • Why did Isabella throw a knife at the #2 baddie when the #1 baddie is right there? Closer to her, even! Maybe she knew something I didn’t about that bitch.
  • A chiropractor could make a killing in Ferelden. The poor women must have such bad spinal problems.
  • Why is my beard so goddamn shiny?
1868

PS3 version:

Played more like a hack and slash than DA, but still fun. I am coming from playing da1 on the pc though.

This also seemed more like an alpha than a demo. Many things seemed to be disabled (inventory) and there was performance problems (slow downs during cut scenes sometimes and long load times).

New skill system is ok, but not really an improvement. Same old same old, but in a slightly different design.

The lack of friendly fire on console versions helped the mindless hack and slash feel of the game (not a good thing). As a mage i’d just rain down aoe attacks on my party for massive damage. I don’t know whose bright idea it was to make it so i had to keep mashing X to auto attack, but I want to kick him in the knee. This adds nothing to the game at all and i’d imagine pushing x every second will make my finger hurt during long play sessions. I feel like i am playing star wars online again.

I did not like the new art direction. Just didn’t like it.

I did like the narrative thing. I don’t know how it will play out actually playing the game from the start, but it seemed kind of cool. It might overstay its welcome though.

Overall it is a different and worse game than the first one. Maybe i will pick it up for $40.

1869

Different, yes. Worse, hell to the no.

1870

I’m still waiting on my pitiful connection to get the demo to me, but for Isabela’s knife-throwing thing, I believe the idea was she was still going to honor a legitimate duel with the guy even if he broke the rules by bringing a squad with him to kill her. She felt no obligation to handle the cheaters honorably.

Massive cleavage aside from Izzy’s is addressed by the first story being the exaggerated one, yes. Good to hear the loading between dialogue stuff won’t be in the final game.

As for spamming abilities, I’ll admit I’m confused by that. I read the released talent trees for all three classes and the shortest CD I saw was 15s after being upgraded at least once. Almost all of them were set at 20 or 30 second intervals.

1871

Others have said it and I agree. Although, I don’t think AP is quite in the same vein. In that your character’s voice is more about how you wanted to interact with a particular person or in other words what “chemistry” you wanted to create between the two characters. So a “pro buy the books” Thorton could act ‘dickish’ when interacting with a cocky Sean Darcy that fits because Darcy reacts to what you say as do others. Unlike in DA2 if you jest one moment then are serious and good willed the next, well you just come off as a awkward unfunny comic relief because no one reacts to your attempts at light humor.

He obviously knows the three C’s in hair maintenance: Condition, Condition, Condition!

1872

Is the content created specifically for the demo, or is it part of the full game? Anyone know?

1873

It’s pieces of the full game thrown together kinda haphazardly.

1874

That’s exactly what it feels like. Seems like they wanted to show you a tiny bit of intro, then some combat, then a fast forward to advanced combat. Unfortunately that introduced a sensation of massive jarring to any concept of “story” and apparently (or so they say) this unfortunate loading hitch that throws any immersion out the window.

Still, the combat was fine. A bit faster on the fodder than it used to be, but I guess that’s all fine as long as I can still pause and give individual commands, which is intact and doing fine. I think the camera doesn’t zoom out quite as far out as it used to, which is a tad annoying in targeting enemies, but otherwise the more uhm, hyperactive skills are fine. I don’t think they’re an improvement nor a detriment, they’re just different. Game feels a little less gritty to me because of them, though. Again, different.

Either way, I found DAO nicely self-contained and exhaustive, so I have little interest in returning. I’ll probably pick this up when it’s bargain price and includes all the DLCs.

1875

So does anyone seriously think having to mash a button to auto attack was a good “improvement?”

1876

You can change that in the settings according to that demonstration I linked earlier. (I can’t check because I’m not on a console).

1877

This would be my strong recommendation to anyone who isn’t totally thrilled with the demo.

Personally I’m picking it up to enjoy any fantears it manages to wring from the Bioware faithful and because I’m morbidly curious as to the quality of the final product.

1878

Well, I’m sold. Loved the first game. March 8 can’t get here fast enough.

1879

To be honest, this is my new approach when dealing with Bioware. Look at the Steam Ultimate Edition of Dragon Age:

Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening Expansion Pack
The Stone Prisoner
Warden’s Keep
Return to Ostagar
Feastday Gifts
The Darkspawn Chronicles
Feastday Pranks
Leliana’s Song
The Golems of Amgarrak
Witch Hunt

Admittedly some of this DLC is crap, but when I look at this list of content that was in addition to what I originally paid for the base game + The Stone Prisoner, it makes me wonder why anybody would buy any Bioware game when it’s released. Instead, why not wait for the Ultimate Edition that’s $10 less than retail and has all of the content for the game.

You know, wait until the game is finished before buying it.

1880

Played the PC demo using dx11 which explains the single crash halfway through my first attempt. Looks fine, better than Origins anyways. No dwarf makes me sad though, watching my dwarf spread eagled with naught but a loincloth on the bed awaiting his tryst always made me laugh.

The game still has the same problem that has plagued Bioware since Baldur’s Gate - the switch to real time combat made discerning discrete actions difficult at best. Click like mad on your little toon screaming ‘suck down that healing potion bitch’, or ‘why won’t you cast fireball you fucking bastard’ and it’s all the same impenetrability. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t, but you rarely understand what’s happening. Stunned? Busy? Bored? Bug? Who knows.