Dragon Age II

[Totenkindly]

I played the beta of that game, and it seemed like the bastard lovechild of WoW and Lineage 2. Perhaps the initial similarities between the two kinda distorted my perception, and surprisingly I've heard a lot of die-hard wow fans raving about it.

Obviously a lot of it is modeled after WoW, just like WoW took what EQ did and tried to improve it.
It's just that WoW was a less "cobbled" game to start with, so not as much difference.

The cool parts are of course the "Rifts" which are continual/ongoing invasion portals that open up all around the world. It's basically "pick up raids" for those who hate committing to a 60-person Raid that takes a few hours to get through; if you run across one, you have the option to simply join the public group and get assigned to a team, you fight, then you go your way. It's pretty cool.

The 3-soul system of skill tree building (where you mix and match whatever trees you want, hopefully to build synergy and reflect personal play style) is pretty cool too.

 

[Atomic Fiend]

Been playing it since morning. This game should be renamed Dragon Age: sidequests and errands.

Overarching plot? We don't need no fucking overarching plot!

 

[KDude]

Overarching plot? We don't need no fucking overarching plot!

Hmm.. sounds like Mass Effect 2.

I haven't gotten mine yet. I ordered some special edition that was on backorder. Oh well.

 

[erm]

Been playing it since morning. This game should be renamed Dragon Age: sidequests and errands.

Overarching plot? We don't need no fucking overarching plot!

Well, I'm making my way through awakening for the first time. I must say, I much prefer the story and characters, despite the unfinished and not as fleshed out feel, over origins. Is the sequel more like awakening or origins in that sense?

Another concern I have, is just how easy even nightmare is if you have even the vaguest semblance of what you are doing. No tactics were required if you simply knew which skills were powerful, and which attributes to level. Neither of which are difficult to discover. Have you tried nightmare? Are more tactics required than the original? Is an all mage party still going to waltz through every battle (or the even more ridiculous archers in awakening)?

 

[InvisibleJim]

*waits patiently on his steam counter ticking down to release*

 

[Totenkindly]

Been playing it since morning. This game should be renamed Dragon Age: sidequests and errands.
Overarching plot? We don't need no fucking overarching plot!

Oh noes!

Well, mine is sitting here in front of me. I'll install it later. Right now I need to finish leveling my SC/Ele/Chloro mage to 20 in Rift.... so close!

 

[Jonny]

I played Origins and had some fun, although I ran out of steam partway through the storyline. To those of you who have purchased the game, please keep me apprised of any opinions about gameplay, etc. I would like to play, but I can't justify the expenditure unless I have a good indication that the game will prove to be an ample source of entertainment.

Edit:

Right now I need to finish leveling my SC/Ele/Chloro mage to 20 in Rift.... so close!

How does Rift compare with WoW, assuming you have played them both sufficiently?

 

[Atomic Fiend]

Well, I'm making my way through awakening for the first time. I must say, I much prefer the story and characters, despite the unfinished and not as fleshed out feel, over origins. Is the sequel more like awakening or origins in that sense?

It's nothing like either of the two.

Like I said there is a very loose plot. Looser then Mass Effect 2s even. It's a series of side quests at first. The main antagonist hasn't appeared or even been mentioned, I'm assuming that it's the Arashok of the Qunari peoples however, but when I spoke to him he was so civil and neutral that I just don't know for sure.

You know what this game feels like? I'm sure this will raise some eyebrows... but it reminds me of Persona 3. Most of the focus goes into hanging out with your party members who at this point all you've done is hang out and do side quests together.

Something that bothers me is that in past bioware games you'd have a central hub to gather at where you could speak to all the members of your party, save for Jade Empire, but in this game you have to go to speak to each member of the party you must traverse to their homes or places of employment. Sure it makes sense in this game, but why I can't I just speak to them while they're in my active party? Why must I suffer an extra load time?

The dialouge as you may have figured is now styled after Mass effects guess what you're going to say game. I've said things in this game by complete accident, and sure you know the tone of what you're going to say but you don't know WHAT you're going to say. This has made for some humorous moments in game where I wanted to say one thing and said something completely different.

Another concern I have, is just how easy even nightmare is if you have even the vaguest semblance of what you are doing. No tactics were required if you simply knew which skills were powerful, and which attributes to level. Neither of which are difficult to discover. Have you tried nightmare? Are more tactics required than the original? Is an all mage party still going to waltz through every battle (or the even more ridiculous archers in awakening)?

This game is significant easier on all settings then origins was. To my knowledge friendly fire is only available on Nightmare. Tactics are probably necessary on higher levels but not on normal.

 

[erm]

It's nothing like either of the two.

Like I said there is a very loose plot. Looser then Mass Effect 2s even. It's a series of side quests at first. The main antagonist hasn't appeared or even been mentioned, I'm assuming that it's the Arashok of the Qunari peoples however, but when I spoke to him he was so civil and neutral that I just don't know for sure.

You know what this game feels like? I'm sure this will raise some eyebrows... but it reminds me of Persona 3. Most of the focus goes into hanging out with your party members who at this point all you've done is hang out and do side quests together.

Something that bothers me is that in past bioware games you'd have a central hub to gather at where you could speak to all the members of your party, save for Jade Empire, but in this game you have to go to speak to each member of the party you must traverse to their homes or places of employment. Sure it makes sense in this game, but why I can't I just speak to them while they're in my active party? Why must I suffer an extra load time?

I'm reading a pretty neutral tone overall? I'm guessing it's yet to make an impact on you.

As for dialogue wheel. It's Bioware, they are great at NPC dialogue, terrible at PC dialogue. So I expect as much.

A great demonstration some else gave:

"Hey Shepard, can I punch you in the dick?"

1. Sure!
2. I guess. Why not?
3. Fine, but make it quick.

And that's supposed to be the positive, neutral, and negative reactions >_>
They don't have much range or variation in how the PC can respond, and a lot of the options are just fluff that impact nothing.

 

[Atomic Fiend]

Yes, and then there are the extreme dialouge choices, where the options are between timidly asking if there's a calm nice way to resolve everything, or killing the person you were speaking to, going to his parents home and feeding them their child, then telling them that they just ate their dead son.

It's a step back.

 

[KDude]

I'll probably enjoy it... There aren't many RPGs around anyways (at least for me.. I have a 360 and PS3).

As long as it's not a major step back (also.. Persona 3 was awesome).

 

[Totenkindly]

Wow. I played for a few hours last night.

With the opening sequence, I was afraid I wouldn't even get to customize my character, but you get to do that after... still, you're stuck being human, vs another race.

The game's look and feel is VERY different, so much that I didn't really recognize the franchise aside from places and races, etc. Everything has been redone, moving away from the typical clutter/packrat style of most computer-game RPGs to an open and clean style.

The talent trees are webs, now, rather than groups with linear streams of talents within them, so you can get to later talents by different routes, and upgrades are simply spoked off the talent in question.

The dialogue wheel seems less complicated than speaking options in DA, and the options are not verbatim what the character says. You need sound for this (although I assume there's a subtitling option somewhere); your character talks, dialogue actually happens in real-time.

Inventory is not one long linear list, it's more intuitively separated into groups, and as far as plants and resources go (by which to fashion potions, poisons, runes, etc.) you only need to find one of the item in question, after which point the resource is open. So you don't have to constantly refill and clutter your inventory with lots of mats.

I think overall the game feels much more suited for console (in style) than computer, it's mean to be clean, easy, visually intuitive, rather than feeling more cluttered and complicated. The hotkeys, while the same concept, seem more ironic in nature. The action also feels much faster to me, and that took a little bit to get used to.

And, after I dumped her first few points into the Fire/Ice web, Bethany (mage) is a freaking badass! The first time she did cone/arc of cold and immediately splattered six baddies at one time, I was just kind of amazed. Fireball and Cone of Cold are devastating. At the moment, while I have Hawke specced as a rogue and she does some great one-on-one damage, the main strategy of my group seems to be distracting any incoming mobs so that Bethany can take them all out without getting hit.

I also recognized a character right away from DA (at the end of the intro / escape sequence), despite appearing much different than the character did in that game; it was the voice that gave things away. I think the actor's voice-acting was better directed this time as well; some of the lines had sounded a bit stilted in DA, but this time the acting was very natural and intriguing.

 

[figsfiggyfigs]

meh... soundtrack was better than the game. hopefully,. second one is better.

 

[Totenkindly]

meh... soundtrack was better than the game. hopefully,. second one is better.

I don't like the soundtrack for the second one as much, at least as a standalone. I'm playing it right now on my iPod. It sounded okay in-game, though, which is all I guess matters for this stuff.

 

[EcK]

This game's a joke. I went through the exact same carbon copy of a dungeon 3 or 4 times in a row in 3 hours of gameplay. They constantly copy the same places for the subquests and didn't even bother to edit the maps \levels to delete unwanted doors etc. So I'd sometimes get into a place with a 20 rooms map and only have access to one with all the doors just being fancy home interior scenery. The maps don't make any sense : squeletons full of arrows in some random cavern not far from the city waiting to be raised by runaway blood mages, identical bodies of (teenage?) elves so poorly modeled that it hurts and linked to some other quest the same map was used on...
Seeing your 'home' being used in random side quests, and so on.
The interactions with other characters became super scripted. Now it goes like this : go to the character's 'home' and click on the right 'color' of interaction wether you want them as enemies, friends or lovers (which i always found ridiculous, it's a video game for pete's sake, I don't want to have a virtual romance with a video game character it's just, i mean, it's fucking wierd)

You can't even equip other characters with armor etc because that'd take away their precious 'model' (which aren't that awesome to begin with so I don't see how it justifies not letting you equip your characters with the items you find or buy which is after all one of the indispensible basis of a rpg)
I actually appreciated the ability to make female characters wear sensible clothes instead of having them fight in glorified corsets: I'm not a 13 years old horny teenager, I'd appreciate game developpers not insulting me as a customer. Additionally, why the hell doesn't change in a year ?

The background is still here but it feels like it's been given to a bunch of over impressionable kids: scenes and intrigues feel fake and too black and white, the name 'the champion' is frankly pompous, your characters stories are all drama but no charm and I really didn't feel like bothering to 'pick and choose' my characters with the care I did before missions in dragon age 1 given specific interactions that might occur. Also when that choice has to be made I frankly doubt it has that much of an impact if any on the way events unfold appart from adding 1 or 2 lines of dialogue and these choices when they have to be made are sort of self evident.


The 'multiple choices' is a joke compared to dragon age 1. And a countless amount of situations you'd expect to contain more than one option end up forcing you toward the path of slaughter, often so rapidly that i can almost hear the budget guys telling that there's only so much voice acting hours they are willing to pay for. I personally couldn't care less about voice acting, i just put subtitles on and fast read through all the dialogues. I couldn't possibly go through 'real time' dialogues, it'd drive me mad.

Frankly I think anybody giving this game a score above 80% just shows they're biased by the first game. Without the background brought by the first game this game wouldn't even be worth wasting more than 4 hours on.

 

[Totenkindly]

This game's a joke. I went through the exact same carbon copy of a dungeon 3 or 4 times in a row in 3 hours of gameplay. They constantly copy the same places for the subquests and didn't even bother to edit the maps \levels to delete unwanted doors etc. So I'd sometimes get into a place with a 20 rooms map and only have access to one with all the doors just being fancy home interior scenery.

The 'multiple choices' is a joke compared to dragon age 1. And a countless amount of situations you'd expect to contain more than one option end up forcing you toward the path of slaughter, often so rapidly that i can almost hear the budget guys telling that there's only so much voice acting hours they are willing to pay for. I personally couldn't care less about voice acting, i just put subtitles on and fast read through all the dialogues. I couldn't possibly go through 'real time' dialogues, it'd drive me mad.

Frankly I think anybody giving this game a score above 80% just shows they're biased by the first game. Without the background brought by the first game this game wouldn't even be worth wasting more than 4 hours on.

It sounds like you got past the first city (Kirkland?). I'm still on there. I appreciated the location maps where I can just jump to finish missions, but I haven't moved to another city/area yet where I've been able to observe the replication of play.

I did notice in the abandoned ruins that there are doors in the wall that look just like normal doors, at the spots where a normal door could be, but you can't open them. And in a few locations in the city, I also noticed what you're saying, where I could see rooms on the map (such as in a tavern or the Viscount), but the doors to them could not be opened, and I don't think one ever can open them. It was pretty annoying.

I honestly think they decided to cater more toward the "console" gamer than the "computer" gamer. It's more like a video game than an old-style RPG computer games. All of that product direction/design was obviously intentional -- I assume not just from a marketing perspective, but also from a system 'port perspective.

 

[Atomic Fiend]

Well that's what it's been marketed as. It's definitely geared toward the console crowd after seeing the success another franchise by the same company had achieved. It doesn't help that the marketing guy refers to Hawke as Shepard whenever interviewed.

 

[Atomic Fiend]

Also I think the combat while plays better on consoles looks ridiculous for this kind of game.

 

[EcK]

I edited my previous post a bit.

What else?
The combat system is BAD. You can't zoom out from the action and fights don't have any tactical feel to them. Your companions will just run off etc. sometimes, even when you just ordered them to stay in place.
And there's no way to plan for combat: you can't cast spells before hand and enemies tend to just appear when you get to the center of a room and then reinforcement spawn out of nowhere. I litteraly couldn't have thought of a better way to take all the pleasure out of dragon age's 1 fights.
The 'normal' mode is ridiculously easy but anything higher feels like too much bother seeing how unrully and frankly sucky the gameplay is.

I don't even understand how they could have ended up with this when they already had most things right in dragon age 1. I mean I get the whole 'we want a more spectacular and nervous game for 12 and 20 year olds alike' but calling this game dragon age 2 is basically a lie.

 

[EcK]

oh and it took me hours to realise that there was no friendly fire (at least when not in 'nightmare' difficulty mod, and as i said before i'm not willing to play the highest difficulty level when the gameplay is that terrible, it'd take all the potential pleasure and turn it into endless frustration).
So basically there's NO tactical cost to using big badass zone damage spells like fire balls etc.
That's like guns with endless bullets and no reload in a survival horror game: it's ridiculous.
I suspected it from the start but I just sort of hoped it wasn't the case, feeling all blasé.

The visual effects are pretty, yes. But I think they wanted to make them so pretty that they forgot that you still had to see what's going on in all these stylish flames. Especially if, with no friendly fire, you'll use zone spells where your characters are engaged in melee.
And my rogue freaking TELEPORTS to backstab, they don't even trust you to go behind someone's back while your tank distract them. I mean, that's like, making a key lime pie without cake or lime! *swears*