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Gaming Dragon Age 2 Review

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by arcticstoat, 8 Mar 2011.

  1. sausages

    sausages What's a Dremel?

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    I like it.

    It not as dumbed down as people are expecting. It's no Baldur's Gate, but it's not much different to Dragon Age 1, if anything it's better. You still need to pause and you can still get your party wiped out, especially early in the game before you have really had a chance to affect the basic builds of your party.

    All the talk about faster combat and hack n slash is misleading in my opinion. It's not really different to Baldur's Gate in that the majority of the fights are just simple 'yard trash' fights that you hack n slash your way through. It's these fights which are fast and PEW PEW PEW, but so were they in the Baldur's Gate games too, in fact in the first half of BG2, one good quick fireball would splat pretty much every enemy on the screen. In this game, about every 1 in 5 fights is bigger and more dangerous and you have to pause and be careful. The only negative is that spells don't seem to harm my team mates on Normal mode, but I don't really care about that too much, because even the biggest of spells so far, are not killing everything anyway. So I still have to run around with my mage, picking targets well and using all my spells. Enemy mages teleport all over the place and have magic resistance spells so you can't just fire storm them like the first game.

    Also the graphics are a massive improvement, especially with the DX11 high res pack, and I find the game to be much better than the first game in terms of story and setting, graphics, presentation, and locations. People should definitely think twice before assuming this got ruined.
     
  2. cypressgroove

    cypressgroove What's a Dremel?

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    I have to agree with this. I sat down with it yesterday morning intending to give in a half hour to confirm it was all bad. Seven hours later I finally quit because I had to go pick the kids up from school. I think the last game that did that to me was probably way back before even the original DA:O.

    There are some legitimate niggles to my mind; mainly to do with the equipment really. The inability to properly upgrade your party's armour robs one element of fun that is always been part of RPGs, and confused me a little at first. The other thing that seems strange is that very early on I got some fantastic equipment, including some I wouldn't be able to use until my stats improved. Since then (probably ~2 hours in) I haven't run across a single item actually worth changing my equipment for, except to switch up to the ones I already had as my stats allowed. That's a dramatic difference to most RPGs who seem to really get off on having a massive catalogue of subtly different pointy hurty things with which to swing at it's antagonists usually gained at a steady pace throughout.

    One thing I haven't seen mentioned much on teh interwebz is the attention to detail that has been put into DA2 in terms of the 'gamer experience' as compared to DA:O. Simply put, everything seems more polished and intuitive. The load times are practically nonexistant, you never feel like you failed at something arbitrarily, it's always because of a bad choice you made, so you get to try again from a save (which load almost instantly, like incremental save games SHOULD) and it's easy to change the outcome the second time round. The cutscenes are handled fluidly and feel part of the experience instead of added on later. Also the approach to the dialogue and party dynamics is never confusing and really makes it nice and clear what 'role' you are creating for your own character (presumably something 'role playing games' *should* excel at) and how that role effects the game going forward. I couldn't say how similar any of those things are to the ME games, as I'm one of those people affected by the insta-crash bug related to my sound hardware, so was never able to play those games, but if this is all ME stuff I can finally see for myself why those games got the critical acclaim they did.

    What I will say is that it is definitely a different beast to the more traditional Bioware fantasy output. I've played and loved every single one from BG1 through PS:T and up to DA:O and where most of those fell on the 'nerdy' end of the 'nerd------fun' scale - this one is rooted firmly as the 'fun' end. There's still plenty to get your teeth into if you want to play tactically and with some lashings of traditional RPG micromanagement, but I think to experience it the way they intended this time around, it's almost better to forget it's heritage and just have a blast enjoying taking part in a suitably grand storyline that at many times feels like being part of an interactive fantasy movie.

    In other words if you're ONLY interested in RPG games, and then ONLY interested in ones that require knowledge of the rules and math as well as a lot of micromanagement to succeed, then it might be best to avoid this one. However, if you can enjoy other genres of game, like fantasy settings and want to be solidly entertained for a good long time for your $, there's a lot about DA2 to love.

    Just my $0.02 of course. :)
     
  3. Palmski

    Palmski What's a Dremel?

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    Don't think I'll be getting this one, which will be a first for me and Bioware. Sounds as though they are following a similar progression

    KOTOR >>> ME >>> ME2 (IMO unplayably dumbed down from an RPG perspective)
    BG >>> DAO >>> DA2 (???)

    Three classes? Fail. Can't even choose your race? Fail. Can't customise equipment? Fail. Focus on sex & gore rather than story? Fail. I am disappoint.
     
  4. yakyb

    yakyb i hate the person above me

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    not entirely surprising the first game got very dull very quick
     
  5. wiggles

    wiggles Minimodder

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    It was pretty obvious from the scrolling demos what this game was
     
  6. SproutWinkler

    SproutWinkler Spending a penny...

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    What a shame. Will await the obligatory "game of the year" edition incl all DLC for £14.99 or a Steam "sale". Time to dust off New Vegas and wait for Fable III PC.
     
  7. triprunner

    triprunner What's a Dremel?

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    game is okeish, fast paced, nice graphics, love Varric, the dwarf rogue, but where the hell is quick change weapons button from the first game? i like to do some AoE with my bow first and then close for some backstab action but i have to get into inventory and equip dual wielding daggers which totally breaks immersion on combat... massive overlook there BioWare
    also i dont agree with the "maturity" in the game. its the kind of maturity for 13 year olds with tits and gore and not really any adult content apart from mentioning some kinky sexual innuendos, the Witcher is still the benchmark for well done mature fantasy game.
    but its well done, fast paced and well done overall, although i started calling it Dragon Effect...
     
  8. GravitySmacked

    GravitySmacked Mostly Harmless

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    I've got the day booked off to play this bad boy. It's getting decent reviews from most places thus far:

    http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii

    I've come to accept the folk here generally have negative feelings to most games these days. I remember the good old days too but there is still plenty of enjoyment to be had with modern games.
     
  9. wiggles

    wiggles Minimodder

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    Games like Dragon Age are always going to get good reviews on MetaCrtitic. I wonder how many of those have been brought?

    The reader's reviews are much more telling, particularly the lack of backing the reader who gave it 10/10 got.
     
  10. GravitySmacked

    GravitySmacked Mostly Harmless

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    Why? Bad games get bad reviews on metacritic, after all it's just using the reviews from the big sites and magazines to get a score.

    I rate the reader reviews far less. People give games 0/10 because they don't run well on their system or just from the demo etc. The reviews there are far more biased then the professional reviews.
     
  11. Jamie

    Jamie ex-Bit-Tech code junkie

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    Love the Shaun of the Dead reference Joe.
     
  12. Fizzban

    Fizzban Man of Many Typos

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    Won't read the review for now, my own signature edition should drop through the letter box tomorrow or Friday and I don't wanna spoil anything. I saw the 7/10 at the end of the review though and that was my general feeling from the demo, 7/10. Should be fun, but just not as fun as I was hoping.
     
  13. asteldian

    asteldian Minimodder

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    I'll give this a miss. Mainly because I spend too much of my time playing Rift: Planes of Telara. To be honest DA:O disappointed me, I found it dull. Odd given I actually love to RP both PnP and computer games, but DA:O felt slow and tedious, I never thought I would say there was too much talking in a game but I felt for every 5 minutes playing I was talking to people (admittedly my own group) for 30 minutes. and it wasn't even meaningful.
    I agree the mature content just being excess blood and some sex is cheesy. I admit it was amusing after a couple hours play to sleep with the witch, then the other girl and then bang the male elf too - but more funny in a juvenile 'yay 3 for 0' kind of way.
     
  14. pendragon

    pendragon I pickle they

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    Glad to hear I'm not the only person who thinks the game is good. I'm also glad I didn't read this review before getting it . played it for a few hours last night and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nothing about it came off as 7/10 to me...

    Good job, Bioware!
     
  15. Yslen

    Yslen Lord of the Twenty-Seventh Circle

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    Given the slating bit-tech gave the original recently, I'd say a 7/10 means I should buy this immediately... I loved the first game.
     
  16. Tyinsar

    Tyinsar 6 screens 1 card since Nov 17 2007

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    :sigh:
    That (and your explanations following that) pretty much kill it for me. The amount of blood looks ridiculous (to the point of being a serious distraction) and I prefer to get my sex in real life. I think I'd prefer to reload KOTOR and try some of the many fan made mods (some are reportedly quite good).
     
  17. Defiant306

    Defiant306 What's a Dremel?

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  18. sausages

    sausages What's a Dremel?

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    Your loss. I think DA2 > DAO. You can customise equipment, and there aren't really classes at all, it's a skill based system. Did you condemn Ultima Online for having 0 classes too? As for race, you are playing the role of a character with a proper voice actor. He is the star of the show and he has a back story and a family, so he can't very well be a different race to them. If you are going to slate this game for something, at least make it something legitimate. Even the focus on sex and gore thing is totally over stated.

    Again, your loss. Apparently everyone else felt the same way about DAO and that's why they have fixed all of those things in this game. It's about as far from "dull" as it can get now, with flashy animations and spell effects and massive death strikes and whatnot. It's also about as far from slow and tedious as it gets too, seeing as the characters all rush around like they're on speed, and there is a tiny fraction of the group chat of the first game.


    Ditto. I gave them such a hard time on their forum about the dumbing down thing, but I was wrong really. It's not perfect, but they've done a great job, and I like it as much as the first game, if not more. I think this is just one of those games that people have got in to their heads early on, that's it's going to be no good. I can't really blame them to be honest, because especially in this age of dumbing down, it's pretty unheard of these days that a sequel actually does a good job, if not a better job than the original. But still, people are only going to shaft themselves by being grumpy about it, without actually giving it a chance.
     
    Last edited: 9 Mar 2011
  19. thehippoz

    thehippoz What's a Dremel?

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    anyone try the texture pack yet
     
  20. Zurechial

    Zurechial Elitist

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    Plenty of those 'big sites' and magazines are in the pockets of the publishers, so Metacritic's scores mean very little to me for any game that has received lots of promotion or hype, because I just know that Metacritic's score is going to be in the 85+ region regardless of whether the game is any good or not.
     
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