Dragon Age 2

techead

techead

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loaded this up last night...

just finished origins and awakening, and was super impressed. dex rogue ftw ;)

anyway, DA2 seems like a serious let down compared to the original. Its very "arcade" like and im honestly not sure what to think :(

thoughts?
 
It's not as good as the first one (and its expansion), but it's still a good game when viewed on its own.

The characters also seem a lot more bland than the first game. Anders for example was pretty amusing in Awakening, but he's quite dull now.
 
Same here.
It looks pretty awesome but doesnt play that nice.
Ive had it now for a while but only did the training mission. I'll rather go back to Origins or Mass Effect.
Really expected more.
 
im about 12 hours in and wondering why Hawke is so gay? Flirts with men, but not alot of opportunity to flirt with women? Just an observation! Maybe this will change later on.

I'm dissapointed that I cant interact with companions as much as I could in the first game. It also appears that gift-giving is dead for influencing their feelings toward you? Matching up gifts in the original to get max reputation points was something i found fun. I'm not really feeling the effects of my decisions that much either - in fact it doesnt feel like I'm getting as many options as before. To me the text wheel is nice, but dumbed down. Less options, less fuss, wont bother with "investigate" unless I'm genuinly interested.

Crafting - dumbed down. Im not even sure if its working properly in some instances.

Outfitting my party members - in DAO i found a combination that i liked and I rolled with it for 70+% of the game. I really enjoyed selecting, finding and applying the gear. Here its limited to rings, belts, and weps. So giving my frost mage companion super frost bonuses on his kit is super limited.

Why is there so much crap laying around that sells for 2 or 3 copper? Fail.

Graphics are awesome, but really, why so much repitition? How many more times am I going to need to go to the coast for something? Why does every dungeon look the same? Just I enter from a different point.

Why do enemies spawn randomly out of thin air? And on that, I'm playing a mage - my god combat is EASY compared to the same difficulty on Origins. OP or? I control my allies alot less - less strategy, more action, and not by choice.

Story seems ok so far so I'll go with it, but i have to say I'm not playing it nearly as much as Origins. Origins took some time to grab a hold of me, but once it did, I just could not stop playing. Loved origins, finding DA2 a bit weak :/

Dont understand how it got so many awesome ratings so far - its a letdown imo. There is just so much wrong with this game...
 
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Agreed, I felt Origins was much better. I find I didn't even bother about runes, and I really enjoyed putting armour/weapons on my companions in the previous campaign, so was really dissapointed with the lack on this one. I think the awesome ratings it received are all based on how good it looks and how easy it is to play.
 
Loved Origins even replayed it a couple of times with different race/combat class's getting different outcomes.

I saw DA2 as a movie that paused every now and then for me to select the tone my actor was using. Was ok to play through 1 time, don't think I will play it again.
Where DAO felt like you played in a world, DA2 felt like the whole game played in one city....
As for the gay ref, I am glad my Hawk was a female... she could hit on anything that moved and it still would be ok if they hooked up, if fact she had 3 romance going on.
 
jeez. the storytelling. the whole flashback thing with varric and the other chantry hag. awful.
"damn you dwarf! that's not how it happened"
"yes it is"
"ok so tell me what really happened"
"well, everything went smooth for a while for the champion, ... or did it?"
dun dun duuuunnnn!
 
My major gripe with DA2 is how easy a mage character is to play compared to both melee classes on offer. I maxed out elemental and force magic and enemies didn't even know what hit them half the time. In fact I finished fights so quickly, I often had to load the previous save as the game bugged from not loading properly or something.
 
ok so from reading all these comments, it would appear Im not the only one. I cant remember exactly what happened last night, but I remember thinking to myself... well thats kinda gay!!! :erm:

I closed DA2, went and downloaded like 3.2gb of DLC for origins. I started witch hunt.... :) Was like opening a freezing cold beer

satisfying compared to the room temp one I had been sipping

:(
 
I'm finding DA2 quite fun. Got bored with origins for some reason, but it was also good. Never finished it though. I'm not saying DA2 is flawless, but I'm enjoying it without getting bored so far :)
 
Dragon Age 2, defiantly feels like an intermission between two proper games. It was sloppily put together and lacks many of the features that made origins so enjoyable.

One of my major gripes with the game, is that I feel like my speech choices make hardly any difference. For example, about half way through the game you have to go into the fade to save a boy. So in the fade, the boy is getting deceived by a demon who is pretending to be someone the boy knows, and your objective is to convince him that he is dreaming. Now before you do this, you are warned by someone that you have to be careful what you say and that you should play along with the dream, while alerting him of the situation. Okay, to cut a long story short. I reloaded 3 times trying every different option and you get the EXACT same conclusion, even if you say the options that agree with the demon, the boy still sees through the whole illusion. So even with the whole warning, what you say means bugger all.

Don't get me started on how they were too lazy to make more than one map for each scenario so they just send you to different locations in the same map, and block off parts of it to give you the impression that you exploring a "new" area.

And mark mentions all the rest of the downfalls quite well. The gay thing is quite lol, but don't worry, eeevventually you are able to flirt with someone besides a guy :P
 
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One good thing I suppose is at least the little 'tard Sandal has more lines :D
 
Dragon Effect / Mass Age ...... more great games that go the dumbed down route for the American masses. It's like ok to play but compared to DAO, it's pretty bleak and overeasy.
 
Mephisto_Helix said:
Dragon Effect / Mass Age ...... more great games that go the dumbed down route for the American masses. It's like ok to play but compared to DAO, it's pretty bleak and overeasy.
Click to expand...
In fairness, the game mechanics do work for Mass Effect 2. They could have retained more of the inventory management aspects, but the combat is infinitely better than the first game. I tried playing the first one after ME2 and wondered how I managed to get through the combat scenes without getting frustrated.

It doesn't work as well in DA2 though. Seems like the greed of EA is to blame - they saw how successful ME2 was and wanted to go that route with DA.
 
playing more at the moment....

enemy AI is so broken...

and dont even get me started on the threat management in this game

eish
 
Well, I actually enjoy the game. I have played every single Bioware game out there, and while this is maybe not the same calibre as some of the others it is still a damn good game. I really dont know what some of you mean by easy either. NM is actually harder on DA:2 than it was for DA:O... At least from a solo perspective. In DA:O it was possible to solo the whole game with any of the classes, and in DA:2 is considerably harder.

I personally like the narrative given by Varric; I think it adds alot of depth to the game. The story is quite good. I do however think there is large gaps in the storyline, but apparently DA:3 will be where DA:O and DA:2 merges.
 
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