Dragon Age 2

excited for this game been hanging around the DA2 forum, recently saw a mega spoiler thread which is filled with speculations and some truth(putting the pieces together kind of thing)really have hyped me up for the game.(How they did it was cracking through the demo btw)

GOD. This demo is amazing. The way it does choices now reminds me of Mass Effect 2. Also I'm going to leave this vid here for discussion.


http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/1974-Enriching-Lives

This game is shitty for me.I don't plan to buy it now...

I'd think it would be too early to call it shitty. I mean maybe the story can carry it. Though that sounds like an excuse

Story is the most important part of any BioWare game anyway. So while I don't like some changes that have been made compared to DA:O, I can live with them. DA2 reminds me a bit of KotOR right now, so while it's not a classical RPG like DA:O anymore, it will probably still be a great game.

No feedback from FAKKU yet?

I wanted to hear some opinions here because all I've been hearing outside is that this game is dissapointing.

I'm enjoying the game. No disappointments yet. I think most people don't like it because they changed the combat system which is very minor.

Mine is still on its way over here from England. We'll see once it arrives.

I won't play it for another month, unfortunately, but judging from the demo, it's not nearly as bad as some people make it out to be. My only dissapointment is that it's shorter than Origins. I've seen people claiming that they've finished it in ~15 hours. Dunno if it's true, but 'm still hoping for at least 40-50 hours with all side missions in 1 playthrough.

Assuming the three arc structure actually stands, then I'm nearly done with the game.

It isn't a bad game, by any stretch. I'd say it is as good as Dragon Age, but for different reasons. I enjoy the combat. It is one thing to genuinely complain about the "hack-and-slash" gameplay, but unfortunately most people I've run into whom say that are from GameFAQs who worship the ground God of War walks on. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. You can argue that it works for games like God of War and not for games like Dragon Age, but no one is doing that. It just screams of one trying to have one's cake and eat it too.

Another common complaint is the story, and that's fair game to argue. Personally I enjoy the story because it is centered around politics and religion. I'm not going to say it is the most affective portrayal of the internal struggles between politics, race and religion; far from it, but it still deserves kudos for going where few games dare to tread. Just because it isn't focused on Darkspawn or generic enemy threat #779 doesn't mean it is a poorly constructed story that goes nowhere.

That isn't to say that I don't have my own gripes, however. For one, I don't like the companion armor system. I liked micromanaging my team with different sets of armors. Buying items to augment current companion armor, is a real step backwards for a Fantasy RPG. I simply don't know what they were thinking there. Who at Bioware thought that was a good decision? Second, the linearity. I don't mind linearity if an excellent story keeps things interesting. And while I do think Dragon Age II's story is a lot better than it is being given credit for, it still isn't good enough to keep my attention all the time. There were several times where my mind wondered and thought, "Oh great, generic manor number #17. And, oh look! Another damn alleyway of Kirkwall, as bland as the last!" The game does feel very small and isolated because of it. I understand that it was necessary because of how the story is focused, but because of that they should have been responsible to make the story an epic, and it wasn't. Good, but not great.



Don't worry about that. I personally assume that guy is lying, but at the very least I can guarantee he hardly touched any, if none at all, of the side quests in the game. You might be able to knock the game out in fifteen hours if you only did the Main Plot quests. I've done every quest I've stumbled across. I'm a little more than 2/3 of the way through the game and I've clocked over thirty hours so far.

My overall impression of the game was simply that they essentially took one of the origin stories form the first dragon age and made it longer. Awakening felt like a more complete game to me.

You can beat it in 15 hrs because the format is more like Mass Effect this time. The main storyline only takes around that amount of time, but there are story driven side quest you can do that make the game MUCH longer. How many people seriously beat Mass Effect in 15 hrs (unless, y'know, you avoided the sidequest)? I believe they did this because if you wanted to play through with another character in DA:O, you had to invest another 70+ hrs into the game. With the change to a shorter storyline, you can get different endings via skipping the side quest thus making it easier to play through the game multiple times.

Also, for people who don't like the combat system, turn up the difficulty. It will force you to be much more strategic, make you pause much more. The good thing about combat IMO is that the Warrior class isn't so limited as it was in DA:O compared to mages and rouges. It is faster, so you can do more, and overall it just feels more fluid to me.

I will say that I don't like the new characters as much in DA2 compared to DA:O (in Mass Effect, I thought they improved your characters in ME2 over ME1), so while some are cool and there is more chemistry among the party, individually I think they aren't as interesting as say Morrigan or Leliana (or SHALE!). Even Isabela, who I've liked the most so far, throws me for a loop since her voice actor and appearance is different from DA:O. Also, the whole thing with certain people dying at the beginning is lame. Bioware always has one of your party members die at the beginning of every game (I'm not spoiling this since it is just a fact - every Bioware game makes an unimportant party member die within the first hour of the game), this time I didn't like how they did it >__>.

I didn't like DA:O nearly as much as Bioware's other games, in fact I think it is the weakest entry of all their RPGs, but I still enjoy the franchise (It says something about a company when their weakest game is still better than most games out there). DA2 is a better game than DA:O, and while there is a bunch of little things that changed that I don't like, there are many more changes for the better that I enjoy.

Now, give me some FREE DLC like you did in ME2 and we'll be golden.

/rant

There. Beat it. The whole ending battle and the sequences that followed it were much more satisfying than Dragon Age: Origins, and they clearly intend to make a sequel. They left the ending with a question, but one vague enough that if a sequel doesn't get made it doesn't completely undermine everything they have accomplished thus far.

Overall, I completely disagree with the majority of the gaming community who thinks the narrative was weaker than Origins. It was significantly better, but as I said before that is due a lot in part because of the political, racial and religious intrigue in the story. Some gamers simply don't enjoy that in their games. I do, and I applaud the sequel for doing it to a more-or-less effective manner. It was even enough to alleviate much of the disdain I had for the linearity and "small world" of the game. They still could have done more to make what small parts of the game that did exist, much more diverse and lively, but for such a short development time they did great. I'd like to see another gaming developer manage to make a game as good as Dragon Age II in such a small window of development time.

Isn't there an option for this in the menu? In the demo I had default auto-attack.

BioWare announced that they are releasing a patch that'll fix the Auto-Attack option. It was suppose to be an option in the game from the get-go but since the release date was forced on BioWare and apparently the had some problem with it on Xbox.

I've been reading a lot of things by people who say they absolutely hate this game and I just don't get it. Oh well.

Just beat it.
Gameplay is fresh and great, story had some good tension and unexpected turns BUT IN THE END it doesn't even ma-a-atte-e-er I'M 14 AND WHAT IS THIS?
Oh God, that ending is so WTF, that my WTF meter is broken beyond repair.

All I have to say is one thing. Enchantment

I liked his DA:Origins "Enchantment!" intonation better.