Side track from the normal conversation today, because I recently finished Dragon Age: 2. As a fan of Dragon Age 1, the spiritual successor of some of my other more favorite games (original Baldur's Gate, etc), I feel compelled to comment on this "sequel". When comparing Dragon Age 2, to Dragon Age, Dragon Age Origins:
Dragon Age 2 has a:
Very linear storyline. You are given many false options, and the hostile actions of NPCs often/always force a similar outcome despite your approach.
Almost insane map duplication. I must have run through the same 3-4 dungeon maps 5-8 times each.
Lack of choice for map exploration. Normally, you might have a map with many side passages, or several ways to get to the same place, and you could choose to clear them both out, or just one, or engage enemies, and exploration into the side branches would often yield bonus loot. In Dragon Age 2, you are forced to do this exploration via unopenable doors, or semi-keys. I often went what I presumed to be the side way (treasure sense activated), only to later find out on retracing my steps that the side way was the only way, because there was no door the main way.
I would presume that two charachters who went through a particular map/quest/dungeon would have 95% or higher duplication in experience and loot acquired/map explored.
Some graphical glitches. One of the early quests had me talking to a floating head, because the rest of his body didn't render. Some of the cut scenes seem to be missing a piece of furnature, and so on.
Low replay value. On one run through of the game, I earned something like 80-90% of the achievements. Dragon Age 1 had some serious replayability for the achievement-junkie, Dragon Age 1 has almost none. This is reinforced by the linear storyline, there are so few choices to make, that you are not able to get an achievement for taking a different story branch, unlike the many instances of this in DA1.
In DA1, there were something like 6 unique independant storylines to start with, that had a good 10 or so hours of playtime in them, and gave you insights into what happens before the quests you run into in the main storyline. Seeing Arl Howe come over for dinner in the Human Noble storyline (my second playthrough) after what happened in my original playthrough was spooky. The biggest (only) difference in DA2 is whether your melee dpser or mage suicides themselves before one of the harder fights in the game (first ogre). That first ogre fight comes pretty darn quick too, perhaps 30 minutes into the game, vs 5-15 hours in DA1?.
Webbed talent trees. This is not a problem in general. DA1 had 4 rows of 4 linear talents per talent block, most often restricted by a stat prereq. (and taking the previous talents in the row) DA2 has a web instead of 4 lines
What makes this bad is that virtually every talent has a prereq of taking some number of other talents in that web, along with level (and potentially stat) requirements. This puts you in a position of being forced into spending your points in a certain way just to unlock a talent/upgrade that only has one apparent prereq. A majority of the talent points are also "upgrades" to existing talents. So your heal does 80% instead of 40%, as an upgrade (with high level and/or points-in-tree prereqs). In one case, an upgrade to a talent I took spending two points in the tree required me to spend 6(!) points in that tree. I didn't do that.
Minions have restricted gearing options. In DA1, your NPC companions had full armor capabilities, so if you found your juggernaut plate armor, you slapped it on your tank (once they met the stat reqs), and you were good to go. In DA2, the main charachter is the only one that can equip hats, boots, chests, and gloves. The minions can wear the standard jewelry (2x ring, amulet, belt), and weapons (though, in the case of Varric, you cannot upgrade his weapon). This means that roughly 50% of the gear you recieve is 100% unusable. Minions do recieve stock minion-only armor upgrades, that you find doing their quests, but you often have no idea that you have recieved such an item, or where to get it.
Items do not have descriptive names. In Diablo 2, for example, all the gear was "Prefix Item of the Suffix". If you knew, or payed attention to what those suffixes were, you had a reasonable idea of whether the item was going to be worth using just from the name. In WoW, you have a color on the items, which indicates the rough usefulness of the item. In DA2, everything is a "Belt" or "Ornate Belt", which only reveals its stats to you once you hover over it. When you have 15 "Belt"s in your inventory list, which you cannot even necessarily see at the same time, it is quite difficult to determine whether any of them are worth equipping.
To their credit, they do have a "Star" system, that roughly compares items to the charachter you happen to be looking at at the time (but not any other charachter). Unfortunately, the rating system of the stars seems to be mostly based on a random number generator. I had the item system rate a belt I was not wearing at 5 stars, when it had less of every stat than the belt I was wearing at the time. (+2 mana regen, +10 health, vs just +2 mana regen -> lose 10 health to get 5 stars?). It was a sliding scale, which was good design, but it rated the items in a undeterminable manner, which is not good design.
Items in general feel pretty bad.
Heals are on a (very) long cooldown. I don't generally object to design restrictions, but I'd prefer to be mana limited than time-limited, since mana is a resource I can control, whereas time is controlled almost solely by the difficulty of the encounter. I also don't mind having some powerful abilities on longer cooldowns, with less powerful abilities being "chain castable", but there are none of those less powerful abilities, only the powerful ones on long cooldowns. (as if a 40% heal on a 40 second cooldown is powerful...)
To amplify this problem, not all mage NPCs can even cast a heal. You also lose your mage companion (if you are a mage) before what is potentially the most difficult fight in the game for a long time (first ogre). (oops, spoilers?).
A consequence of this time-limitation is that mana is worth almost nothing. As is mana regeneration, since you can't physically spend your mana fast enough to run out. In the final fight (spoilers!) my sole healer was 100% mana drained every 60 seconds or so in a 10-15 minute slogfest, and I only noticed that I was being mana drained about 8 minutes in. (and took no action to prevent future mana drains - which appear unavoidable anyway)
Staff DPS is laughable. In DA1, I was quite successful using a 2 healer + dps + tank strategy, because the mobs hit very hard, and being able to cross-mana-regen (could not cast mana regen on self) was quite good on the long fights, where you had to be chain-healing a tank. My main healer+ccer did something like 20% of the party damage from just wanding. In DA2, they don't provide this statistic, but I would imagine my DPSer (when I was doing 2h-1d-1t) was doing something like 50-70% of the party damage. In DA2, do not try to use two healers, it is a recipe for being overwhelmed.
CC is not nearly as useful/varried. I took sleep, and it was near-100% useless. It doesn't last very long, and is almost instantly broken with all the aoe going off. I suppose I could have edited the tactics to prevent my allies from using AOEs, but then I would have been overwhelmed by the opposition. DA1 had some powerful CC (AOE stun, large AOE sleep, Fear, etc). DA1 has horror as pretty much the only viable CC. OTOH, mobs have a pretty trivial time CCing your party members, though the various AOE knockdowns, or just knockback on attacking you, putting you in a semi-stunlock where you cannot act with that charachter. Normally, this is a time where having two healers (with cc?) is ideal, but it's not effective/possible in DA2.
Hover text is largely missing where it's most useful(Tactics Screen). This was also a problem in DA1 if i recall, but it was not fixed in DA2.
Holding off leveling up is quite difficult. Sometimes I would leave a charachter with stat points floating, because they weren't terribly relevant except for increasing health and meeting requirements on armor/weapons, but in DA2, it seems to want to lauch you into the level up menu for 90% of clicks on a charachter portrait.
Front/Back menu navigation is not handled particularly well. Each charachter has 6-8 talent webs, to see the details on any of them, you have to "zoom in" to one of them. this makes comparing across webs quite frustrating (have to click on "back" in one area of the screen).
The menu system hides your achievements quite well, and the "flag" for marking an item as new goes away on the slightest mouseover. This means that it becomes hard to identify which belt is the new belt, if you want to compare it to 4 different charachters.
Every encounter is a wave encounter. You engage the 4-10 guys they start with, then at some undetermined time later (either time or progress on 4-10 guys based?) you get another 4-10 guys, who often show up in the middle of where your extremely fragile ranged guys are standing. Then you get another 4-10 guys, and often another 4-10 guys after that. I can't think of a single fight in the game where this was not the pattern. I mean, sometimes it was 25 guys instead of 10, or sometimes they were all "elite" or half-"elite" (it would take perhaps 40 seconds for my healer mage to staff-down a single normal mob)
Why not just aoe them you say? AOE seemed to be just strong enough to get your AOEr killed, without easily dealing with the waves. A standard aoe on a long cooldown would potentially do 10% damage to a normal mob. If I played again, I might experiment more with this strategy in mind.
For reference, one charachter has a optional static aoe power of 7-14 damage every 4 seconds. My staff swing (which takes 10 seconds to kill a 1/4 health (weak) mob, or 40 seconds to kill a normal mob) does something like 60 DPS. Good luck not getting killed!
For some fights, the only way to beat the wave encounter mechanic on high difficulties was to kite the starting monsters far away from the starting location, and the reinforcements would stand around looking stupid at their spawn-in location. To give you an idea of how necessary this was for 1-3 fights in the game, I kited away the starting boss + 4 ranged nukers/vanishing/ambushing rogues, and STILL died to just the reinforcements when I ran back to deal with them.
The fighter/tanks seem to get a auto-counterattack power, which probably accounted for 20% of the damage done by the party.
Mobs were trivially kited.
Without any movement enhansing or debilitating effects, I often kited melee mobs just by running their target away.
In the solo fight against the Arishok (spoilers, but you've seen the trailer...), it was 20-50 minute kite for my healer mage against a overpowering melee monster with infinite health and near-infinite health potions.
The quest system feels detached, you don't feel connected to the story. I often went into a quest "?" having no idea which quest I was actually working on. I'd have to figure out from what they said what the heck was going on. You'd often have 4-8 quests in a zone, and have no idea which one you were wandering into.
Acts randomly end, leaving you stranded without the ability to find certain items (which are only available in certain acts). This varies from act to act, but I went into act 3 without being able to get one of my party members back, which caused me to be short a guy (gal) for the rest of the game.
Item sets feel pathetic. The Juggernaut plate armor from DA1 was epic to get, and felt epic once you got it. The act 2 armor can't even be completed in act 2, and has stats indistinguishable from other items. The set bonus for the act 1 armor? +1 to a stat, and +10-20 mana? The set bonus for the act 3 armor? +2 to a stat, and +15-30 mana? Meh. Meh I say.
Party friendly AOE is prevalent. Often, you would be told to blow something up, and because you did the blowing up, your melee guy standing next to the explosion would be unharmed. I liked the limitation of power of the DA1 party non-friendly aoes for some effects. (notably Fireball - but in DA2 fireball seems pretty bad) I do recall one (1) fight in the deep roads where the aoe actually did hit the party, and did trivial mob damage. (we were told to blow them up to kill the mobs, gee thanks)
Linking of notifications is only weakly tied to the ability to find out more about that notification. For example, when you recieve an item, if you click on that notification on the main screen, it takes you to whatever inventory tab you last visited, which often (75%) does not contain the item you recieved. When the item you recieve is "Belt", it's even better. Codecs and quest linking is similarly vague. I often had little to no idea what quest I had just finished, or what item I recieved.
Many dialog options do not indicate the consequences of that option. The most aggredious offender for this is the option to give money to people. One time, I gave 30 silver (0.3 gold), another I gave 5 gold (out of the 30 gold I had at the time). In DA1 you chose how much to give, from 3-5 options, so you could know what you were getting yourself into.
Necessity of saving frequently. Because rogue mobs can one-shot a non-tank from a repeatable ambush ability they use every 20 seconds or so, and there are some fights with 4 "normal" (aka not weak) rogue mobs, and some blood mages have an ability that near-instantly kills all non-tanks in your party, and some tank mobs knockback your healer into a corner (with no response possible) and continue to knockback them to death, saving frequently is a must. I had over 800 saves near the end of the game.
This is compounded by everything being a wave encounter. You get near the end of what you think the fight is, and go in passive mode, looting, autoshotting or whatever, and a blood mage you didn't see because they spawned in behind you has been casting a spell that kills 3/4 of the party, or 2 rogue mobs and 3 archers show up, and 2-3 people die.
Getting three of your party members perma-knockbacked by a blood mage's aoe until they die is pretty non-fun. All you could do was throw a stun (Horror) at them and hope you burned them down before they got to act, or the omnipresent waves of guys overwhelmed your dpsers/healers.
Nothing felt very epic.
The fade sub-quest in the circle tower in DA1 felt absolutely amazing. Nothing got remotely close to that in DA2. It was just another run through the same map, with new ways being blocked off to force you into a slightly different 100% linear path.
The false choices or everpresent must-attack-me's of the NPCs also didn't help this.
Loot seemed to appear and dissapear (on the map) over time.
Since you spend so much of your time going through the same zones, you notice that things appear or go away in the same act, in the same time of day. You have to be pretty vigilent or you'll miss the loot you might be walking by, and then it is gone forever.
Loot was relatively hard to loot. There was no auto-loot, you had to click on "Loot All". I didn't determine how to loot anything without clicking "Loot All" over the course of playing through the game once. The loot display screen also only showed three items (One of which was always gold). I presumed this meant that you only ever got two items, but instead, you had to mousewheel the menu to see the other items you got, if you got any more than that. Otherwise, you are reliant on the flag system in your inventory to determine what the heck you should look at.
Locked chests were prevalent, and to open them, you had to take control of your rogue charachter. Why couldn't the rogue auto-open it, who knows.
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Props:
Presumably, they give you some tie-in to your experience in DA1, and you can move charachters over.
You did get to see some callbacks to DA1 charachters, and actions your previous charachter took.
Varric is awesome. (but at the end, appears to be leaning on a table that isn't there) Varric is probably the best part of the entire game, to be honest. The cut scene going into Bartrand's Estate is hilarious.
"Hard" difficulty was hard. It was too hard for 1-4 fights in the game for me. (Initial Ogre, nothing from the deep roads on, may be a early charachter problem). I did not try nightmare difficulty. (replayability = 0?)
You did get "letters" at your home base, from the people you saved, but often you had no idea who they were, or what they were talking about. Perhaps if I paid more attention, or took notes, it would have been less confusing. It was a nice feature.
DA2 is a different tactical challenge, and I do enjoy different tactical challenges, since this type of wave encounter was less seen in DA1, and heals are certainly less chain-able, which forces you to react differently. Unfortunately, you are reacting in a near-identical manner across all combats in the game, which counteracts what would otherwise be a strong point.
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Dragon Age 1 was one of the funner games I've played. It extended the grand tradition of the Baldur's Gate series, and took it to a new level. It had alot of versitility, was fairly easy to understand, and multiple viable strategies. And multiple storylines! What you did had an impact on the flow of the game, in more than just the end credits.
Dragon Age 2 is a pale shadow in comparison. It presents what feels like false options throughout the game. Many of the fights feel the same, you keep wandering through the same zones, etc.
Reviews for DA2 have not fallen off strongly from DA1, so perhaps my views here are not the mainstream. And obviously, if you enjoy the things I list as "negatives" for DA2, your conclusions will be the opposite of mine. Some people like linear gameplay, or being faux evil. Either way, you'll have information from reading this that should be relevant to your decision to purchase this game.
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