One thing I never understood was the MASSIVE hate for Dragon Age 2. The first time I played through the game I felt it was mediocre, the recycling of stages was pretty lame and the change to the Quani physically was rather jarring, same with Flemith and most of the returning characters,the flow of combat was changed significantly and you could now dodge attacks by dodging the animation but tactics either remained the same or close enough to where you could figure it out with retaliative ease. These changes were numerous, but most were purely ascetic, well done, and had little impact on the game as a whole.
The Qunari looked like a distinct race now, instead of looking like a pale J.J. Watt, Isabella was now attractive enough to be seductive(a trait integral to her character),Flemith no longer looked like a crazy old hermit-witch and now looked like a powerful sorceress which makes scene considering how she is a powerful sorceress and now that darkspawn have pushed as far north as they had she had no reason to keep a low profile. Overall, the game was very visually pleasing, the environments looked very stylized and polished, all the particle effects and battle animations were really elaborate and cool especially the spells and stave's.
You couldn't equip allies with armor anymore but weapons and accessories were still fair game. In lieu of equipable armor, allies had unique armor, which could be upgraded thru hunting down upgrades from merchants or doing side quests. Hawke, however, still had a plethora of arms and armor to choose from, and runes are still around so you can still upgrade the good stuff.
Combat received the biggest change and even then, it was mostly visual. You still had a squad of 4 people and the bare-bones combo system (I.E. Winter's Grasp/Cone of cold + Power attack) was greatly expanded upon and rewarded the player for strategizing beforehand, at the level up screen and the party select screen. Some enemies used stealth now, and they are capable of dealing massive damage to your party, unless you manage to damage them while they are invisible(usually accomplished with a fireball or cone of cold right after they stealth). The largest difference was that you could dodge attacks as a player. Not auto attacks (unless you just kinda ran around or something) but big attacks like a dragon's fire ball or an ogre's rock throw thing. Injury's now only take away HP, which, in my opinion, is a steeper penalty than before (oh no, Morrigan's attack speed has been reduced slightly, whatever shall I do)
Stats are almost exactly the same and spells/skills were expanded on. Now, Spells/skills had levels to them and the trees had paths. So now you had more options when leveling up a character and it required a lot more thinking and planning to decide on which ability to take.
Anders and Fenris were pretty dull as characters, I'll give you that, but the rest of your party had great character depth. Merrill was determined to help her clan by any means necessary, even though those means lead to her becoming ostracized by her own people. Aveline is driven by her scene of honor and joins quite possibly one of the most corrupt city guards in a game and then proceeds to fight,sometimes literally, against the sea of corruption she finds herself in. Isabella spends the whole game trying to decide whether to stick to her easy come easy go loyalty policy or to actually trust in or care for someone and your actions decide the result, and she does this without being whiny about it and wearing it on her sleeve. Normally she just acts like a slutty pirate, but if you develop a relationship with her, she will occasionally drop the facade, allowing you to see past the front. Carver suffers badly from "little brother syndrome" and feels like he's just living in Hawke's shadow, he struggles every step of the way to find his own place in life. Bethany feels strong ties to her family and heritage and deeply wants to reclaim her birthright while keeping her family together. I literally cannot summarize Varric without taking two whole paragraphs. Its good, trust me.
Like I said though, after my first play thru, I felt that the game was extremely mediocre and was honestly dissapointed. But then my roommate suggested that I play the game on Nightmare difficulty. It seemed like an odd remedy at first, but I tried it just to humor him. Holy crap was he right.
Nightmare turns DA2's combat from a dull diversion into a crazy high octane strategy game. All of a sudden positioning, kiting, and map lay out are extremely important. Now, if you leave your teammates on tactics they'll just kill half your team with friendly fire or waste a critical ability at a stupid time,so you gotta turn those off and pause to give orders A LOT. Now, the fact that attacks hit based on the animation is SUPER important and adds tons of strategic value to any move that affects the position of either you or the enemy (whether that be via knock back,leap, slow, stun..etc). Cross class combos are now VITAL and you have to really think at each level up and each time you choose your party.
TL;DR If you didn't like DA2, try it on nightmare. I'm seriously you guys.
Edit: I'm not trying to imply the game is perfect, it's not. I'm just saying I don't understand why people hate it SO MUCH. I just don't understand how it is "an abortion stuffed in a box", so I assembled a list of things I liked about the game to try and support my stance of "pretty good".
The Qunari looked like a distinct race now, instead of looking like a pale J.J. Watt, Isabella was now attractive enough to be seductive(a trait integral to her character),Flemith no longer looked like a crazy old hermit-witch and now looked like a powerful sorceress which makes scene considering how she is a powerful sorceress and now that darkspawn have pushed as far north as they had she had no reason to keep a low profile. Overall, the game was very visually pleasing, the environments looked very stylized and polished, all the particle effects and battle animations were really elaborate and cool especially the spells and stave's.
You couldn't equip allies with armor anymore but weapons and accessories were still fair game. In lieu of equipable armor, allies had unique armor, which could be upgraded thru hunting down upgrades from merchants or doing side quests. Hawke, however, still had a plethora of arms and armor to choose from, and runes are still around so you can still upgrade the good stuff.
Combat received the biggest change and even then, it was mostly visual. You still had a squad of 4 people and the bare-bones combo system (I.E. Winter's Grasp/Cone of cold + Power attack) was greatly expanded upon and rewarded the player for strategizing beforehand, at the level up screen and the party select screen. Some enemies used stealth now, and they are capable of dealing massive damage to your party, unless you manage to damage them while they are invisible(usually accomplished with a fireball or cone of cold right after they stealth). The largest difference was that you could dodge attacks as a player. Not auto attacks (unless you just kinda ran around or something) but big attacks like a dragon's fire ball or an ogre's rock throw thing. Injury's now only take away HP, which, in my opinion, is a steeper penalty than before (oh no, Morrigan's attack speed has been reduced slightly, whatever shall I do)
Stats are almost exactly the same and spells/skills were expanded on. Now, Spells/skills had levels to them and the trees had paths. So now you had more options when leveling up a character and it required a lot more thinking and planning to decide on which ability to take.
Anders and Fenris were pretty dull as characters, I'll give you that, but the rest of your party had great character depth. Merrill was determined to help her clan by any means necessary, even though those means lead to her becoming ostracized by her own people. Aveline is driven by her scene of honor and joins quite possibly one of the most corrupt city guards in a game and then proceeds to fight,sometimes literally, against the sea of corruption she finds herself in. Isabella spends the whole game trying to decide whether to stick to her easy come easy go loyalty policy or to actually trust in or care for someone and your actions decide the result, and she does this without being whiny about it and wearing it on her sleeve. Normally she just acts like a slutty pirate, but if you develop a relationship with her, she will occasionally drop the facade, allowing you to see past the front. Carver suffers badly from "little brother syndrome" and feels like he's just living in Hawke's shadow, he struggles every step of the way to find his own place in life. Bethany feels strong ties to her family and heritage and deeply wants to reclaim her birthright while keeping her family together. I literally cannot summarize Varric without taking two whole paragraphs. Its good, trust me.
Like I said though, after my first play thru, I felt that the game was extremely mediocre and was honestly dissapointed. But then my roommate suggested that I play the game on Nightmare difficulty. It seemed like an odd remedy at first, but I tried it just to humor him. Holy crap was he right.
Nightmare turns DA2's combat from a dull diversion into a crazy high octane strategy game. All of a sudden positioning, kiting, and map lay out are extremely important. Now, if you leave your teammates on tactics they'll just kill half your team with friendly fire or waste a critical ability at a stupid time,so you gotta turn those off and pause to give orders A LOT. Now, the fact that attacks hit based on the animation is SUPER important and adds tons of strategic value to any move that affects the position of either you or the enemy (whether that be via knock back,leap, slow, stun..etc). Cross class combos are now VITAL and you have to really think at each level up and each time you choose your party.
TL;DR If you didn't like DA2, try it on nightmare. I'm seriously you guys.
Edit: I'm not trying to imply the game is perfect, it's not. I'm just saying I don't understand why people hate it SO MUCH. I just don't understand how it is "an abortion stuffed in a box", so I assembled a list of things I liked about the game to try and support my stance of "pretty good".
