For me it's that DA:O was close to a modern Baldur's Gate. Da2 was just Mass Effect with elves.Frozengale said:
Dragon Age : Origins and Dragon Age II
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what difficulty did you play da2 on?HalloHerrNoob said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiKeAW_Z_ao
The tougher enemies normally don't add anything noteworthy to the gameplay beyond gigantic health bars which simply take forever to deplete, and fighting a single enemy - often supported by annoying low-level critters appearing in waves at predictable intervals - is usually far less complex and interesting than dealing with a couple of different mid-level foes (such as, for example, the dreaded Revenant/Arcane Horror/Skeleton Archer combo).
Another not entirely successful aspect of the combat is the frequent spawning of new enemies during on-going battles. In principle I like the idea of shaking things up a bit and making sure the player can never know exactly how many foes he or she will have to defeat before the battle is over. This is especially important in a series like Dragon Age in which health and mana regenerates after each combat scenario is finished. The spawn system in DA2 is unfortunately a bit predictable and too easily avoided, since it's almost always possible to simply leave the room with the spawn point, lure the first wave of enemies away from the room in question and later return to finish off the remaining, recently spawned enemies.
Finally, one of the most surprising combat changes from DA:O is the removal of friendly fire even on Hard difficulty (it's available on Nightmare difficulty, but most will never play the game on that difficulty). It's basically a bland combo between mmo combat, and action rpg that never hits its stride while also trading depth with pillar-kiting higher hp mobs.
The reason I wasn't a fan was because the biggest thing that I liked about Origins (the combat) was completely changed for a more action style. I liked the strategy of manipulating all my characters, switching up ai to suit my needs, and all of that. I tried DA2 for several hours, and just.. didn't like it very much. I also liked the race class selection of origins, and that was taken away. They didn't need to give the main character a voice, but I feel they did it to make it feel more like mass effect: dragon age edition, and I didn't like that. I feel, origins was different from what they had done, and 2 just made it feel too much like mass effect to me.
Mass Effect was the golden child of the Bioware family that got all the attention and praise, that made its parents proud. Dragon Age was the lesser child, that the parents only paid attention to once the golden child was satisfied. While Mass Effect got to eat the big kids table, Dragon Age was fed the scraps and it showed. Despite DA2 coming out in between ME2 and 3, the difference in quality is staggering. In all of ME series you travel to vast varied landscapes and cross the whole damn universe, in DA you get a town and some bare fields.
I played through multiple playthroughs in both ME2 and 3. I played DA1 for 2 days before trading it and DA2 for a week.
I played through multiple playthroughs in both ME2 and 3. I played DA1 for 2 days before trading it and DA2 for a week.
For starters, the combat is more flashy, but it's not more polished by any means. There are some unique things you can do in terms of move combinations, but when, even on nightmare difficulty, you can win by just pausing and moving at the right times while your main jumps around and whacks people upside the head, with little to no strategy behind it, it very quickly becomes a boring test of patience more than an exciting test of skills. Origins required careful positioning of your party, setting up choke points and traps, with ranged and melee characters working together. DA2 didn't have any of that because it didn't matter where you positioned your party, you'd always have swarms of enemies raining from the sky on you. Every fight quickly devolved into a mosh pit of spells and fighting that relied more on how often you could pause and issue orders than if you could keep tanks in front, mages in back, supports doing their supporty things, select the right targets first and win the battle through strategy. They added fancy visuals but neglected to account for the depth of Origins' combat. Origins may have been boring to watch, but it was much more enjoyable to actually perform.Frozengale said:
The characters were the same way. With the exception of Varric and Aveline, both of who were well thought out and actually changed throughout the seven years the game takes place in, the rest of the cast all stagnated and fell short when compared to the companions in Origins. Over the course of the quest in Origins you learn a ton about all your companions, and their personalities change depending on what you did and how you did it. They had back stories that were important to their characters, they had their own motivations and guidelines, they disagreed with eachother and had their own conflicts, and so on. Even the romances had so much more depth other than "flirt with me and I'll be your sex slave!"
Look at Marrill, since you said you liked her the most. Try to describe her; she's a naive elf blood mage, and her character doesn't evolve from that at all throughout the game. We don't learn more about her, she doesn't ever decide "oh, I'm an idiot! I shouldn't be doing this!" or even go "No, fuck you hawke, I'm saving my people in the way I see fit, and you can either follow me or get the hell out of my way." She's constantly "Oh, I'm doing this for my people, but I'm so cute that I have no idea what I'm doing! Protect me!" She serves very little purpose other than as a cute love interest for Hawke, and even after she fails in her task she doesn't change as a character. She's the epitome of stagnation in a character, and is instantly recognizable as the stereotypical naive-yet-powerful girl from any anime ever.
The rest of the characters aren't much better; Anders is a gay mage with a secret, Bethany is a mage and your sister, Sebastian is a religious Welsh prince with a bow, Isabela is a slutty pirate. With that information you can guess 90% of all of their character personality and development throughout the game. The specifics might elude you, but there wasn't a single decision or quote made by any of those characters that surprised me or showed that they had changed in any way from when you first met them. Over seven years, with gaps in between, that's just bad writing. Aveline and Varric are the only two who manage to surprise me at any time, and that's because they have significant motivations other than "oh, Hawke did this to me! I love/hate him more/less for it!" Their lives become centered and dictated by you and only you. Again, bad writing.
The worst of it, however, was the romances. I flirted with all of the ladies, and even occasionally with the guys, on my first run. Know what happened? At various points I had slept with Isabela, then Marrill, had the opportunity to sleep with Fenris, and had all of them switching between "I'm happy for your relationship with ____" and "Oh, I love you so much!" Never once did I get the "I can't be with you, you're with ___" treatment, which completely broke my immersion. Either I had just won the harem-simulator or the game was broken, and I went with the latter.
While I'll agree with you that the base plot was more compelling, the way they pulled it off was a prime example of good intentions with bad execution. Other people have already explained most of the issues, so I won't delve too far into that, but there were a lot of them and they were obvious. Also, the hats didn't matter so much in Origins because you could choose ones that looked good instead of being stuck with the ones the characters were given.
In the end, they favored simplicity instead of depth across the board, and that hurt the immensely. Add that onto an obviously rushed game (seriously, the repeated environments were unforgivable in my eyes. It was the most ridiculous example of corner-cutting that I had seen in a long, long time.) and the end result is a mediocre product that very few people liked and more people disliked immensely.
I very much enjoyed the game, but I can see why so many hated it. If you went in expecting a 'true' sequel to Origins, you're going to be very upset. Copy-pasted dungeons. Never really explore anywhere new. Story's pacing could be a lot better. Originally had to hit the attack button for every attack--very bad if you're playing as a Rogue with speed as your skill. Characters come off as a bit whiny.
But I liked it. I'm in the series for the story, and I found the story in Dragon Age II to be interesting. Not so much the main story, but the background story. The stuff that, if Hawke and company weren't busy running for their lives/trying to save their own skins, would cause them to stop and go, "Oh no, that can't be good."
But I liked it. I'm in the series for the story, and I found the story in Dragon Age II to be interesting. Not so much the main story, but the background story. The stuff that, if Hawke and company weren't busy running for their lives/trying to save their own skins, would cause them to stop and go, "Oh no, that can't be good."
Dragon Age: Origins was a work of art. It was made with love and dedication of it's creators. Dragon Age 2 was a quick cash-in on the success of it's predecessor. Everything about it is underwhelming. It's like Mass Effect 3 in a way. Rushed into a disaster.
I can't let your statements slide either. Anything but tactical? So positioning is the only thing that matters for a game to be tactical? And how is having to reposition your allies not part of tactical considerations for a battle? Dealing with friendly fire? Resistances? Cross-class combos? Silencing enemy mages? Enemies that need to be killed ASAP or they'll ruin your party? Do none of these things have anything to do with tactical party-based combat?j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
Whether you like the combat or not is besides the point, but calling it "anything but tactical" doesn't sit right with me. Getting through the battles, at least on nightmare, requires use of tactics and can't just be bruteforced through.
I'd hardly call asking for opinions on a forum a trap.Orc Town Grot said:
Okay I can agree with this a bit. While I still think DA2 has a better story I do think that it did fail to follow through from Act to Act. Each felt like it's own story that was building up to something but never really paid off in the end.
My major problem is the fact that so many people hold Origins on some sort of pedestal while kicking DA2 to the ground when both have so many problems in similar fashion. Even you prefer Origins over DA2.
Whenever I play a game I judge it on it's overall experience however. And I feel DA2 is much more cohesive then DA:O in this regard. It may be muddled but I feel like everything from combat, to dialogue, to characters makes a better whole. DA:O offers more but it all feels much more shallow and silly. Then again if DA:O and Awakenings didn't offer so much in way of background and world building I probably wouldn't have enjoyed DA2 as much.
I think both are great games. Both have many flaws. But it boggles my mind why one is considered to be so great and the other is kicked to the ground.
People hate DA 2 because reasons, that's pretty much it. I'll be the first to admit that it has its fair share of issues, but it doesn't deserve the monstrous amount of hate that it gets.
One thing that tend to be overlooked when people are discussing (or ranting about) Dragon Age is which version you played. Origins and Awakening were far worse on consoles than on PC, because it lacked the tactical overview that made the slow combat work DAO and DAA. The combat was slow because the game was built around managing your partys spells and abilities and knowing exactly where your followers stood, since friendly fire needed to be considered with the mages AoEs.
DA2 on the other hand removed friendly fire and made the combat faster, more responsive and slightly more over the top, much like a hack-n-slash. The console version also had the option to turn of auto-attack so that the player would have even more control of the characters attacks and feel more like the solider on the battlefield rather then the commander giving orders from sidelines. However the PC version didn't have (to my knowledge)this option, which made the game feel like a MMO without any other players. And since the tactical view was removed from the PC version as well the combat felt mindless and boring.
What I want to say is that when your talking about the combat in the DA-series, would you please provide some context and say if you played it on console or PC? That would avoid some misunderstandings.
DA2 on the other hand removed friendly fire and made the combat faster, more responsive and slightly more over the top, much like a hack-n-slash. The console version also had the option to turn of auto-attack so that the player would have even more control of the characters attacks and feel more like the solider on the battlefield rather then the commander giving orders from sidelines. However the PC version didn't have (to my knowledge)this option, which made the game feel like a MMO without any other players. And since the tactical view was removed from the PC version as well the combat felt mindless and boring.
What I want to say is that when your talking about the combat in the DA-series, would you please provide some context and say if you played it on console or PC? That would avoid some misunderstandings.
I've noticed that the most common way to attack DA2 is to compare it to DA:O.Milk said:
Let me tell you a little secret - humans cant deal with absolutes. everything they perceive and judge is relative to what they have encountered before that point.
OT: I enjoyed DA2. It was different than DA:O. Both games had its problems.
Why the hate? Because for all the cries of "I want something new and innovative!" Most people want the same thing over and over again.
They just need something to complain about.