Rahnzan said:
I'm writing a negative review about a game that critics would risk losing their jobs over by offending fans and game companies if they didn't write something positive? You want a smiley happy review that gives you exactly what bioware wants you to hear, go read a review by one of them. I have no game company, I carry no one's flag but my own, and I can find flaws in anything. Wat bothers me is when a game makes finding those flaws too easy. The masses are happy with whatever a company spits out as long as that company is big and famous. It's blind consumerism, which destroys quality control. Without that control companies can just push out any mess of polygons and make a profit on it. This ensuring that people like me who don't get caught up in paid off reviews that wouldn't be out of place on a commercial showcasing the latest "blockbuster" romantic comedy that hasn't even made it to the theatres yet will never get a game we can actually enjoy. There's a lot of us, but not enough that we can impact the market..
Wow, is that a chip on your shoulder or the whole potato? I'm gonna go with the potato.
I'm normally of the opinion that there's no "wrong" way to play a game, but it seems you've managed it. You should not just be smashing enemies in the face, dropping damage spells and sneaking rouges round the back (despite you stating that you didn't play rogues). Dragon Age clearly owes just as much to MMORPG combat as it does to Baldur's Gate. It's not about hitting things, it's about manipulating them. Draw damage to your tank, use crowd control, lock-down key targets etc. Yes, the combat and depth of the levelling system is biased significantly towards mages, followed by rogues, with warriors trailing far behind. But that's part of the problem with classes, there's only so many special abilities you can add to a warrior before it becomes just a mage that cuts people up.
I'm also impressed how you managed to focus entirely on the shield skills (Hint:They're friggin shield skills, they aren't supposed to be varied) and ignored every single other skill available to warriors. Oh, and skill interactions, probably the most vital part of combat, you missed that to. Most require a mage or two to set up (I said it was biased) but the warriors and rogues are essential to finish them off. The whole concept of shattering completely upends normal combat. At no point should you be standing just clubbing an enemy unless the rest of his mates are dead and your skills are in cool-down. Freeze + Shield Bash, use Glyphs to paralyse people and set them up for sweeping blows. Your ability to kill enemies has absolutely nothing to do with straight up DPS. Yes, DPS-wise my rouge will always be behind a Hurlock, but with smart use of paralysis runes, buffs and backstabs I can mince the bastards. And I refuse to beleive you have the game on a sensible difficulty setting if you can drop a dragon with 2 AoE spells (even with Storm of the Century, one of the comboes you neglected)Which dragon was it?
Finally: You missed the point of the dwarves and elves. Entirely. Dragon Age markets itself as a "dark fantasy" and that's what they've done. Yes, it's based heavily in Tolkein, that's the point, it's mocking him. Every single stupid cliched fantasy trope is here not in full glory, but smashed in the face, dragged through the mud and served up bleeding and broken. It's like Watchmen, but not quite so nuanced.
Or did you not notice how the Chantry is almost exactly an inversion of christianity? How the Elves are the shattered remnants of a powerful once immortal race? How the typical artisan-dwarf culture is warped into a perverse caste system? You criticise them for being based off human cultures, tell me, what OTHER cultures are available for BioWare to base them off?
Sure, criticise the dodgy animations, the lack of face variety that plagues all RPGs (I made Leilana on my first playthrough. Almost exactly her), criticise the iffy textures and generic hordes of mordor enemies. But don't complain about the things the game actually does RIGHT. I challenge you to find a game with more variety in background NPCs than DragonAge.
