Poll: Dragon Age 3D (Dismal Dragon Disappointment ?) *may contain spoilers*

[theevilsanta]

I'm almost done with my first character and about halfway with my second.

LOVED:
1. With the combined four characters of my two and my sig other's two the stories are very distinct.
2. Combat is fun, while remaining just as strategic (or almost as anyway). I play on Hard and am throughly challenged while still feeling badass charging a group of "critter" level characters with my 2h weapon user and eliminating them with two abilities. Also the health pot cooldown adds a welcome level of concern to my weaker companions.
3. Companion characters. Pretty much everything about them (except Sebastian).

DID NOT LOVE:
1. Voiced Hawke. I know I'm in the minority and won't get into details, but it really kills my roleplaying. (Also female Hawke is leagues better - every male Hawke "comical" line is just sand rammed into my ears).
2. Repeated dungeons. If I have to see another Green Goblin mask I think I'm going to kill someone.
3. All the load times.

IN CONCLUSION:
I'm loving it. I wouldn't call it an RPG though. Maybe a Storytelling game with RPG elements. RPGs are things like The Elder Scrolls where you can stab the king for no reason and get massacred hilariously.

 

[theevilsanta]

Loved: The characters,story,fast paced combat,abilities,emo elf, silly blood mage elf Any mention of the warden, Allistor and Anders being in the same room!
nly
Hated: Combat glitches, Anders turning into such a douche, Only one healer,all the elves sound irish for some odd reason

Also, the Dalish elves have Welsh accents. Fereldans (and Kirkwallians) have English. Orlaisians have a French accent. Antivans have an Italian accent. And dwarves have an American accent.

The Dalish having a Welsh accent was completely lifted from JRR tolkien and the Sindarin language he invented (it sounds a lot like Welsh). Not that every western fantasy didn't lift heavily from Tolkien.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

RPGs are things like The Elder Scrolls where you can stab the king for no reason and get massacred hilariously.

I killed the main villain in Oblivion with a fireball while he was mid-monologue... didn't even mean to, just tapping my finger on the mouse while I waited for him to wind it up. I was almost as surprised as he was.

 

[Tochtli]

Behold, a review!

You can see how they first imagined it, a family flees the Blight only to face the prejudice and superstition from an already burdened city attempting to climb out of it's own misery. One event after another piles on top of the ready mess until the very refugees who sweat drops of blood to prove worthy take it upon themselves to decide the impossible.

What this vision lacks is better execution, repetitive combat encounters eat up so much gameplay when the things in between could wield much more depth than the lackluster grind. Instead the bogged down politics and interaction between characters drown as they come and go. Years pass and somehow people lovelove you and nothing's really different other than what's hinted to have happened within the exposition. When the events finally lead up to a finale, it has little weight as the game has to continue to the next act with more exposition no matter what you choose.

Adding further to the filler is the severely broken inventory system. Everything is "Belt" or "Ring" or "Amulet" while they might give very different bonuses. Party members' equipment cannot be changed if they're not moving with you, something this necessary was not implemented even into your home base.

All this might not really be due to "dumbing down" for console players, or because the Mass Effect-series has done so well. What seems to most likely have happened is that the gameplay design was handed over to the ME team, while story was still handled by the DA:O writers. If this is the case, the set development time was way too short for the team to fully grasp the differences between the games and to properly deal with them.

For instance, and as proof, the equipment system in the original Mass Effect wasn't certainly the greatest, though still had the manufacturer's name to help differentiate a piece of equipment from the next. Quickly replaced in ME2 with a simple upgrade system the designers had skipped their practice with inventory management. Social interaction was contained effortlessly within the Normandy, while this time around it had to be spread all over the city introducing further management difficulties to be hastily patched up.

Positives for the final product are the kick-ass spells and moves, a decent bunch of good characters and some moments that are either grand or over the top hilarious.

One last negative; Merril is a massive something, not a letdown but something on an entirely new level of crap. Is she supposed to be Tali? She rips some lines from her and is oh so nervous and ever the most vulnerable girl ever.

Verdict:
Unmemorable, but worth trying.

 

[tzimize]

I've just finished "part one" I guess and

Spoiler

Gotten my noble mansion back

Likes:
Voice Acting: Good, but once again it astounds me that the worst and least interesting voice actor is that of the main character. Why is this so often the case? I'll present my idea at the end of the post.

Overal design: I like the armor and weapon design, but the graphics are not very impressive. They are not bad either, just devoid of wow-factor. Qunaris are cool enough, but mostly because I enjoy their philosophy/lore.

Meh:
Companions. Most of them are pretty uninteresting imo. They killed off the only one I have really enjoyed thus far

Spoiler

my magical sister Bethany ;( BOOO!

Dislikes:
Story: VERY meh-bad thus far. The starting stories of DA:O were so much better, this is more like an embarrasment. The overall story is not very impressive either.

Mileu: BORING! WAY too much reusing of the environments...and Kirkwall...what a dull place. Instancing a city this way does NOT work in my opinion. I dont get the impression its a cohesive place at all. I REALLY dont like it.

Dialogue system: ARGH! WHY?!?! While the dialogue itself is usually decent, and well played the dialogue wheel is an abomination in DA! The reason DA was so interesting to play was the extremely gray area conversation choices! This is COMPLETELY ruined in DAO2. FOR SHAME!
I actually find myself pressing escape to make the conversations go faster, instead of enjoying the voice acting. Thats how little this game engages me. That said, thoroughly enjoyed this feature in Mass Effect. It just killed the interesting parts of DA. Stupid.

The gore: Its completely overdone. While DA:O had some EPIC finishers and fantastic kill animations...DA2 has got...gibbing. In buckets. While it can be cool to chop darkspawn in half with a whirlwind attack+greatsword...gibbing people into meatloaf with a stray arrow is simply...stupid.

All in all, a fail game. I completely disagree with the review score of the escapist so far (But I am not done with the game yet, so my opinion COULD change. I doubt it will though).

My grade so far, grading the game for itself: 6.5/10
My grade so far, grading the game as the sequel to DA:O: 3/10

Its not a very bad game, its simply pretty meh. But as the sequel to one of the most interesting RPGs I've played in a good long while...it is...an abomination. For shame Bioware...For shame If you ruin Mass Effect 3 this way my faith in you will be lost forever.

Luckily I borrowed a copy from a friend to test it, if I paid money for this I would feel SEVERELY ripped off.

About VA: I think the reason the main character is so...dull is because he has to fit a lot of molds. The rest of the characters are "types" and can have a voice that supports this type. The main character has to be able to be "the diplomatic good guy", "the funny rogue" or "the stone cold tough guy"...and ends up being none.

 

[Tochtli]

Enjoyed it thoroughly.

-Stat system. I feel like the lieutenant and bosses perhaps reduce your defense and attack too much compared to normal enemies (100% chance to hit normal enemy, 40% chance to hit boss... what???), but other than that I thought it was well designed.
-Interface. Simple and functional. Inventory system was improved over Origins.

Actually what makes it a better stat system is that an unsuccesful attack is a "glancing blow" which still hits but just deals far less damage. Fortitude sucks since melee rogues miss it unless they sacrifice points to strength or equip the random fortitude trinket. This is why most o' the big bosses have to pause every few moves, to let stabbers stab.

Only added improvement to the inventory system is the storage chest. Otherwise you'd be neck deep in them belts.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I didn't really hate anything, but the whole experience was just so fucking bland.

I liked:
The controls and combat. It felt much more engaging, like I was actually participating in battles instead simply giving orders. The graphics, thankfully, looked a good deal better as well.

I disliked:
The characters. They weren't really bad (except for Anders, I hated him) , but none of them were outstanding either. The only character that was somewhat interesting was Varric, and even he wasn't that great.
The visual design of the game on a whole was extremely lackluster. I get thet Bioware was going for this kind of medievil pre-perspective visuals, but making the main color sceme of a fantasy game grey was a very bad idea.
The story, again, was also very boring. When I play a fantasy game, I expect to battle evil forces that threaten all life on Earth (or whatever fantasy realm I happen to be in) not solve political disputes.

All in all, DA2 felt like Fable. And that's not a compliment.

 

[darth.pixie]

That's...a lot of hates and dislikes. And I share most of them.

I did dislike the characters more than anything else. I made a small chart of what old chars liked

Sten(my best fighter): Liked cookies, swords, paintings, honour, flowers, some jokes, Dog, Shale
Disliked: mages, lack of discipline, the Chantry and chant of light, dawdling, Leliana

Fenris (since he was my main fighter): Liked: er...my killing of mages and slavers, gambling
Disliked: mages and slavers, Tevinter, me eventually and...Anders, maybe. That's about it.

Also, the lack of skills or feats outside combat aka diplomacy, taunt, bluff, tracking..whatever.

 

[Nimcha]

The story, again, was also very boring. When I play a fantasy game, I expect to battle evil forces that threaten all life on Earth (or whatever fantasy realm I happen to be in) not solve political disputes.

I see this complaint a lot. It makes no sense to me, why do people even have such expectations? And why are they disappointed when they aren't met? Do you expect every developer to cater their game specifically to your expectations of a particular genre?

Ugh, gamers are looking more and more like political conservatives, everything that doesn't neatly fit into a pre-determined box can't possibly be entertaining.

 

[Fusioncode9]

Another DA2 topic. Why is it that every time I got on someone is saying that it sucks or saying that is great. You don't to create a new forum every time you want to vent your feeling on this game. There's already like 60 threads saying how its a disappointment. This one will probably get lost in a day or two like all the others.

 

[Liquid Paradox]

Hate: I swear to god, nearly every side quest you complete before the expedition involves mages. You werent kidding about the sheer number of apostates... I was a little discouraged when the first two new party members I received (after the blight intro) were both apostates. (err... not including the smug dwarf with the ultra crossbow) So for the most part, I had my sister, who was an apostate, and anders, who was an apostate as well as a renegade Grey warden, with an annoying blood-mage elf as back-up.

Also... apparently, entire armies of heavily armed bandits roam the streets at night. There are actually more bandits in the city then non-hostile npc's.

 

[Googooguru]

Another DA2 topic. Why is it that every time I got on someone is saying that it sucks or saying that is great. You don't to create a new forum every time you want to vent your feeling on this game. There's already like 60 threads saying how its a disappointment. This one will probably get lost in a day or two like all the others.

Thanks for the Post, this is a forum to discuss what you enjoyed and didnt enjoy about the game and the poll is to get a feel for the communities response to some pretty big changes to a major franchise. sure there are a lot of Topics about DA2 ATM but its due to the various conflicting experiences we are all having.. sure it will die down in the next few days, but for now its a good platform to discuss radical changes in mechanics , fandom and how it shapes a genre and just generally have a good laugh and a general chat and i think thats why we are all here

 

[Googooguru]

The story, again, was also very boring. When I play a fantasy game, I expect to battle evil forces that threaten all life on Earth (or whatever fantasy realm I happen to be in) not solve political disputes.

I see this complaint a lot. It makes no sense to me, why do people even have such expectations? And why are they disappointed when they aren't met? Do you expect every developer to cater their game specifically to your expectations of a particular genre?

Ugh, gamers are looking more and more like political conservatives, everything that doesn't neatly fit into a pre-determined box can't possibly be entertaining.

People will always have predetermined expectations based on the Genre. Should all Fantasy RPGs follow the sweeping "world is on Fire so let save the universe" ideal maybe not. As an example ,If you played an RPG where half way through you break your leg and retire from adventuring and spend the remainder of the game crafting items for NPC adventures, who return and dialogged there adventures to you would you be satisfied? sure it would break the Mold but personally i play Games to be swept up in a grand experience that outshines the day to day repetitiveness of everyday life. Are some Gamers Conservatives... yeah sure.. can they be entertained outside their box.. to that i say most definitely if the execution is good.

Managing Peoples expectations must be a damn tricky part of the development cycle and hats off to all the Hard work that bioware has put into this title.

i suppose if you've been reading a good Author for many years and Suddenly they releas an average book it really stands out due mainly to the exceptional quality of their previous work. its no easy job to consistently improve on excellence lets not forget that

 

[Casual Shinji]

The story, again, was also very boring. When I play a fantasy game, I expect to battle evil forces that threaten all life on Earth (or whatever fantasy realm I happen to be in) not solve political disputes.

I see this complaint a lot. It makes no sense to me, why do people even have such expectations? And why are they disappointed when they aren't met? Do you expect every developer to cater their game specifically to your expectations of a particular genre?

Ugh, gamers are looking more and more like political conservatives, everything that doesn't neatly fit into a pre-determined box can't possibly be entertaining.

If I play a game called Dragon Age, which is home to fantastical creatures like elves, dwarves, demons and dragons, then I except a little bit more than simply carving a name for myself in a city and then quietly vanishing into the night.

Games like this need an overarching plot to drive you forward. I don't mind settling disputes between mages and templars, but only if it's for them to get their act together in order to face the true big baddy. In DA2 there is no central plot whatsoever. There's only three story segments; The Deep Roads, the Qunari conflict, and the mages vs. templars dispute. And after that the game just ends without any sense of conclusion. Not that the game was short, I clocked about 27 hours on it, but all the while I was waiting for the story to begin.

 

[veloper]

It's MEH.
Maybe when really bored and on a Steam sale, is this worth it.

 

[TheHeffla]

Overall good things:
Combat - Kinda kickass actually

Some of the Voice-acting

New qunari design - In the words of Freud: Horns kick ass.

Cudos: for at least daring to break from DA:O, a but failure in execution...prime example: companion armor; nice try but WHATINTHEHELLAREYOUTHINKNINGNOTLETTINGMECHANGEARMORTIHSISANRPG-RAGE

Overall bad things:
Repeating locations - srsly wtf guys?! This is 2011 aka the future, not ok. No excuses, none. Me and my friend wrote a game (a skiing-game where you played a dude who suffered a massive heart-attack and then became a vehicle of the wintery wastes) and it had more locations than DA2.

Endless spawning of henchmen - Ok, I could write my thesis about this...I get the 'take out the leader'-approach but I found combat way to overwhelming on nightmare, and I'm not one to whine.

Kirkwall - Another Thesis that may need writing. Why is this 'city' completely empty? I buy a game to get away from my social isolation and I get this?! +1 ironical value for great justice

Repeating locations - I cannot stress this enough: This is the future. 42 years ago Man went to the moon, therefore I deserve more than 2 caves. Also +$50.00 plays a significant role

No info for items - This is the knife in my scrotum. A few items get mentioned in the Codex but why, oh why, do I not get the satisfaction of reading about the cool stuff I'm wearing? This is an RPG right?


Overall:
No. Dragon Effect was good enough, but not god enough. Someone somewhere has implemented that thing that made ME2 great into DA2; Superfast combat and Overall kickassness, but left out emotion and depth. Actually I think ME2 had more depth than this.
It could be a gutsy move but more likley someone fucked up (Hanlon's Razor).

In essence some serious drawbacks a few mediocre implementations and good combat.

Oh and Flemeth was cool.



...and why is it me against the protagonist in dialogue-mode? Whatever option I press Hawke manages to perverse into something unrecognisable.


EDIT: The storytelling was very much a fresh breeze, well done BW.

 

[Bobbity]

Spoiler: Snip :P

Just Finished Dragon age 2, and feeling a little torn about the experience, so i though i would write about it. Below is a list of What i loved and loathed about the Game. If you have played or are playing this title what are your feelings towards the game?, what was good about your experience with DA? Was it rushed to completion or is it the defining direction into which all RPG's will venture?

anyway enough Banter, here is my long Post



Loved:
*Fully voice acted (including Hawke ,even if he is a bit pompous and has the emotional range of a flounder)
*New combat system (fast and fun like all generic combat experiences should be )
* New combat animations were great really make you feel like battle tested bayonettes deploying your ordinance to the ground (sorry couldnt help myself)
*The framed narrative with Varric was great i mean whats not to love about dwarfs,short beer loving rogues with crosbows that always shoot at groin height, technically that could be a rogue dwarfs special ability: groin shot: knockback / 20X physical damage/ inflicts sterility buff

Liked:
*Overall the companions were interesting and had a good dialogue and banter with each other
*the revised ability trees (easy and straight forward, i like the upgrade options)
* Story while not as Epic as DA:O played out well overall

Disliked:

*Kirkwall is too empty ( judging by the reception at the gates i was expecting it to be full to the rafters with Hakers, Merchants , Citizens, Trade Caravans, Civilians and Refugees) finding an empty city really broke the immersion. The viscount really like his citizens to have a lot of personal space cleary he has never been on a public bus.

* The story didnt gel at several places (anders companion quest didnt seem to come to a conclusion, Several choices which i guessed would have had huge ramifications never panned out, kinda seemes unlikely that everyone just looks the other way at champion mages given the circumstances. must be my mind trick NPC's passive ability)

*Was there a sale of blood magic books in kirkwall seems like you cant swing a cat without hitting an apostate , the templar order in kirkwall is know for two things 1) its fantastic croquet team and 2)its knitting club. finding apostates or even noticing them is not there strong suit.

* I like being human as much as the next guy but not in an RPG, in a fantasy game i like to play as a fantasy character maby a Vaudevillian Quanari with a "to hell with the Qun" attitude and a love of fine whiskey and human bar maids

*Horny Quanari, this is a personal gripe, but by dehumanising the Qunaris Apperance it has Psychologicall seemed to reduces their values to a more simplistic or animalistic understanding of the world. Guess thats also why there were kept caged off in a seperate part of the city like good animals should be

* Too many Rogue companions , i mean honestly is everyone in this city a rogue, who in this city do i bribe to get another tank or could the gaurd do there damn job and arrest all these fracking rogues

* Crafting System: Apparenlty all crafting resources are homeopathic recipes and only contain one part per million so you only need 3 pieces of each for the entire game . whats next scanning the forrest from the tree tops with a magic rod to find resources

* no Arcane Warrior / battlemage why give us an awesome character build in the first game and remove it in the second? sigh

Hated:

*Repitition of Zones and Dungeons (15 hours in noticed i was starting to get zone fatigue, looks like the whole world was built by a condo developer at discount price with a wide choice of identical Dwarf Tuscan Style Mansions and with one generic dungeon (that will be run Forward, Backward and with Spooky lighting and fog included, al a scooby doo, as a matter of fact that could be shaggy in the arcane horror costume)... when you compare Kirkwall to other AAA title citys like Assains creed Brotherhoods Rome it looks dangerously shoddy , unpopulted and under developed)

* Boss fights felt like raids and instances in a MMORPG ie: Hack hack hack, step out of AOE , drink potion heal and hack hack hack. Tank and Spank all the way

note: where were the clevery designed encounters from DA:O ie: the Puzzle challenge with the Demon Cat, Sloth demon who cycled through several forms which challenged your understanding of the game mechanics, ashes of andraste Puzzle etc...

* inability to customize the armor of the companions made the loot system irrelevant and makes for some very smelly companions (why bother with loot once you have the champion armor set you never needed to loot another corpse of open another chest)

*non customised trinkets ie: everything seemed to be named Belt, Ring, Amulet it stripped the game of vital depth. When playing an RPG i want to find items with a sence of history ie: Wardens amulets of vigilance and even generic items like Amulet of the wolf or the blooming rose garter of chastity you know ....whatever.. it increases immmersion in the fantasy. i was incredibly disappointed in this aspect

*rehashed monsters . The developers had an amazing chance in Kirkwal to introduce new Monsters maybe a bound old god or two .out to reclaim there past glory and munch on some souls this is A Tiventer city seeping with ancient rogue magics from the old empire, but instead of exploiting this dragon age 2 lays on more of the same and in most cases less .if any one is looking for me i will be down at the Hanged man putting up missing posters for the Shrieks and Werewolves, drinks are on the golems

Overall : For every Step that Dragon age took forward it took two back with this lateset iteration, some solid Ideas get overshadowed by the recuring feeling that im not playing Dragon age at all and rather another title that was shoehorned into the dragon age mould. The Story,doesnt have the puch to deliver the final sating blow of satisfaction this title desperatly needed to convince the fans that these changes were in their best interests. While Mass effect 2 was in every way a superior game to Mass effect 1 . Dragon age 2 trips over its own grand designs and plays out more as a poor Mass effect 1 clone : with blind templars, sock puppet blood mages with as much magical range as my mum, saucy pirates, horny quanari and groin obsessed dwarfs.

I loved this game, but I do agree with you about certain things. The recycled dungeons got very old, very quickly and the number of blood mages I killed was enough to depopulate several medium sized cities. I appreciate that Varric might be exaggerating, but that really bothered me. As for the boss fights though, I didn't really notice the difference. Arcane Warrior was so hugely OP in the last game that I just tank and spanked everything anyway, and the variety was welcome.

I also found the variety of trinkets and items sadly lacking. The lack of having to choose companion armour was good, to an extent, but it meant that I was always forgetting to upgrade their weapons and trinkets, which was a little annoying. The thing that really gave me the shits though, was the almost complete lack of companion healers. Anders had only two healing spells and one revive, while Merril had nothing at all.

I didn't mind the lack of different races though - I can see how they really wanted to focus the story on Hawke - and the voice acting was an improvement over my silent protagonist, as hard as it may be to admit. That said, the dialogue was a lot more interesting than ME's, and you weren't just presented with a good/neutral/bad palette all the time. I never used the Renegade conversation options in ME, but I find myself using their equivalent a lot in DA2, because they were pragmatic rather than jerky, and actually worked for my character, as well as the good ones.

What else did you talk about? Hm... I have mixed feelings about the Qunari retcon: It's good in the sense that they're unique now - I thought Sten and his Qunari were just a different race of humans until halfway through the first game - but now they really feel like savages, when essentially, they're not.

I loved the companion banter and talking to everyone, but Mass Effect's problem of having everyone hit on you was present. I took some serious relationship hits with Merril and Anders because I didn't want to get into bed with either of them. That said, they were still very interesting, if not quite at DA's level. I missed being able to talk to them whenever I wanted, but got over it because the dialogue when I could talk to them was enjoyable enough anyway.

I have mixed feelings about the combat, but overall I think it was a turn for the better - although maybe it feels a little too much like an action game now, as opposed to the last one being too static. Anyhow, I've gone on long enough, so I'll stop here. I really enjoyed the game, and I definitely feel I got my money's worth, but I'm still looking forward to Skyrim more

/edit
Oh yes, and the framed narrative. That was awesome