Early Dragon Age 2 player reviews are pretty bad...

[ddk]

I played the demo of DA2 and was bored within the first five minutes.

The main character is completely uninspired and uninteresting. You're thrown into the deep end of the story without any character development other than, "This guy is important because we are telling you flat out that he is!" The NPC's you're travelling with are the same and I feel absolutely no connection to them whatsoever. The combat annoying unless you pause, select ability, pause, select ability, pause... OMFG KILL ME NOW!

The 'sparkles are fun' concept also annoys me. One of the things I absolutely loved in Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 was leaving the party behind and taking my rogue through every single house in a city and robbing it blind. Can't do that 'cause if it don't sparkle, you can't play with it.

I really think CRPG's have taken several steps backwards in trying to be more complex. I long for the days of immersive game play where I lived for the next part of the story and adventure. Mass Effect was probably the only game in recent memory to have done that for me.

[Drunkenvalley]

You couldn't find subtitles? That's always the first thing I do is turn it on. and DA2 put them in audio like most games

Err, yes, I didn't find them then in the demo. I probably just missed them in my hurry, as is easily possible.

[moaradin]

It's ironic Moaradin jumps directly to it's defence, despite the fact it shouldn't be defendable.

It's got broken graphics, the Normal mapping is buggered, for those who don't know what normal mapping is, it means the further away an object is, it's ingame model is changed to a lower graphicly enhanced one, so same of engine running basically.]

In Dragon Age 2, you can get those "far away" models really close, and they look like lego men.

Can this be patched? Yes, but it shouldn't need to be, this is a very basic mistake, a very earrly mistake to make, something Bioware should NOT be making.

How about those reused cave systems and dungeons? Understandable when it's an MMO like WoW, but a single player game? It's laziness of the highest degree, it's not even hard to quickly create a cave system.

How about that awesome UI? it's the most barebones UI ever, and not in a good way.

And that great class Balancing. At least mages are not overpowered, instead they get stunlocked out of every action.

Let us not forget the tons of Retcons for the sake of petty aesthetics or cutscene bait.

Lets not forget the horrible PC version.

Bioware called it in, this is just to grab easy money for TOR, this game is BAD.

---------- Post added 2011-03-09 at 06:34 PM ----------



So, just because people dislike a game because it obviously tries to deliver less but gain more on Hype. they are Anti-fans? I suppose I am an Anti-fan of Bioware just because I don't worship them as a Paragon of game-making.

Oh look its my favorite hater. I'm running the game on ultra, DX11, high res texture pack at 40fps. Everything else you said was completely subjective.

[Drunkenvalley]

Oh look its my favorite hater. I'm running the game on ultra, DX11, high res texture pack at 40fps. Everything else you said was completely subjective.

Except duplicated caves, but we saw that in Oblivion and mostly every other damned "massive" RPG out there anyway. 'Tis something of a moot point when just about everyone do it.

[Fojos]

It's not an RPG.
It's a streamlined console shooter with "RPG" tacked on.

Not that that's a bad thing; it's just that many DAO players (and Bioware customers) wanted an RPG as Bioware is good at those, and what they got was Dragon Effect.

You don't know what an RPG is. RPG doesn't mean slow.

If you look at most of the people who dislike it here, it's obvious they only played the demo.

[Faldric]

Got it today, would not buy it again.

The missing view from above, makes targeting AOE spells really painful.
Nightmare Difficulty is still to easy (paused about 2 times in 4 hours), dont really bother reading skill tooltips, about anything just 1-2 shots an hurlok.
Graphics dont matter alot to me, but some things are really really ugly.
About 2 hours into the game, I could already predict how the dungeon will look like....And at the 3rd hour I was in the exact same cave again, not 1 stone has moved. They copied whole dungeons.
And about everyone looks the same. My sister looks like my mother( with that amount of children she should be at least 50....) like the merchants daughter and so on.
Weapons are pretty much all the same with different symbols.
Dialogs are fine, if you can find someone to talk to. The whole city ignores you, you can run into them, steal from them, they dont care.....

I like the chars and the Rival/Friend System so thats a plus. Little more active battle is fine to(but its now so damn easy)...
And I feel that after aproximatly 5 hours, I am halfway done. Which doesnt bother me alot because my next quest brings me to the same cave...again.....

Short the game is not bad, but from dragon age I would have expected a lot more, DAO was much much better.

[moaradin]

Except duplicated caves, but we saw that in Oblivion and mostly every other damned "massive" RPG out there anyway. 'Tis something of a moot point when just about everyone do it.

I just skimmed through his post so I missed that part. He's not worth my time anymore.

[Hauroch]

Except duplicated caves, but we saw that in Oblivion and mostly every other damned "massive" RPG out there anyway. 'Tis something of a moot point when just about everyone do it.

I do have an issue with the cave copying when they don't edit the maps to take out the areas that you can't access in a specific cave. Other than that, it really is understandable, and is something that Bioware's done in the past

[Blackcompany]

Dragon Age 1 did not deserve CLOSE to the scoring it got.

DA2. Is getting less hype and worse scoring, so what does that tell you about the actual game experience.

Rent it. Never buy games anymore, they are too damn short and crap to invest any kind of actual money into them

[Fojos]

Then enlighten us, Master. What is an RPG?

RPG means you play a role, nothing else. It doesn't have to be dungeons & dragons to be RPG. RPG games are storyline-driven, and Dragon Age 2 is just that.

[moaradin]

Most of the negative views are from people who want nothing but the same as origins. Basically, they are the people who are afraid of change. Also the game is getting very good reviews from critics. It is only players that are giving bad views simply because its different.

---------- Post added 2011-03-09 at 06:46 PM ----------

RPG means you play a role, nothing else. It doesn't have to be dungeons & dragons to be RPG. RPG games are storyline-driven, and Dragon Age 2 is just that.

I had some pretty stupid arguments with people about how combat doesn't determine if something is an RPG or not /facepalm.

deus ex is considered one of the greatest RPGs of all time, yet its a first person shooter.

[Drunkenvalley]

RPG means you play a role, nothing else. It doesn't have to be dungeons & dragons to be RPG. RPG games are storyline-driven, and Dragon Age 2 is just that.

Oh, d'oh, I completely misread stuff there. My bad. My bad. ._.

[Mornus]

It seems like they changed everything that was wrong with Origins, but at the same time changed a lot of what was already great about it.

[Fojos]

It seems like they changed everything that was wrong with Origins, but at the same time changed a lot of what was already great about it.

What did they change that was great? (Only thing I can think of is I liked how different classes/races had different intros)

[Faldric]

Most of the negative views are from people who want nothing but the same as origins. Basically, they are the people who are afraid of change. Also the game is getting very good reviews from critics. It is only players that are giving bad views simply because its different.

I am open for any change. The more active battle was a very good idea, but they have not put enough effort into balancing the fights. Nightmare feels like nightmare in Awakening where you were so op, that there was no difference between easy and nightmare. Same here: It doesn't matter what button I press, it will always instantly cause my enemy to explode(yes explode).
The game has lots of improvements over origin, no question. But everyone who plays it cant deny the fact, that you can actually see how they rushed the game. They reuse so much Models, Dungeons, Weapons,... Its like they have a set of 5 areas and build everything out of it. Each chair is the same, each door, Each woman

Its definitely no bad game, I had much worse. But it isnt a good game either. It's very short (guess I will finish it in the guessed 10-15 hours), Storytelling is good, but the actual story so far is kinda lame. And so on I already named enough points at my previous post.

If they had taken the ideas and developed them about an year longer, put more love into level design,... It would have been perfect. But as it stands, I dont really consider it worth the money.

[Deleted]

Oh Skyrim, how i wish thou wereth releaseth already.

Save me from mediocre at best "RPG's".

[moaradin]

you mean like Oblivion? That game was a disgrace to morrowind. I hope Skyrim can redeem the series.

[Deleted]

you mean like Oblivion? That game was a disgrace to morrowind. I hope Skyrim can redeem the series.

Oblivion is just like DA2, clunky, retarded combat but better than the original, tried to look a little fancier but it just made everything look bad.

Reused environments, bad performance, random pauses during cut-scenes, short, not a lot of side quests, tons of content chopped out to be sold as DLC later, bad models, dumbed down dialogue, poorly written, shitty combat (waves after waves instead of tactical gameplay choices), no really memorable characters, ect. are the things that plague Dragon Age 2.

Overall, it's a terrible game, and could have been much better.

[georgevonfranken]

moaradin you seem alot like a bioware fanboy. Any time any one says anything bad about SWTOR or DA2 you call them wrong and then state your opinion like its a fact.

OT: Im enjoying DA2 but i havnt been able to get very far, combat is alot better

[Drunkenvalley]

no really memorable characters,

Please do tell me how Flemeth failed to be memorable when she appears before you looking absolutely glorious. O.o