Yesterday (Sunday) GameStop called me up to tell me I could pick up my copy of Dragon Age 2 Monday night at midnight, but, that I should get there early, as early as 10 P.M.. I'm guessing GameStop is having a release party and maybe even giving away some free swag (possibly DA2 shirts or something). I'm going to call them this afternoon and ask them if I should really be there a whole two hours early. If they're not going to put it in my hands until 12 A.M. I'm not going to be there two hours early. For one I'm way too sick to be able to stand there for that length of time. I wouldn't want to sit there for that long either as I'd still be in pain either way. I'll probably show up around 11:30 or so. If they're giving away free stuff that probably means I'll miss out on it, but, I'm just happy to get the game.
Who all has played the demo? I've played through it twice now on a lap-top I can use from in bed. I've played through it as a mage and a warrior. Depending on how I feel I may give it a run through as a rogue some time today. Honestly, I'm liking the feel of the game (demo) minus a couple small annoyances.
1. Even on the PC version, unless it's in the full version and wasn't in the demo, they got rid of the Isometric over-head view. That kind of pisses me off. I've read two separate previews and one says the iso view is in and another says it's gone, so, I guess I'll find out tonight.
2. I'm not sure I like the conversation "wheel". I preferred the method of conversation from DA:O. I may be in the minority there, but, I feel this wheel thing is just an excuse to use a short-cut. It only gives you the "gist" of what the actual reply is anyway and doesn't list what your character will say word for word. It does how-ever give you a little picture representing the emotion that will be conveyed in the reply you give (good, neutral, evil).
Aside from those two things I didn't see anything else in the demo I didn't like. I was honestly afraid that by speeding up the combat like they did that they would have gotten rid of the tactical feeling that DA:O's combat had. Fortunately the tactical feeling is alive and intact despite the more action oriented combat. If you haven't played the demo because of the fear that the sped up combat has taken away the tactics, have no fear, it's still there.
Most of the sites that have given previews say the graphics are much improved over the first game, but honestly, aside from some better animations (which really doesn't count as "graphics" if you ask me) it looks pretty much the same except with a slightly different style to parts of the games over-all look. The graphics are good, just as good as the first game and the newer look does indeed look good as well, but I'm not seeing a huge improvement in the graphics that some of the sites are raving about.
The voice work in the demo is great and I can't complain there. The UI is basically non-existent how-ever. At the bottom of the screen where your skills are displayed there's not even a box to outline them. There's a slightly grayed area where your skills are listed side by side in what-ever order you'd like to list them. You can arrange them in which-ever order you'd like.
So, originally I had my doubts that by changing the combat the game wouldn't feel like Dragon Age, but that's not a worry anymore. The only real important draw back to me has been the lack of a pulled back iso view. Needless to say for the most part I'm greatly looking forward to getting the game tonight. If you haven't pre-ordered the game and you liked the first one, get your ass to the store and lay down the money. If you don't you're missing out!!!
To help anyone out. I got all my game content except my Dead Space armor. If you got both (DS2 and DA2) and assuming you got it on impulse, steam or what ever and didnt get the code, first register your 2 games with ea and at bioware ie only da2. Then contact ea support and they should sent you a code. Im just waiting for my code right now. Also you have to download these 3 items below for the signature edition. The rest of the items will be unlocked if you done what your suppose ie here http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/info/bonus_items/ and in your unlocked area in dragon age they will be highlighted unlocked and if not not greyed out. Hope this helps...
Also I believe you have to click more info to unlock all the other content... Hopefully everything goes smoothy for everyone.
Thought everyone knew about that or I would've mentioned it earlier...the problem with release date checks. Per region is doable, per time zone really isn't. Considering the BS Stardock went through, you can hardly blame em for the RD check.
...I will soon have my first SSD. Guess what's going on it first
You guys seem to like it better then people on metacritic do. 3/10. Ouch.
Beware geeks bearing gifts - http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Catalyst114earlypreview.aspx
Or don't. Whatever works. (Mostly relevent to 58x0 and 6xx0 vidcards)
Apparently so. I'm thinking somewhere between 85 and 95...it doesn't do anything terribly new but is fun to play and seems far more solidly executed than DA1. Maybe just cause you don't have so much backstory to slog through.
I'm not really sure where the story is going, but I'm enjoying going there.
Saying I'm disappointed by this game wouldn't really sumarize what I really feel about it. No, I'm scared by this game.
I'm scared because, to quote a post I've read from someone with a sense for the theatrical, it's a "declaration of war against PC gaming". DAO was a love letter to the old-school PC RPG, with some update. It could be improved, and it should have been in DA2. Instead, Bioware decided to make a game that would have nothing to do with an RPG and take its licence in another direction. It could be fine (although sad) if it was done correctly, but just like with Gothic 4: Arcania, taking the series in another direction ended with a gameplay stuck between several genre and doing nothing right when trying to do everything at once. It's trying to take a licence with PC gaming style roots, and adapt it for a crowd who isn't fond of old school RPGs in the first place. But without doing it fully, without really taking responsibility for making a beat'em all.
The graphics are decent although some of the animation is laugable. But where's the immersive, intringuing and narrative-contributing world design ?
The dialogs and general writing are subpar and certainly not what could be expected from Bioware. And I'm not even comparing them to Obsidian/Troika/Black Isle (fallout 1/2/New Vegas/Planescape Torment/Vampire Bloodlines/Mask of the Betrayer). The dialog system, with its "good answer, bad answer, funny answer" labels, is not what I expect in a deep, complex RPG where I need to ponder the consequences of my action. A good RPG would let me deal with the consequences of my words, would force me to face the unexpected reaction of the person to whom I'm speaking. Including the "diplomatic blunders".
The combat system has been striped of everything that made the first game interesting. Lost are the tactical aspects, replaced by an action system that actually fails at emulating good action games. The combat is messy, doesn't give much to party management lovers, and destroyed all the synergy planing that I've learned to love in game sharing genetic material with the Baldur's Gate series.
And in the end, the game feels tedious, more like a chore than an ejoyable time. I cannot find anything compelling enough to keep me playing, so I'll just stop here and weep for my money. Shoulda bought Shogun 2 instead...
I'm expecting a lot better from "The Witcher 2", but also, surprisingly, from Dungeon Siege 3. With Obsidian in charge of that game, there's a chance it might transcend the "fun but totally forgetable" status of the first game, and the "not that good" status of the second. Who knows...
And maybe... Elemental RPG could be the game to save old school RPGs ? Yeah, I'm not optimistic or anything, but a lot of PC gamers I know are tired of seeing the genres they love being stripped of depth and complexity. Age of Decadence, an indie RPG with realtively poor graphics, has started to obtain an underground popularity from the PC RPG crowd, a constantly growing part of which is impatiently waiting for the release of this game. Maybe there is a substantial market for this sort of game, a market that's underestimated and ripe for the taking for whoever will have the guts to make a game to satisfy its needs.
Fixed protagonist race, no equippable armor for companions (!), party based potions cooldown, lots of reused areas... Is this a joke or what? Am I reading reviews right?
Seems like professional reviewers are too timid to demolish this game as it would deserve. They demolished (and rightly so) Elemental, but now they don't have the stomach to criticize the giant Bioware.
I hope DA2 will tank. No, I hope it will tank HARD. Sad days for PC gamers, indeed.
This whole debacle does place Stardock in a better light. At least they have their hearts in the right place.
Yeah, I can't believe this game is raking in such good reviews. Yes, it is more or less bugfree but there are so many shortcomings.
Don't really care whether or not people dislike the game but this isn't the entirety of it. Most conversations its the emotion, not whether its good or bad. From what I can tell its peaceful, sadistic, humorous, greedy, pushy/throwing your strength around, and sometimes trying to give people more options.
I'm sure that isn't the entirety of it either, but thats how it seems to me. I will agree that I liked knowing what I was to say, but it makes more sense to have lots of options this way...and lets you match more to what in the first game was just a choice of how your guy will sound.
That said I find it a little weird also, but I LOVE having the asking questions in a dedicated submenu instead of cascading options.
Pretty much the only thing I really like about that change.
[...]
The upper-echolon review scene (for lack of a better word) is either suffering from an enormous disconnect from the actual market, or is quite simply corrupt. We've seen this pattern of "Criticize everything that can't fight back" and then "Praise large publishers or they'll cut their ties with us" over and over again now.
Reviews from big sites and magazines are an utter and complete croc with no meaning anymore. It's almost hilarious to see bug-filled abominations or rehash #52 consistently garner 90+ scores for.. for what, exactly?
Having had about 5-6 hours with the game, here's my take on it.
It is "pretty", in the technical sense. The models are detailed, the textures are nice and sharp, and the combat animations are improved over the original. But, the environments are crappy. There's just no flavor. Even setting aside the fact that most of the time you're in the city with a similar color palette, the environments outside just aren't interesting to look at.
The dialog system is definitely a step back. It's basically a clone of Mass Effect, and it suffers from the same crappy problems. The "short hand" text it gives you to pick from sometimes gives a totally different impression of what your character would say than what they actually say. The addition of voice for your character seems to me a very poor reason to pedal backwards on the depth of dialogue.
The combat is, I think, a bit misunderstood by people.. or maybe they don't play on the harder difficulties. I started the game on Nightmare, and so far I've had to pause every battle constantly because there's no way I would be able to do it as it flows. Positioning matters a lot, and who you target matters a lot. There are a few things that bother me about it, namely the fact that every hit seems to interrupt/knock back, which basically means you or your party members can be permanently prohibited from doing anything if they're attacked by fast foes (or more than one).. they just get chain knocked down and can't even escape. The other is that the formula for most battles seems the same, and goes something like: Spawn 'lieutenant' mob + helpers > when 'lieutenant' is getting low on hp, or all helpers are dead spawn more helpers out of nowhere > have 'lieutenant' drink a potion > die. There are a few exceptions, but so far most of the fights resemble that. I'm also not a fan of the new up-close camera. But overall, this combat system is not devoid of tactics, and to anyone that's finding it boring I highly recommend starting the game on Nightmare. I still favor DA:O's system, but this one is not a complete failure.
Not being able to equip armor on your companions sucks. Scrolling through the achievement list, it looks like their armor can be "upgraded".. at least I hope that this brings stat upgrades as well, not just visual appearance like in ME2.
To correct one thing..
Is false. The party shares the same pool of potions, but each party member has their own potion cooldown. Multiple characters can drink a health potion at the same time.
Overall, so far my prediction is coming true.. I don't think DA2 is a bad game, it's enjoyable enough because the more difficult combat is somewhat of a redeeming quality. But DA:O is all around a better, true, PC RPG. Too many sacrifices were made in DA2 to please the console crowd, resulting in a game that's not bad, but not nearly what it could've been if it was developed for PC as the primary platform.
I think scores of 8-8.5 are appropriate for the game.
Annatar, while I have not played the game (nor do I intend to), I can confirm that based on pre-release information, the upgrade of your companion's armor is indeed cosmetic, like in Mass Effect 2.
Also, based on your critique, I have no idea how you came to an 8-8.5 score (presumably, you mean 8/10, not 8/100). Based on what I'm reading into your text, I'm surprised it's any higher than 6. 7 at most.
Because if you take it as a game on its own, I think it earns that 8-8.5. If you take it as a sequel, which it really isn't - more of a "reboot" - then it is lacking in too many things that DA:O had. And I guess it also depends on whether or not you're judging it as a purely PC game, that can dock some points, too
It just plays like more of a straightforward action RPG (though you can wander around and your quest log gets a fair amount of quests/side quests), than one of the old-school D&D RPGs where sometimes you could wander around for quite a bit without seeing combat.
Also, again, I am playing on Nightmare which has friendly fire and some rather difficult fights - as far as I could see, none of the reviewers actually played on Nightmare and I believe without friendly fire the combat really loses a lot of flavor as you can just spam powerful mage AoEs with reckless abandon. Given that DA2 heavily shifted focus to combat over story/exploration, you really need that combat to be fun, and atm for me it is, despite all the changes to it.
That's not true at all. There are several armor upgrades for each non main character and they all give various statistical bonuses. You can also equip accessories and other non armor items just like the main character.
I'm enjoying the game a lot so far, but I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that early metacritic scores would be low. If your reviewing the game after a few hours of play you must hate it.
Are you sure, though? I've met a lot of people on many sides of the RPG scene (some prefer complexity, some don't but enjoy depth in the world design, some love Diablo clones, etc) and the general sense I've gotten is that action oriented games are generally well received, unless they're genuinely boring/bad. I've no reason to believe any real disconnect on the part of the reviewers.
Hell I'm still affiliated with the Ultima Dragons and I think most of the Ultimas sucked. Hah.
I'd give it a solid 6, the repeating maps are a joke and I'm actually not even enjoying playing this game (I loved DA). I'd give it even lower if nightmare wasn't available, combat just feels like a total grind with no danger on lower difficulties. I'm also having a hard time with the story, although I can't really talk about it without spoiling it for others. Companions are just getting thrown at me with very little backstory.
edit: I'm going to download the high-res texture pack now, maybe with that the game won't keep drawing my eye to the poor graphics. Don't get me wrong, it's generally good, but there are many parts that just stand out because it's so bad (my mother's hair, flemeth's clothing and more)
After checking out some of the reviews I think I'll be passing completely on DA2. DA:O was originally inspired by games like Baldur's Gate - Tactical RPG's that had lots of choices and an epic feel. Certainly DA2 looks like it deserves the 8-9/10 ratings it's recieving, but it looks like they "fixed" things that weren't broken and by "fix" they dumbed things down. Sure, it's nice to have the main character voice acted, but I'd have rather had more choices, not less. I'd have thought this would be a game where Bioware could go crazy with the choices, especially since it was advertised as being a shorter game. Everything looks to take place in/around one city with many locations, which is fine if they make everything seam together like it would in reality.
Of course, I'm taking the Cooper Lawrence approach. Well, I'm not, because I've actually watched videos and several reviews, but I've still not actually played it.
I'll stick with the original DA:O for the moment. Also, just beat ME2 with my new graphic card. It looked so much better this time around. The first time around it was like watching claymation on youtube using dial-up.
Edit: Also, on the ratings discussions - I believe the ratings are likely accurate - Or at least the reviews are. IGN and Gamespot both mentioned lack of choices, somewhat flat characters, lack of locations, washed out textures, and reused locations at one point or another. But they also stated that the gameplay was solid, and while the story started out with not being able to piece things together so well, the missions themselves were decent. So giving a game an 8 on those points, with none of the issues actually affecting gameplay, seems decent to me. Now if they did a rating where they were basing their points on whether or not it lives up to the original, I'm sure it'd get a 5-6 because of the gameplay changes and watering down of some of the things that made DA:O so great in the first place. It looks like DA2 just got away from the Baldur's Gate roots and took a step towards being more console friendly.
Played the original DAO, for DA 2 only watched demo playthrough by TotalHalibut on youtube. Based on that decided to wait until the price comes down to something more reasonable. Then too, patches, mods, and expansions will improve what appears at the moment to be a fairly dismal gaming experience.
Metacritic, current metascore pro reviews 84/100. Current user rating 3.0 based on 257 users.
I doubt content people care enough to go rate games quite so often. Hell, I'm not getting paid for it and my piece has already been said by the professionals (and undoubtedly better.)
My latest grump:
No manual.
$25 Prima guide. (Not that I'd buy it when the information is available online, but still....)
Methinks the two are linked...
But why would that be different for this game then for other games? Metacritic user reviews ALWAYS have that same issue, and you don't normally see a gap this wide between critics and users (and you don't normally see user reviews this low). I mean, DA 2 has a lower user score then Final Fantasy 14... and FF 14 was the worst game of 2010 and the worst MMO release in years Your explanation doesn't explain why this game is so much more loathed then others that should experience the same problem.
My theory is that from what I've read (haven't played it), the game is a drastic departure from DA:O. Anybody who liked Origins and wanted more of that is set up to be really disappointed.
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