On September 18 2010 11:26 DannyJ wrote: I found DAO really disappointing. I'm not sure why it has such a strong following.
Yeah, i was the biggest bioware fanboy being a baldur's gate 2 fanatic (seriously played through that game + throne of bhaal at least a dozen times with a dozen different mods) and I found dragon age really meh. When I accidentally stumbled onto the sex scene with the witch I shut the game down and permanently uninstalled it, that was the last straw.
Really? I'm sure you haven't used some real mods. :p
On September 18 2010 11:26 DannyJ wrote: I found DAO really disappointing. I'm not sure why it has such a strong following.
I agree. I was a BG fanboy and I played Dragon Age with pretty high expectations. That game is so damn linear. It gives the illusion of freedom and choice, except...not really. I spend more time on thinking what gear combination looks shinier and prettier than actual combat tactic or chewing over the storyline.
I completed Dragon Age all the way to the invasion of the capital city and stopped right there. Seriously, I just can't find the motivation to play it anymore. It was a waste of time for me.
I am playing Oblivion now. It's way better after mass modding.
On September 18 2010 11:26 DannyJ wrote: I found DAO really disappointing. I'm not sure why it has such a strong following.
I agree. I was a BG fanboy and I played Dragon Age with pretty high expectations. That game is so damn linear. It gives the illusion of freedom and choice, except...not really. I spend more time on thinking what gear combination looks shinier and prettier than actual combat tactic or chewing over the storyline.
I completed Dragon Age all the way to the invasion of the capital city and stopped right there. Seriously, I just can't find the motivation to play it anymore. It was a waste of time for me.
I am playing Oblivion now. It's way better after mass modding.
My major problem with Dragon Age was really the story. It didn't really interest me in the slightest. I've consumed most Bioware Games the day they came out and loved all of them (especially from KOTOR onward) but this game was just somehow boring. the ending also sucked superbly in my opinion. I still finished the game though, and did a reasonable amount of sidequesting and doing stuff, but somehow since the story was kind of lame, I never had any desire to completely discover the world, as the boring story also somehow ruined the setting for me.
It actually started out REALLY good. when you came to [the castle which name I already forgot since it's been a few months since I finished the game] and got into those cinematic talking sequences, where there's a lot of dynamic things going on in each conversation and you're walking around during it etc, I was really impressed by it. But soon after, it became the standard "stand in one spot and see the camera switch between two faces while you choose one of several obvious dialogue choices".
and since the setting bored the hell out of me (hell, they killed of the most interesting character right in the freaking beginning!) I didn't really have any drive to go through all dialogue options etc.
The interface also somehow pissed me off. It seemed overly complicated by today's standards. The idea of tactics was totally awesome and I couldn't wait to fiddle around with it, but the way you actually implement your tactics is absolutely horrible: choosing an endless amount of options in an endless amount of lists. This really is not necessary. They shouldn't make it any less complex, but they should make it less complicated. those are 2 different things. The tactics system was clearly the latter.
Then you browsed through an endless list of generic weapons and armors when you were in your inventory. You also got lists of lists of random items where you won't ever find out what use item XY has anyways, with weapons and armors having stats upon stats which never get explained. Then instead of just having enemies drop their stuff outright you have to click every corpse to get the items.... and so forth.
There would be a lot more to bitch about when it comes to the interface. It really was quite horrible.
The graphics.. well most things looked beautifully designed and I understand when they say that they didn't spend as much money on graphics etc. because they wanted the story to come first, but in the end it really looked a bit ugly. Mass Effect 1 looked better and that game is a few years older.
I also absolutely hated the pacing of the quests (basically they're giving u the illusion of a pretty open world by basically giving you a checklist of stuff you have to do and you can decide the order in which you do it) and some of the quests themselves... I mean wtf at that area in the mage guild tower, that was just horrible. You walked around in a horrible labyrinth while you had to transform into random creatures to use abilites. Sooo bad. And most areas where you were it was like this: Run around and walk into random traps of enemies etc. until you find the right way / key etc.
I don't even want to start talking about the crappy skills. Too many skills which do the same thing, the interface doesn't help that either.
In my opinion the game was soooo overhyped. Everybody talked like it was the best RPG they've ever played when in fact it was just mediocre. Bioware can do soo much better than this.
I found it better than Kotor 1 (slightly) and better than Kotor 2. But i'm really not into the Jedi stuff, not at all... It doesn't compare to BG2 or PS:T.
Dragon Age is like Baldurs Gate *light* (very light). If you never played BG2 (or PS:T) you might think that you can do lots of stuff in this game and have tons of options at every step... If you have played BG2 you just see what have could been and get kinda angry over the wasted potential .
Some parts of the game i loved... The Wood, Redcliff and Dwarven Quest areas were (very) good, sadly the fighting system won't ever let you have the same exciting fights as you had in BG2. Just imagine these areas with some more *BG2* in it, i would have fallen in love instantly... But there are no Lichs, higher Demons and stuff like this which will just wtfpwn you if your not prepared for them... It's just "Undead/Darkspawn/Cultists, which are all esentially the same + flavor enemie of the Quest-Area. Endless waves of the same enemies again and again (the Wood was a little better iirc, until you entered the Tomb) and after all the big Quests are done, what shows up? More standart Darkspawn which just fall over as soon as you touch them...
Or the fight against the Archdemon... First of all, it's just a Dragon (you probably allready defeated 2 big Dragons) with some darkspawn spawning (iirc)... THATS NOT HOW YOU DO THE LAST FIGHT IN A GAME.
What this game lacks the most, in my opinion, is fights to remember against enemies you will remember (there are a few exceptions like the Broodmother). But are there any enemies that just show up at a seemingly random location and are actually really dangerous to you? It just does not happen in this game, it just doesn't...
To me it seemed like this game made nearly everything *good* but nothing was really outstanding. Alltogether it's probably the best group/tactics based RPG of the last few years... But the last few years were horrible when it comes to group/tactics based RPG's...
The Setting was... "ok/meh"... I rather don't have such a clear cut goal to achieve but int he end this does not make or break a game.
I must agree with the previous poster (2 up) Half my time was spent seeing which armor looked better, which was shinyer. There really was not many options for gear, THere was XXX item tier 1 to 7, therre was YYYY item tier 1 to 7, and the only change was a mild color difference. There was just no options. Coupled with the very linear story line, the terrible map system (Who wants to get into random encounters 100x before you get to the other end of the map) The zones themselves were very strict, and as previously said, linear. Half way through the game All i wanted to do is hear the end of the story, and this was after a 8 month hiatus of not playing after release. I got to Denever (sp?), had to same some woman, did that, and called it quits. I bought the Awakening expansion a few months back during the steam sale and i must say, i'll probably never play it. It's a good game, but I feel they cut themselves short.
I somehow have to agree with the posts befor me I don't know how many times I played throught BGII, but I stopped playing Dragon Age somewhere in the game it just doesn't feel like BGII, it's hard to describe, but I really think that the graphics is a big part of it. 3D thing just takes away to much things. You can't be so detailed as in 2D. I somewhere read an article, which said that throught the change from 2D->3D it's nearlly impossible to put in these little details as in BGII unless you have a ridiculous amount of memory space. And the 2D thing isn't necessarily a bad thing, as you are free to imagine what's going on (it's sounds kind of strange to phrase it like this, but I when I have my white dressed elf mage, without a face, it has a more shaped face in my mind, than if I can zoom in in 3D).
As others stated befor, in BGII, there seemed to be endlees different spells, and therefor endless battle tactics. And it was ridiculously hard, honestly this gaxx guy, I don't know how often I had to reload to beat him, and I had high lvl chars, good gear and I am no noob in any means, though I am no hardcore expert in RPG.
Maybe it's just because I am older now and not so much into computert games any more, if you compare it to my fanatism in my younger years. I can still remember playing the tutorial with this purpel clothed mage, I think it was Eleaster, or goddamn I don't know his name any more, but it was soo awesome. Or fighting down this red dragon, Firkarag (misspelled for sure, but who cares).
I want to add that I played IWD, NWN (the magic system based on the new edition thing, was imo bad and I didn't like it as much as the BGII) and KOTR (which was pretty good. being a jedi is awesome, but you couldn't get more powerful as in BGII and the one dimensional weapon upgrades, lack in the fighting system was pretty boring. I really wanted to be this melee jedi fighter, you get unbeatable later on in the game, evil jedi grandmaster...sooo powerful).
IWD was just hack an slash, I quit the game after I first fought a Dragon, it were fucking multiple (two or three? or even four!?) dragons. How lame is that? I want to fight single dragons not a whole army. At this point I was pretty pissed, because I had to fight like 20 or 30 monsters several times. Trying so hard to make the game hard pfftt..put one big ass, monster, that would be much more reward to kill it not one thousand little ones, who bring you down over time, that's boring.
My point of view of this topics, random thoguths and w/e. As the one before, I want BGIII
The thing aboud IWD 1 and 2 was, (i only played 2).
They were like BG2 strapped of everything that made BG2 TRULY great and focused on the fighting... And it still was a good game (not outstanding or anything).
Try this with Dragon Age and it would become a very boring and alltogether horrible game. There are just not enough options in DA, be it in the fighting system or the *rest*. It's just not as good.
Really, i don't know which one is better... Neverwinter Nights 2 or Dragon Age... I probably would rather replay NWN2 because it actually gave you choices to handle some things differently (but had a horrible graphics-engine and the endless fighitng in the Ork-Mountains keeps me from ever playing it again ^^...). Actually the more i think of the 2 games.... I'm sure that NWN2 in DA's engine would be the better game.
im surprised there is so much hate on DAO... it has been easily my favorite RPG to date, and inbefroe the insults i've played all the BG's + Oblivion... not the older morrowind games though
On September 21 2010 21:39 Velr wrote: In whcih aspect do you think DA:O is better than Baldurs Gate 2, except for meaningless banther with your NPC's?
i felt like i developed a connection with my characters, i cared what happened to them and how their stories turned out, didnt have that in BG
On September 21 2010 21:39 Velr wrote: In whcih aspect do you think DA:O is better than Baldurs Gate 2, except for meaningless banther with your NPC's?
i felt like i developed a connection with my characters, i cared what happened to them and how their stories turned out, didnt have that in BG
Alright, Dragon Age has more banter options with your companions, not to mention the voice acting. HOWEVER, Dragon Age's romance SUCKS! Baldur Gate II's romance makes you feel like you earned her love through epic numbers of dialogue, many of which could terminate your relationship due to a slip of tongue. What happens in Dragon Age? Why, it's the act of gift giving. You find a bunch of gifts, give them to her and you get the girl in bed. Why don't we get a nudity mod while we are at it? Nice.
Morrigan got nothing on Viconia.
Oh, one more thing I hated. With rare exceptions such as Korcari Wild and maybe the Forest, the map is so damn linear and enclosed. There is no open field combat or open land exploration. All the fights are forced and happen in enclosed areas. I fricking hated that. Korcari Wild, which is like part of the introduction, is arguably the best section of the entire Dragon Age map.
Yes, this may be a sign that I played too much Asian (MMO)RPG.
How important is micro in this game anyway? I swear if I have to kite like a pro to beat the game I might as well go back to play starcraft. I don't feel like playing a try-hard game.
I dunno, with some AI mods, you set up proper tactics and then hop on one of your characters and fight shit. Like automating a healer wasn't all that difficult IIRC. I just sat on my arcane caster to make things blow while the rest of the party automagically tanked and healed stuff. Oh and I think the thief was out there running into traps in combat, but who cares, it's not like I needed the dmg from her.
On March 08 2013 15:19 ddrddrddrddr wrote: Press space, give commands, press space, watch the magic happen, then press space again. This can be played a lot like a turn based game.
On March 08 2013 15:19 ddrddrddrddr wrote: Press space, give commands, press space, watch the magic happen, then press space again. This can be played a lot like a turn based game.
Oh what the fuck you can pause in battles?
Yes and it's an absolute necessity on higher difficulty levels. Makes for fun tactical battles, though not as epic as the ones in BG series.
EPT
.
