Dragon Age 2 is superior to the first despite what everyone says

[taiwwa]

I never felt that DA1's combat was all that tactical. I think it's because it was largely real time. Yes, you could pause in the middle of combat. But it still isn't quite the same feeling as a turn based game where each character has a set number of moves that they can do.

Because in a turn-based game, you can sort of figure out the upsides and downsides of moving to a certain position in terms of possibilities of attack and vulnerabilities to enemies. real time combat becomes more about reflexes IMO.

 

[Bostur]

Keep in mind I played it on PC with a point and click interface. A control scheme most suited for slow games with thinking involved.

Are you implying the PC can't support fast-paced games? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WloiU-YFpME&feature=related]

What's your point about thinking, though? The game supports pause-and-play so you can literally think for years inbetween pauses. I played it on the PC too, and what you're saying sounds like right nonsense to me.

Little gameplay? What's your definition of gameplay? Combat depth? Did you not notice the class synergy between skills? The multiple skillsets for one character?

Whatever.

I'm not at all implying that the PC can't do fast paced games, on the contrary. And the link you posted doesn't look much like DA2 at all. I'm saying that fast paced games needs to be designed in a different way than tactical games. And DA2 used an interface and a design approach mostly used in tactical games. Since it was a sequel to DA:O.

Sure pausing is possible in DA2, and one of my main gripes playing on hard mode was that pausing every second or two was essential. That doesn't result in fast paced gameplay in any meaningful way. From a tactical perspective the encounter design and the lack of tactical options failed to make it a meaningful tactical game.
Yes I noticed some class synergy, but it didn't seem wortwhile compared to simply auto-attacking. It would have worked better if the encounters and the environment had been designed with that in mind.

Gameplay is when the player directly influences the game in a meaningful way. As Sid Meier would have said by making interesting decisions in the broadest possible meaning of the word.

An action game needs to be designed as an action game. It's not possible to retrofit a tactical engine to do good action combat. And doing that will ruin whatever tactical potential it might have had.

 

[Individuo]

"...despite what everyone says" huh?

In my mind that conjures images of a person blocking his ears going "LALALALALALALLA!!!"

That was exactly what I thought, I was also half expecting a "because I said so" in their too.

 

[TotalerKrieger]

Much better art.

I don't agree at all. Everything in DA2 had this weird jagged cartoonish design. While unique it was not very appealing. The darkspawn went from looking like menacing demons to looking like chimpanzees with down syndrome. Many weapons were ridiculously oversized. Dragon Age: Origins has a nice balance between realist and stylized design. It was a nice touch that everyone had bad teeth, something that didn't seem to be in the sequel.

You didn't mention how they reused environments to the point where quests started to blend together/lose any sort of meaning. One of the laziest design decisions I've seen from a well known company in a while.

Faster combat while keeping the same abilities as the original.

I agree that the faster combat kept the game moving at a less annoying pace. That said, it also tended to dumb down a lot of tactical decisions. DA2's combat animations were also really stupid. Attacks were exaggerated and unrealistic. A character could momentarily defy gravity/ground friction, decapitate 10 enemies in one sword swing and everything attack had some stupid "oh yeah, this is intense!" slashing sound effect. Combat played like a crappy JRPG or something, not my taste.

You didn't mention the waves of enemies that would literally appear out of nowhere, totally ruining any sort of strategy. Every encounter became one big dull mindless frenzy. In DA:O you had to think about how to approach a fight, change tactics if necessary and complement character abilities. In DA2, you just slam your face against a brick wall until you realize everthing is dead. Once again a lazy design choice.

Better plot and story

I didn't mind DA2's plot. It was interesting to play a character who was simply working in his own interest rather than trying to save the world. But, so many of the characters fell flat (the only really interesting character was the beardless dwarf) and/or had really cliche appearance and personality. In the end, the plot took a nose dive and none of the player's decisions made much impact at all.

I did think that the simplified dialogue system in DA2 was an improvement over the original as well.

 

[drh1975]

I liked DA2, but to say it's better than DA:O? Let's just agree to disagree.

 

[Kahunaburger]

"...despite what everyone says" huh?

In my mind that conjures images of a person blocking his ears going "LALALALALALALLA!!!"

That was exactly what I thought, I was also half expecting a "because I said so" in their too.

Or a "I think Dragon Age 2 is better, you think Dragon Age: Origins is better, and both opinions are equally valid

"

 

[Buccura]

Yeah, well, you know that's just like uh, your opinion man.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Dammit I miss that Let's Play. It might not have been the one that Something Awful wanted, but it was the one the game deserved. I wish they hadn't gassed it.

I miss that too. I was actually thinking of registering for Something Awful because of that but then they locked it and when I checked the reasoning it was because they didn't like it. Yeah I'm not going to pay $10 to register for a forum where they can ban me because I'm not good enough for their taste. Screw that.

In case you haven't already seen it, the thread lives on [http://gigglesquee.blogspot.com/] in blogspot form. It's not quite the same without comments by other forumites, but it's still hilarious.

That's great! I'm glad Shadow Isaac decided to continue it. They were just on the cusp of the murder quest too.

 

[T_love]

Can't agree. In my opinion DA was way better. If you compere the two you will see why.
1. no copy/pasted dungeons in DA
2. Looooodddiiing times for the copy/pasted dungeons is also not in DA
3. You only get to play as one race in DA2 (yay humans)
4. No major storyline in DA2. Get $$$ -> Kill people -> Kill people -> To be continued

 

[Kahunaburger]

I think that the best way to make a game like Dragon Age faster is oddly enough to scale things less, not more. I maintain that the best part of Dragon Age combat-wise were the first few levels of Origins. Darkspawn are legitimate threats, combat achieves that gritty/violent feel they were going for, and elite enemies like Emissaries and Ogres actually felt dangerous, and could very easily wipe your party on the higher difficulties if you weren't paying attention. Then everything becomes a hp sponge, you start unlocking I-win buttons, and you're soon swimming in more consumables than you know what to do with. A smarter levelling design would have given us a game that actually played like the tactical "dark fantasy" the devs wanted it to be instead of a game that alternates between grind and a kite simulator.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Dammit I miss that Let's Play. It might not have been the one that Something Awful wanted, but it was the one the game deserved. I wish they hadn't gassed it.

I miss that too. I was actually thinking of registering for Something Awful because of that but then they locked it and when I checked the reasoning it was because they didn't like it. Yeah I'm not going to pay $10 to register for a forum where they can ban me because I'm not good enough for their taste. Screw that.

In case you haven't already seen it, the thread lives on [http://gigglesquee.blogspot.com/] in blogspot form. It's not quite the same without comments by other forumites, but it's still hilarious.

OH GOD YES! Thank you so much for that.

 

[Condiments]

I think that the best way to make a game like Dragon Age faster is oddly enough to scale things less, not more. I maintain that the best part of Dragon Age combat-wise were the first few levels of Origins. Darkspawn are legitimate threats, combat achieves that gritty/violent feel they were going for, and elite enemies like Emissaries and Ogres actually felt dangerous, and could very easily wipe your party on the higher difficulties if you weren't paying attention. Then everything becomes a hp sponge, you start unlocking I-win buttons, and you're soon swimming in more consumables than you know what to do with. A smarter levelling design would have given us a game that actually played like the tactical "dark fantasy" the devs wanted it to be instead of a game that alternates between grind and a kite simulator.

Yeah going up the tower at the beginning to light the beacon was probably the best part of the game combat wise. The fight with the troll was pretty intense, and darkspawn encounters didn't feel like a waste of time.

Bioware just got lazy with their "wave" combat design, and just started throwing mass enemies at you. I wanted this to get fixed in Dragon Age 2, but apparently it got far worse.

If they want to be the "spiritual successor" to the Baldur's gate series they better put some time into encounter design like they did in previous game. Also, they should come up with a magic system that isn't completely MMO like and stereotypical.

 

[Kahunaburger]

If they want to be the "spiritual successor" to the Baldur's gate series they better put some time into encounter design like they did in previous game. Also, they should come up with a magic system that isn't completely MMO like and stereotypical.

+100.

With the magic system in particular, since they seem to be basically running with the whole "mages are psykersin serious danger of possession or corruption" thing, it would be very interesting if magic actually presented some sort of threat to the mage or his/her allies. I'm thinking something along the lines of TOME 4's Paradox meter. For those in this thread who haven't played it (you should - it's free and fun), the best analogy is that spells build up heat, running hot is dangerous to the mage and everything in the general vicinity, and cooling off is time-consuming. It would also be interesting if blood magic was treated as an actual step towards Chaosthe mage going insane and there were story consequences for using it.

 

[Iwata]

The first one bored me to tears, so I never bothered with the second game. I found the whole backlash against it intriguing, though.

Wow, you just about said verbatim exactly what I was going to say here. No, I mean it. I was formulating my response with "the first one bored me to tears, so I never-" and then I saw someone had already started it off just like that...lol

You know what they say: "great minds think alike" and so on.

 

[mysecondlife]

I played DA:O on Xbox and it was really boring and had bad UI

Maybe its a PC thing

 

[legend forge]

Lastly the art is fantastic. I'm guessing that DA:O must have been in development a long time because some of the art looks quite dated. But in this game they revamped the game models. Biggest improvement is in the elven models.

Sad thing is several people here will take you seriously.

I really liked the elves in DA2, they were alien and mysterious as opposed to just pretty people.

 

[Baralak]

No, da2 was awful on consoles.

I couldn't even finish it thanks to a lack of promised auto-attack.

Ummm, I see Auto-Attack in the options menu of my PS3 version...

 

[DoPo]

If they want to be the "spiritual successor" to the Baldur's gate series they better put some time into encounter design like they did in previous game. Also, they should come up with a magic system that isn't completely MMO like and stereotypical.

+100.

With the magic system in particular, since they seem to be basically running with the whole "mages are psykersin serious danger of possession or corruption" thing, it would be very interesting if magic actually presented some sort of threat to the mage or his/her allies. I'm thinking something along the lines of TOME 4's Paradox meter. For those in this thread who haven't played it (you should - it's free and fun), the best analogy is that spells build up heat, running hot is dangerous to the mage and everything in the general vicinity, and cooling off is time-consuming. It would also be interesting if blood magic was treated as an actual step towards Chaosthe mage going insane and there were story consequences for using it.

I fully support every single word up there. I really felt the mages and the Fade were too close to psykers and the Warp. Only in the fluff, though, nothing to reinforce it. And blood mages, good lord, the blood mages. I wanted to go blood mage, and I did, I wanted to see the confrontation with others, to feel threatened to get a taste of forbidden power... and there was none of that. Even Wynn didn't say anything when I went to become a blood mage. Neither did she when she became one. All right, after a while it turned out that blood mages aren't necessarily obsessed with killing stuff and causing pain and being dark and broody but somebody could have said something at least.

Thanks for the suggestion about TOME 4, I'll definitely have a look. I love the concept of dangerous magic only it's very rarely implemented well (if at all).

OT (ho-ho, yeah): This thread has four pages now. It doesn't deserve that much. If anyone feels the need to respond to TC, just read this:

I never felt that DA1's combat was all that tactical. I think it's because it was largely real time. Yes, you could pause in the middle of combat. But it still isn't quite the same feeling as a turn based game where each character has a set number of moves that they can do.

Because in a turn-based game, you can sort of figure out the upsides and downsides of moving to a certain position in terms of possibilities of attack and vulnerabilities to enemies. real time combat becomes more about reflexes IMO.

Read it? Because it doesn't make sense. It's self contradictory. There is room for opinion but this right there is just straight up ignoring facts. Each character does have a set number of moves they can do. So that does make DAO's combat turn based. When you are playing it turn based, that is, when pausing (OK, not really turn based but definitely not real time in that case). What do reflexes have to do when I pause my game and give a set of orders to my team, and then pause whenever I feel like it. No fast reflex needed, as I can literally spend five minutes ordering one guy to move and another to whack at people with a sword,