Escapist Dragon Age II Review, Is Something Wrong Here?

[Danpascooch]

No other professional review has thus far given the game above a 94, but the Escapist gave it 100.

That's not a problem with the Escapist, that's a problem with Metacritic's scoring system.

Anyone with half a brain knows a 5-Star review does not mean something is considered perfect, it simply means the reviewer thought it was in the top tier of releases and they highly recommend it.

The fact that Metacritic change that 5 (which numerically could mean anything from 80-100) and change it to a flat '100' - that is the problem here.

What about the factual inaccuracies and unsupported claims in the review, do those not matter?

 

[Danpascooch]

I think Greg said that the darkspawn plot in Origins was dangled in front of you because you weren't given any emotional reason to go after them. They were a nameless, faceless, amorphous blob of evil.

On the graphics section, I think that the reviewer was saying that the game had good art direction, but was poor on a technical level.

The "animations are immediate" comment was referring to how much the animations have quickened.

What's more emotional than defending yourself against a group that at its basest instincts want to kill you? If that was his opinion he should have at LEAST explained beyond "somehow" which is a word exclusively used to indicate a lack of explanation.

The difference is that while one is seen as a long-term goal in saving the world, that's also such a massive goal that unless it's very carefully done, it's nearly impossible to get us to internalise the scale of what we've done, whereas, with smaller, more personal side-quests, it provides an instant action/reward, dealing with all the elements in a small enough section that we have all of the emotional baggage of helping these people with their problems on hand at the moment.

Which is exactly what Greg Tito should have written if he meant that, well said.

 

[Danpascooch]

Wow... this has already beginning to bug me as well. I mean, the very first review I've ever seen about the game was the one from The Escapist and I said, "hey!, the game looks like it actually is any good", but then, the other reviews started to pop up.

First IGN, I don't trust their reviews, but they are pretty biased towards BioWare games and it struck me as a surprise they game the game an 8.5. It didn't bothered me too much, same with Gamespot, they are pretty biased toward BioWare's games and they gave the game an almost same score, pointing out the same flaws.

But then I started reading the user scores from the same site and other places. It seems that 80% of the people are pretty mad about the game, or at least dissapointed about it.

Is the game really that bad?, I think that everyone doesn't want to see the real answer, wich may be, yes, the game is simply not that good.

I think I'll wait a bit for things to settle down and truly decide if the game is for me or not.

I wouldn't say it's "bad" but I wouldn't say it's particularly "good" either, it's meh, through and through

 

[lord canti]

So dragon age 2 is now the cool game to argue about.

 

[DirgeNovak]

He liked a game you hate. Of course he is corrupt and was obviously paid off. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Sigh...

Finding a serial killer who gives white lilies to his victims, or making a mine safe again so the workers can return feels somehow more meaningful than ridding the world of Darkspawn just because that's the plot dangled in front of you.

Just because it's dangled in front of you? What does that even mean? It's a meaningless statement that attempts to classify the plot of origins as arbitrary and the plot of Dragon Age II meaningful without any evidence or reasoning beyond the word "somehow"

What evidence do you need? "Monsters from Hell came to destroy the world. Kill them!" pretty much sums up the main quest of DA:O. The individual quests were completely awesome, but DA2's biography take on storytelling makes us care that much more about the characters.

The party-based combat is frenetic, with no auto-attack making you feel in the thick of it with constant button-pressing. (If the no auto-attack annoys you, it's possible to turn this feature back on in the options.)

This is simply incorrect, the option is simply not there on consoles, and the review clearly states that it was based off the 360 version of the game, Bioware meant to include the option but do to a coding mistake the option is not currently on the console version, was this review truly written based on experiences from the game? If so why does the reviewer think the option is there? If there is any merit to the argument that EA payed them for an advance-written positive review this would be the strongest evidence, this statement in the review mentions something that was supposed to be there and was expected to be there by Bioware, but ended up not being in the final version (or review copies) of the game

And you know the option wasn't in the review build because... oh, you don't?! Well, shut up then. If you know it's a coding mistake, you should know that the review build might contain the right code.

Orders you do make with the improved radial menu are immediate, rather than annoyingly waiting for your next strike or a spell animation to play, further quickening the pace of the action.

What does this mean? You still have to wait for the animation just like in Origins, this statement is verifiably and provably false

Now you're just being ridiculous. He says attacks start instantaneously since the turn-based element was removed, not that there are no animations.

Any complaints I may have about Dragon Age II are minor annoyances, easily ignored for the leaps made in other areas.

Now I understand this is a matter of opinion, but nobody was shy about talking about numerous major problems in Dragon Age II, nobody. It's Metacritic user score is about a 4, and it's been long enough since release and many hundreds of reviews have been made that render the "too small a sample size" argument invalid

There are no "major problems" in the game. Maybe slight bugs (I haven't encountered any, though), but this is clearly not a New Vegas or FF XIV situation. The only thing the butthurt nerd kids from Metacritic are complaining about is the change in mechanics, which are perfectly functional. Anyone who gives 0-3 to ANY game is just venting their nerd frustration and their score should be disregarded.

Not only does Dragon Age II play better, it looks absolutely gorgeous. Gone is the mess of pixels and aura bugs that were the graphics of Origins and in its place is a combination of environments that just sing -- the golden statues of Andraste in the Chantry, the ships docked in Lowtown, the eddies of the Wounded Coast and the dank caves and dungeons all look wonderful. Individual textures may not look amazing under scrutiny, but as a whole each character's face is expressive across a wide range of emotions. If I have a concern, it's that certain dungeons below Kirkwall are visited two or three times with only small variations. "Oh, we're in that place again. Glad somebody restocked the chests with treasure."

Am I the only one that wonders what the hell is going on in this paragraph? It basically says "This is absolutely gorgeous, until you really take a good look at it, then it doesn't look too good" what the f--k does that mean? It looks good as long as you don't pay attention!?

What is going on in this paragraph? He's saying the game looks nice. He mentions that some textures are bland (it's a negative point, you should rejoice), but that almost everything else looks great. And he's totally right.

The advancements in RPG mechanics would be enough to set it apart, but the real achievement of Dragon Age II is in the story-telling. I could point out the improved combat and graphics till there's blood covering my face, but BioWare is one of the few companies that uses the advanced computing power available to modern game designers to let you actually play a role. As Hawke, you care about your mother and family, you care about your city and the conflicts that threaten to tear it apart. In a game as dense as this, and it will occupy at least fifty hours if you follow every hook, it's a triumph to just complete the story. But if I was proud to become the Champion of Kirkwall, I was more happy to have the tools to tell the story the way I envisioned it.

It just seems way too enthusiastic for a game that is almost universally cited as less impressive than its predecessor, the opinion that the metacritic user score of 4 is "too small a sample size" or "just trolls" has been obliterated as the number of reviews have almost reached a thousand when you consider the reviews for both 360 and PS3 (which have much the same low score)

AGAIN with Metacritic?! most of the very low reviews basically say "DAII sucks because it's bad and is bad because it sucks". They don't mean anything.

 

[veloper]

The thread with the Dragon Age II review is abuzz with speculation as to whether EA has payed The Escapist for a positive review or something similarly shady is going on. Below is my analysis and some of what I thought to be flaws, inconsistencies, or general oddities in The Escapist's review of Dragon Age II.

In short he didn't notice any flaws. Meh. I don't reckon Greg was paid; he sounded genuinely impressed. That means he's got different tastes and his reviews aren't for us. Even bad taste isn't a crime.

Bioware games are usually shiny and polished if uninspired. The illusion is great to some gamers.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

That's not a problem with the Escapist, that's a problem with Metacritic's scoring system.

Anyone with half a brain knows a 5-Star review does not mean something is considered perfect, it simply means the reviewer thought it was in the top tier of releases and they highly recommend it.

The fact that Metacritic change that 5 (which numerically could mean anything from 80-100) and change it to a flat '100' - that is the problem here.

On the front of the DA2 box it says: PC GAMER Editors Choice 94%. Pretty sure that has nothing to do with metacritic.

What does PC Gamer have to do with the Escapist's review?

What about the factual inaccuracies and unsupported claims in the review, do those not matter?

I don't agree that there are factual inaccuracies. Reviews are all just opinion. Why don't you PM Greg Tito and ask him?

 

[Lukeje]

No other professional review has thus far given the game above a 94, but the Escapist gave it 100.

That's not a problem with the Escapist, that's a problem with Metacritic's scoring system.

Anyone with half a brain knows a 5-Star review does not mean something is considered perfect, it simply means the reviewer thought it was in the top tier of releases and they highly recommend it.

The fact that Metacritic change that 5 (which numerically could mean anything from 80-100) and change it to a flat '100' - that is the problem here.

Actually, I'm pretty sure The Escapist do half stars, so it's anywhere from 90--100, but your point still stands.

What I don't understand is why someone with so many posts on here (the OP'er) would willingly commit forum suicide over such an issue. No-one's forcing him to read the reviews; if he feels that they've lost their objectivity then he's free to go somewhere else.

 

[Danial]

I assume that your comment about dubbing people fanboys is directed at me (the OP) since you didn't quote anyone, in that case I don't know what OP you think you read, because I was very careful not to use the word "fanboy" or imply its equivalent at any point, don't make assumptions about my post if you didn't read it.

What exactly does "silly anger" mean? What about these people's anger is silly? They mostly complain about lackluster environments and story structure, which doesn't seem silly to me at all. Regardless of whether people treat Metacritic as a like/dislike system (with either 1's or 10's) the point is that this sort of negative review fest did NOT happen with games such as Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 1 and 2. The entirety of nerd-dom did not change since Dragon Age Origins, the only thing that changed was the game being reviewed.

And FYI, calling feedback "nerd rage" is just as bad as calling someone a "fanboy" it's just on the other end of the spectrum.

Silly anger is wrong? Any and all Anger about game changes at this level is silly. Anger at games is Stupid as all hell. Being disappointed is one thing, actually getting mad at a game not being as good as its predecessor is just... well bad. And no, I did not attack your point about The review for DA2 not being good. It wasn't it didn't cover anywhere close to enough.

But you Can't use meta critics User reviews at all, people ARE giving this 1/10 because of changes they don't like. As I said, I would so far give the game a Low 80 high 70, It was a disappointment compared to DA:O, but sorry, "The worst game ever!!!", some people are actually spouting this, and yes i have read most of the Sup 4/10 Scores.

And on the Fanboy comment, No, I was using it as everyone in this topic and on the DA2 Review who used "FANBOI" to cut down people defending the game.

Hey shock sodding horror the game WILL get 10/10's from some people, Even non "fanboys" people will like changes you don't, I have to admit this became more like an Action game than a tactical RPG, but hell, mabye that's what they wanted to make. They wanted something more akin to what happened to ME2, but in the end it didn't work.

Im sorry, It is nerd rage, getting mad at anything this pointless is nerd rage, (just as sometimes Fanboy actually has a place), getting Angry, actually angry about a game is just stupid. If you COMPLETELY ignore DA this is still a good game. Not the best by a long shot but still worth buying and playing. This is just, and im right (and no its not aimed at you) Silly anger.

 

[Zaik]

You keep citing metacritic user reviews, but you know I could put 5-10 of those up an hour if I wanted to, right?

Sure, and you would put up 5-10 out of over 1000

It's not all trolls, the denial has to stop, when's the last time Game Informer has given an 83 to a major Bioware RPG? It's not a coincidence that it's scoring badly, it's not a paradox, the universe is not imploding, it's just not very good.

Nope, but let's say maybe me 20 other people put up an average of 7 an hour for an average of 5 hours a day, and you've got... 700 per day. Total reviews on all consoles = 1569 right now, that's two days and a few legitimate reviews.

And who would willingly do that for 5 hours? Who would even spend an hour doing that?

Nerd raging fanboys. I mean, honestly, look at the reaction. I'm not saying your 7s, 6s, hell 5s are wrong. I'm saying your 1s and 2s are just nerd raging fanboys spamming the site because they haven't been this mad since Oblivion added fast travel.

And yet oblivion doesn't have user scores in the 3's and 4's?

Was metacritic even around when Oblivion came out?

I don't know, but having seen the Morrowind loyalist base firsthand, I can guarantee that if Oblivion was released today the same thing would have happened.

Metacritic was out 5 years before Oblivion, Dragon Age Origins just came out not too long ago and it has good ratings, care to explain this "guarantee"?

Occams Razor, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one, there is no conspiracy here, it's just not very good and people are angry because of it. Not liking the reason behind the result doesn't change the reason.

Well folks, I just looked up Oblivion's metacritic page out of curiousity and, lo and behold, it has a grand total of 1413 ratings between pc/xbox/ps3. I'll stop pulling the fanboy irrationality card if you'll admit that it's a little odd to compare a game that's been out 7 years that has less reviews than a game that has been out for two or three days depending on where you live.
Then again that was my doing so I guess that would put us at square 1.

How does the number of reviews Oblivion have matter? It doesn't reduce the review count on Dragon Age II. The volume of quick responses can be easily explained by the fact that people who are angry or feel betrayed by a low quality game are motivated to take action to hold the developer accountable (IE leave a negative rating) while people who are satisfied don't feel the same sense of urgency and often don't bother.

Explain to me why it's odd, what about the Oblivion rating count damages the legitimacy of the Dragon Age II rating? Given that trolls can be all but ruled out since they aren't attacking other new releases and the sheer volume of negative reviews is too much to be accrued by trolls, and that's not even considering the fact that nobody has any motivation to attack this game's ratings for no reason.

*shrug* At this point we're talking maybes. I think there is, you think there isn't. I can't prove there is, and you can't prove there isn't. We can argue all night, but it won't get either of us anywhere. So, I propose we try something that might sound a little less dumb.

I'm gonna go through and average up every user review score for Dragon Age 2 that isn't a 0, 1, 2, 9, or 10. I think that clears up all the bias, right? 3-8 will be acceptable numbers to be averaged. Then I'll come back and post what an average without trolling and countertrolling ends up being, and we can argue about what that means.

I guess you could do that, but you won't really be able to, you can't see individual scores that aren't attached to reviews, and I only see a dozen or so actual full user reviews, which really is too small a sample size.

You mentioned that you "think there is" but my point is that I am at a loss for what "there is" means, what are you implying? There is a troll movement against the game? There is a database glitch that caused its score to be swapped with another game? What do you mean by "I think there is"?

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii/user-reviews
http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/dragon-age-ii/user-reviews
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/dragon-age-ii/user-reviews

If you want to look through them yourself and see the rationale of the average poor rating, you're welcome to, all the actual written reviews are there.

I'm going to concede. I've got nothing but theory on what's going on.

Please answer my question, I'm not saying your theory is wrong, but that's primarily because I have no idea what your theory is, please tell me what your theory is for why Dragon Age 2 is receiving these low scores.

My theory is that there were a smallish number of people who liked Dragon Age: Origins a lot, and somehow came to the conclusion through accident or fanboy rage goggles or whatever came to the conclusion that Dragon Age 2 "sold out", and became some sort of button mashing Gauntlet clone, and therefore decided to hop on guerillamail.com to make some quick disposable emails to register a ton of throwaway accounts that were used to give DA2 a 0-2 rating.

Like I said, it wouldn't be difficult to do 5-10 of these on your own in an hour. Let's say out of everyone who was mad about this, 20 people were mad enough that they decided to spam 0-2 ratings and reviews up just because they didn't like it so much.

I'm not here to argue over whether or not the game is good or bad or the reviewer was paid off or not, I was just saying that 20 people could have engineered the entire metacritic rating in two days, so it's not really remotely reliable of a system to use as evidence.

First off, take a step back and try to read that post you just made from an objective person's point of view, you have to admit it reads like a conspiracy theory.

Secondly, you'll remember Mass Effect 2 having the same "sell out anger" over its inventory system and exploration, people were pissed, nerd rage peaked, and yet somehow it has a user rating of 9/10.

I'll give you that. It could all be in my head and it's really SO bad that it deserves an average rating of 4.

I just don't see it. I mean, even with the demo, it's not like the game was broken. Yeah, you could make the point that basing a 5 as totally average a 4 would be a mere "below average", if average games got 5's normally. They tend to drift more towards 7s. Games that get 4s are more often broken buggy messes that might have been interesting if they were playable or not rushed out the door.

It doesn't seem odd to you that a fairly normal, not totally busted game would suddenly be the first game to ever be rated from a "5 is average" scale? I'm saying something has to be up because there's no rational explanation.

 

[Danial]

I would also like to point out that DA2 360 is a lot better than DA:O(360) but nowhere close to DA:O (PC).

 

[Sapphire_Blue]

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii/user-reviews
http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/dragon-age-ii/user-reviews
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/dragon-age-ii/user-reviews

If you want to look through them yourself and see the rationale of the average poor rating, you're welcome to, all the actual written reviews are there.

I'm going to concede. I've got nothing but theory on what's going on.

So I just did that, removing 0, 1, 2, 9, and 10 scores, and ended up with averages of 5.1 for the PC version, 5.3 for the 360 version and 4.9 for the PS3 version.

Additionally, it seemed for every two lines long rewiew there were one half-page rant.

 

[MrJoyless]

meh...

i liked Origins the reviewer basically said its origins but with a bit more button mashing and more smooth combat...

sounds like a winner to me, only thing i think many people have issues with in this game is that you really really have to set up good party commands to survive in this game on the highest difficulties

one of my best friends who is a massive RPG nerd hit a big ass wall with Dragon Age Origins because he wanted to play all the characters like it was a turn based RPG which you just cant do very well and be effective

i remember seeing his party commands, having spent 0 points for any of his NPCs were basically turn aura on...drink potion if almost dead...use level 1-2 abilities on specific targets...

then i showed him mine that had combos built in for my CC/Heal mage and my Attack mage like sleep+horror or cone of cold+rock fist or my rogue who would stun/kill anyone attacking either of my mages if they got any undue attention and it blew his mind that you could go so deep into the party commands

meh

 

[Zaik]

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii/user-reviews
http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/dragon-age-ii/user-reviews
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/dragon-age-ii/user-reviews

If you want to look through them yourself and see the rationale of the average poor rating, you're welcome to, all the actual written reviews are there.

I'm going to concede. I've got nothing but theory on what's going on.

So I just did that, removing 0, 1, 2, 9, and 10 scores, and ended up with averages of 5.1 for the PC version, 5.3 for the 360 version and 4.9 for the PS3 version.

Additionally, it seemed for every two lines long rewiew there were one half-page rant.

I'm impressed, i kept fat fingering the calculator and screwing it up.

Thanks. After actually looking at the 3s and 4s I still think that they're biased, but I'm not going to push this issue any farther.

 

[Zhukov]

You keep citing metacritic user reviews, but you know I could put 5-10 of those up an hour if I wanted to, right?

Sure, and you would put up 5-10 out of over 1000.?

Over 1000? At time of posting there are 685 across all platforms. And 73 critic reviews.

Just sayin'.

It's not all trolls, the denial has to stop, when's the last time Game Informer has given an 83 to a major Bioware RPG? It's not a coincidence that it's scoring badly, it's not a paradox, the universe is not imploding, it's just not very good.

I want you to try something.

Bring up the list of Metacritic DA2 user reviews. Now open the profile of each reviewer. (I suggest opening each one in a new tab.)

Notice how many of those profiles have been created for the sole purpose of reviewing DA2. Also notice how many of those profiles have posted reviews for two or even three different platforms. (Because, y'know, these people have clearly had the time, not to mention money, to play the game on 360, PS3 and PC.)

Also notice that the above applies to both the positive and negative reviews.

Trolls, haters and fanboys ahoy. Welcome to the internet.

 

[silasbufu]

I agree with some of the things you said, especially the auto-attack argument.
And it wouldn't piss me off in normal circumstances, but I finished the game today and I'm pretty disappointed. I'm not trying to be a troll, but except for the combat which I really loved, everything was just average and the story still has enormous gaps for me.

 

[znix]

DA2 is not a perfect game, but I'm having lots of fun with it regardless. You're not in a sandbox and you can barely interact with the environment. It's impossible to walk up hills and when you're in a fight, you get invisible walls in the environment sometimes, limiting how far you can kite/run. Even so, despite it's mostly "fight, story, fight, story" it's okay. It doesn't have the exploration & whole world experience that oblivion or skyrim will have, but it's still fun in its own right.

There's no way all those who posted at metacritic had finished the game and explored it fully, so I take those reviews with the huge grain of salt they deserve.

 

[Sacman]

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii/user-reviews
http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/dragon-age-ii/user-reviews
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/dragon-age-ii/user-reviews

If you want to look through them yourself and see the rationale of the average poor rating, you're welcome to, all the actual written reviews are there.

I'm going to concede. I've got nothing but theory on what's going on.

So I just did that, removing 0, 1, 2, 9, and 10 scores, and ended up with averages of 5.1 for the PC version, 5.3 for the 360 version and 4.9 for the PS3 version.

Additionally, it seemed for every two lines long rewiew there were one half-page rant.

I'm impressed, i kept fat fingering the calculator and screwing it up.

Thanks. After actually looking at the 3s and 4s I still think that they're biased, but I'm not going to push this issue any farther.

I read some of the longer rants and they seemed biased to me... very few of them made any kind of legitimate argument as to why the game should be a 0 or a 1... all they did was overly complain about annoyances like day 1 DLC or the stylized graphics or problems that we're present in the first game, like the combat becoming stale after a while(Which in my opinion it never really did)... and anything they stated that could have some relevant had no backing evidence... usually about the characters or story most of them just stated that the story was bad without saying why it is or when talking about the characters never mentioned anyone that wasn't shown in the demo... than they say something like, "I wanted to like this game but..." when it's painfully obvious that they went into it wanting to hate it, if they played it at all because most of them sound like they never even played the game let alone the demo...

[and of course they would throw a redundant zinger in at the end in brackets like, "Yeah, and it's ugly too."]

 

[Hawgh]

I disagree. I had a more eloquent(and ranty) post, but the Escapist ate it. Stupid thing doesn't realize when I'm trying to help it.

 

[Nikolaz72]

You keep citing metacritic user reviews, but you know I could put 5-10 of those up an hour if I wanted to, right?

Sure, and you would put up 5-10 out of over 1000

It's not all trolls, the denial has to stop, when's the last time Game Informer has given an 83 to a major Bioware RPG? It's not a coincidence that it's scoring badly, it's not a paradox, the universe is not imploding, it's just not very good.

Alert-alert. Its a matter of opinion? I like the game and have played for like 10 hours. I've and it feels like I've barely started. I've played both Rogue/Warrior. Rogue seems the most fun while Warrior is the safest (Way it should be?`) Which is also an opinion. And yea, they cant 'all' be fakes. But a lot of them 'are' trolls.