Escapist Dragon Age II Review, Is Something Wrong Here?

[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.

 

[Zing]

I don't know how anyone can actually finish this game? What exactly is the incentive? I'm 14 hours into it and I've lost any track of any semblence of an overarching storyline. There's NO epicness to the land at all, you basically backtrack your way over the same places(which mostly look like shit, especially the outside levels).

The only improvements I've found is the dialogue system. It's far better, having moved away from "Choir Boy option" "Hitler option" or "Sweden option", also the combat does seem a bit more fluid. There's still no reason for me to finish this game at all, though. This is the first BioWare game to have failed so badly in the story department.

 

[Legion]

I don't say trolls but a rabid fan base... Come on even before the game came out people already hated, why? because it looks different and plays different it's a step away from the basic formula that the fans enjoyed and that scares them, not because the game is bad but because it isn't the same game... let me quote Yahtzee, "Fans are clingy, complaining, dipshits, who will never ever be grateful for any concession you make..."

This is the main problem with taking the complaints seriously and the accusations of anybody hating it being "trolls". If you could metacritic the game before it came out then the results we are seeing would be almost identical because a lot of people were downright determined to hate it before it even came out.

The problem I see with this is that a lot of the complaints made were over things that Bioware never pretended wouldn't be in the game, things such as the dialogue wheel and the fact that most of the game would be set in Kirkwall were confirmed a long time before release so complaints about that are only valid to a certain extent.

The only valid complaints that I have heard are that the auto-attack isn't on the console version despite them saying as little as hours before the release date that it was, this was a blatant falsehood on Bioware's part as they knew that a lot of people were extremely unhappy with the idea that it wouldn't be included and had been promising users that it was. The fact that they didn't officially announce that it wasn't as soon as they knew shows deliberate misleading.

The other are things such as DirectX11 or whatever it is not working correctly, as that kind of thing should be okay as standard, unless you specifically state that it isn't.

The other problem is when half of the "review" is Bioware/EA bashing and irrelevant to the game itself, it makes it extremely hard to take seriously. Criticism of the company that made it is one thing, but it shouldn't take up anything more than a footnote of the review itself.

*snipped for length*

Exactly, and thank you.

 

[ZephrC]

Wow, seriously? First of all, he gave the game 5/5 stars, not 100/100. Metacritic may count those things the same way, but they obviously do not actually mean the same thing.

Secondly, Dragon Age II is clearly not what the raging fanboys wanted. They're the ones all butthurt, and they're the ones who are most likely to be giving user reviews on Metacritic. It sucks that they didn't get what they wanted, but it has most certainly unfairly skewed the average user rating. The critic rating is actually pretty decent. No match for the first game, but certainly respectable. I think that's a much better indication of how good the game is right now.

Thirdly, why would you even bring up the idea of the review being bought off? That's just straight up stupid. One gushing review about a game that's only overall considered to be good, not great, by most critics that isn't even being advertised on the site is basically zero evidence in favor of that opinion. Yeah, you have some pretty good points in favor of the review being bad, but there's nothing indicating it was bought off.

Seriously, the best you could come up with is mentioning the bit about the auto-attack not working. Okay, so he clearly didn't do the research on that point, but is it really so hard to imagine that he read about that being in the game and just didn't double check because he didn't use it?

And honestly, can you seriously not figure out how a game might have good graphics (especially in comparison to Origins, which was pretty much universally blasted for having quite bad graphics) and still have mediocre textures? Do you really think texture resolution and graphics are completely interchangeable? You've maybe never heard of art design or polygon count or things looking good from a distance or lighting effects or any of a bazillion other metrics for measuring graphical quality that have nothing to do with textures?

Basically you have a couple valid but minor complaints about an above average review of a game you don't like and you're trying to make it seem like all journalistic integrity has been thrown out the window because of it. A couple fairly minor factual mistakes and a few subjective things you disagree with aren't the apocalypse.

Actually, as far as I can see there's no real indication in this thread that you've even played the game. Have you? Not that you have to to have an opinion on the matter, but I'm kind of curious why you care so much if this review didn't cause you to immediately run out and buy the game.

I personally haven't played enough of it yet to say whether or not I like it better than the original, but I can say for certain that I'm having fun. Quite a bit of it, in fact. When do I get my check from EA, 'cause apparently that means they bought my opinion? Oh I'm sorry. That really only means some people say EA bought me out, but you think they probably didn't.

 

[Sacman]

I don't say trolls but a rabid fan base... Come on even before the game came out people already hated, why? because it looks different and plays different it's a step away from the basic formula that the fans enjoyed and that scares them, not because the game is bad but because it isn't the same game... let me quote Yahtzee, "Fans are clingy, complaining, dipshits, who will never ever be grateful for any concession you make..."

This is the main problem with taking the complaints seriously and the accusations of anybody hating it being "trolls". If you could metacritic the game before it came out then the results we are seeing would be almost identical because a lot of people were downright determined to hate it before it even came out.

The problem I see with this is that a lot of the complaints made were over things that Bioware never pretended wouldn't be in the game, things such as the dialogue wheel and the fact that most of the game would be set in Kirkwall were confirmed a long time before release so complaints about that are only valid to a certain extent.

The only valid complaints that I have heard are that the auto-attack isn't on the console version despite them saying as little as hours before the release date that it was, this was a blatant falsehood on Bioware's part as they knew that a lot of people were extremely unhappy with the idea that it wouldn't be included and had been promising users that it was. The fact that they didn't officially announce that it wasn't as soon as they knew shows deliberate misleading.

The other are things such as DirectX11 or whatever it is not working correctly, as that kind of thing should be okay as standard, unless you specifically state that it isn't.

You sir, are extremely level headed... and have shown a level of sound judgment and restraint I have yet to see on this thread... especially, among my posts... you shame me... I would continue my words of praise, but being from the U.S., I have obviously been educated on a botched education system and thus have a limited vocabulary and a poor understanding of the English language... but that is a discussion for another day and perhaps another thread...

Words N Shit...

and you too...

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

Video games are serious business! ! !

 

[drunken_munki]

Common sense...

"Read these comments The majority of the people played only a couple hours of this game before realizing that it wasn't worth it to invest anymore time into playing something like this.

By proof of contradiction, I will show you why this game doesn't deserve anything above a 5.

Suppose, that the true rating of this game was actually 90+ as rated by PC Gamer, then it must be the case that this would be:
*The best RPG ever
*The biggest and most interesting towns that you ever seen in RPG
*Many player choices with consequences on the story.
*Well written story that will make your eyes wet many times
*Much more attachment to companions, more so than any of DAO. etc.

But anyone who has played the game will see that:
*Not by a lightyear
*What?
*Im hungry
*lol
*Nope

And there you see by proof of contradiction. Thus, 0/10 "

*oh, quoted from a review on MC.

 

[drunken_munki]

ubersnip

Escapist reviews are often statistical anomalies, remember the Black Ops review?

I think its more likely Greg Tito just rated the game on what he thought about it, rather than trying to guess the average score like most other reviewers.

Hmm not quite?

Edge magazine gave a good review of a poor game, without even mentioning the disparity from the DA:O to DA2. On its own merits, it flops as a triple A budget RPG. So given that, it is more like a 5-6 / 10 game. Now throw in the fact that a lot of Bioware fans and RPG fans were keen and excited on playing a game that they were accustomed to seeing. With depth and character. Yep, you enrage and upset a lot of fans. Now you can call them what you like, but what are you without your fans? What exactly are you? A money sucking leech?

Please can someone explain whats the point in trashing one set of fans to replace them for another set? You can't make EVERYONE happy. That is a fact of life. So why bother? They could have made this dumbed down crass game and called it something else. There you go, that mass market can eat it up.

Fuck em. Another developer will swoop in and woo the people, and create a deserving game to receive high acclaim, that is EARNED. Bring on the competition, there isn't much you have to beat here...

 

[DazBurger]

GUYS! Stop that... Its silly...

Why are we discussing reviews when theres a FREE DEMO on Steam?



... So instead of reading reviews of biased people, play the damn game!.. FOR FREE!