Merkavar said:
yes cause listening to the popular oppinion is such a bad thing. i will get around to it eventually. but at the moment i have no motivation to play it over other games i can play or even just doing my uni work. its not that i have heard that its bad, i have had this oppinion shoved down my throat with the number of threads about how it sucks clutering up the place. and the number of negative responses has demotivated me to play it. im sorry if this doesnt make sense to you.
but have you noticed. out of the 5 posts there was only 2 positive things said about it. that the story is easy to understand and expands on the original. and that its engaging and enjoyable.
Popular Opinion is fine, but I think you should make your own decisions. Is Dragon Age 2 as good as Origins? No. Is it a bad game? No. Should you give it a shot? Yes.
Myself, I happen to find strengths and weaknesses in it.
Storywise, it's not as good as Origins. The story lacks an overarching antagonist, like Loghain and the Darkspawn in Origins. Instead, Act 1 has no strong antagonist, and there is an antagonist swap between Acts 2 and 3.
Some people complain about the Dialogue wheel, but I don't particularly mind it too much, since the trade off is now we have fully voiced dialogue, which is rather nice. And really, the Dialogue wheel offers you a fair amount of options.
The one complaint about the combat is that enemies come at you in waves instead of massive groups like Origins. But in DA2, you're much more mobile and your abilities have a lot more force behind them. In Origins, combat was pretty lame, you just stood there attacking enemies and sometimes someone fell down. In 2, if you play a rogue you will hop all around the battlefield stabbing people, if you play a warrior you can throw enemies back with your 2h weapon, mage's fireballs feel like they're actually knocking people aside, yadda yadda. Also, the cross class combo system is pretty intuitive once you understand it.
Most people complain about the Armor being removed for party members and replaced with ugraded armor, but I personally like not having to change out my party's pants every encounter, and instead focus on combat. Plus, the trade off her is now every party member has their own defined look to them, will really nice armor and outfits. The thing I hated more than ANYTHING in DA:O was that the armor just looked like ass. I mean, cmon, the mage hats or the leather caps? None of your party members stood out, they just looked blah.
Skills are gone, but really, the skills system was a bit arbitrary anyway, there was no real reason to have it. You can still make potions and poisons and runes like before, your character automatically gets the benefits of the coercion, nature, and tactics skills among others. The only thing really missing is stealing and to be honest, stealing wasn't that big to begin with in DA:O besides the thief quests.
My biggest complain about Dragon Age 2 is that it reuses the same environments. It does admittedly get old, but it hasn't kept me from playing it. It's no where near as bad as it was in Mass Effect 1 where there was just like 2 dungeons to go through.
I say give it a shot, can't hurt.
