Poll: Dragon Age 2 was it that bad?

[Sonic Doctor]

Snip

I got about 30 minutes into the demo, and again, the characters weren't interesting at all to me. Also the demo was much too hack n slash for me.

In the demo, from what I remember, your hometown was being destroyed and some darkspawn attacked you, then I found I could kill all of them in one swipe which I instantly hated. Then there was some dialogue which I didn't like much at all. And that's when I decided to stop since I felt I'd had a touch of everything it had to offer me.

Oh wow, then you don't know what the game is really like. From what you say, you were playing a plot device not the actual normal game play.

Wow, that is definitely a bad move on BioWare's part.

Explanation: In the beginning, you are shown that Varric the dwarf is being interrogated. He is told to recount the story of the Champion. Most likely the part you played was the exaggerated battle scene, Varric at first exaggerates how powerful the Champion was at that time. In that battle you are given all the power as if you were around level 20(with a sampling of special abilities) and all the enemies are level 3 or less. After you do that, the woman questioning Varric tells he is lying and needs to tell the truth, then you start out playing as Hawke at level 1, with the normal two starting abilities, each from a different ability tree, then you fight the same battle again, but it is vastly different a such a low level of course. At level one, you certainly can't kill a darkspawn with just one blow, even on casual(because I played it on casual the first time through).

 

[Turing '88]

Worst Bioware game I've ever played, which I guess isn't as bad as it sounds.

I didn't finish it; combat was incredibly tedious, game way too linear, aesthetic was bland, items lacked any character...etc . I got bored way before act 1 and stopped playing, then that miracle of sound video made me want to play it again. Spamming the insta kill cheat to skip every fight I got part way into act 2 before Hawke acting counter to my intentions / not even asking my intentions made me quit.

I actually only enjoyed one or two quests, one I remember was the

Spoiler

the elf killer, he was in a cave/dungeon if I remember correctly. That quest where you meet one of his victims on the way in and she has Stockholm syndrome? I thought that was a very well done quest.

 

[Smooth Operator]

RPG pumped out in a year, how could it possibly go wrong...

 

[tehroc]

I would Say that the new Legacy DLC has Saved Dragon Age 2. Highly recomended.

Yeah, that is just fantastic, forced to buy DLC in order to get the entire story. Let's talk about Neverwinter Nights 2, without Mask of the Betrayer expansion, the game was very poorly optimized and ran like shit on a good computer. Mask of the Betrayer made the game actually playable with decent framerates, but still everyone slams NWN2 as a terrible game due to the flaws of the original product.

So why does DA2 get a pass in this regard (or is it just trendy to slam anything and everything Obsidian has done)?

 

[Hypertion]

ok gameplay improvements.... but they bastardized the story so badly...

fun to play but not a truely enjoyable experience compaired to origins overall.

from what ive heard bioware did this to Knights of the Old Republic too.....

that said its not bad enough i dont love it. just not as much as the origonal....

storywise..


gameplay is pretty fun^^

 

[Sonic Doctor]

ok gameplay improvements.... but they bastardized the story so badly...

fun to play but not a truely enjoyable experience compaired to origins overall.

from what ive heard bioware did this to Knights of the Old Republic too.....

What do you mean? Other than the MMO that hasn't come out yet, BioWare only developed one KotOR game, the first one. KotOR 2 was done by Obsidian.

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

No. A lot of people stupidly assumed it would be in the same vain as Dragon Age: Origins, and were disappointed.
Yes, there were many flaws, but it wasn't as terrible as everyone said it was.

Why would it NOT be in the same VEIN as Origins? They share a title, for Christ's sake! I can understand if people were complaining that Assassin's Creed wasn't in the same vein as Grand Theft Auto, but COME ON. It was supposed to be a sequel, hence the "2" in the name. And the differences between Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 are NOWHERE near as jarring. This is the stupidest argument I've ever heard, and I pray it was sarcasm I missed.

Just because it's the same series doesn't mean it has to be the exact same game with each new instalment, like Call of Duty is. It's a good thing to change it up every now and again otherwise the series will get stale.

The problem is, people will complain about how it's the same game every sequel and then the dev will try something new and then everyone will ***** about how it's changed.

LOL , you think COD " changes it up"

Learn to read posts properly.

 

[Hypertion]

oh yeah.. forgot about that...

lol i think thats even sadder.. that bioware did the fucking this time that is...

again tho i still had some fun. and i mod crazy the game... despite owning the Xbox version.

i made Hawke a Dragon.... tho he fights weirdly lmao.

 

[Wuggy]

No it wasn't that bad. It was a good game. It just wasn't as good as Origins.

I enjoyed it quite a bit, but not as much as Origins. I put the blame for this on EA, because I'm guessing they were trying to rush the game out: resulting in a short development cycle for a big game.

The narrative had very big potential, but it was hindered by the fact that the game was rushed. It resulted to year-worth of jumps in the storyline that broke the rule of "show don't tell". If these jumps hadn't been there, I would've felt that the narrative style would've been actually way more compelling than Origin's.

I enjoyed the story more than Origins'. It was not "here's the big baddy, now do stuff for 40 hours and then kill it". It was more subtle and was story about change. Change in people, change in hierarchy, change in society etc. It broke out from the chains of the fantasy plot we've seen time and time again.

I really liked the changes in combat mechanics. The original's were just a bit too awkward at times. I did not, however, like the fact that there always was the "second wave" of enemies. It just seemed a bit tedious and unnecessary.

The characters were alright overall. They had personality, backgrounds and character-relationships between each other that showed in the wonderful idle banter. Are they better than in Origins? I don't know, I guess that's for the individual decide. None of them could surpass Shale or Oghren in my mind, but that's just me.

 

[LokiArchetype]

I haven't finished playing yet as I got distracted by school work and other games, but the only thing I find bothersome so far are the repeated environments. (I'm at the beginning of the third act.)

I think another appropriate question, though, is was Dragon Age: Origins that good?

The way its brought up when DA2 is mentioned you'd think it was one of the best RPGs ever. The only thing that really stood out for me was the characters, though. I don't think the gameplay/story was all that remarkable. The game had plenty of its own issues.

-Mages were OP and if they spec'd Arcane Warrior and Blood Mage it was practically god mode.
-Dexterity modifiers weren't applied properly for Rogues so certain builds were broken.
-Party build was very restrictive as you essentially needed an offensive mage, healing mage, and your phys dps was going to be a rogue if you wanted to actually be able to get the loot from the dungeon. If you wanted to play a rogue or warrior then you had an especially limited choice in what party members you got to play with.

-There were no respec pots until Awakening so you were stuck with your and your companions initial stat/talent allocations.

-The whole silent protagonist deal made you the least interesting, least animated, and least characterized member of your group.

-The free choice of what place you want to go to after Lothering gives the illusion that order doesn't matter, except it does. If you do the Tower of the Magi before Redcliffe you could unknowingly eliminate one of the solutions for the latter's plotline.

-If you played as a human noble your intro plotline was just completely abandoned.

-The Fade, just, the Fade.


I'm expecting people to chime in that the PC version was the only -real- version and that fan made mods fixed some of these issues. That's like saying a book series should be more highly regarded because there's some really great fanfics that fix some of the unresolved issues.

 

[The Forces of Chaos]

I would Say that the new Legacy DLC has Saved Dragon Age 2. Highly recomended.

Yeah, that is just fantastic, forced to buy DLC in order to get the entire story. Let's talk about Neverwinter Nights 2, without Mask of the Betrayer expansion, the game was very poorly optimized and ran like shit on a good computer. Mask of the Betrayer made the game actually playable with decent framerates, but still everyone slams NWN2 as a terrible game due to the flaws of the original product.

So why does DA2 get a pass in this regard (or is it just trendy to slam anything and everything Obsidian has done)?

I?m not giving Dragon Age 2 a pass, I?m saying it's possible to make it suck less, I.e. have a more enjoyable experience with this dlc. They have more dialog and expand on why Kirkwall was slightly nuts. Also some decent boss fights. I would put this dlc on par with mass effect 2 lair of the shadow broker.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I enjoyed it,but it didn't give me the epic feeling that Dragon Age Origins did.

And regarding the lenght(finished the game in 24h with all side quests),it really felt like an expansion rather than a full game.

 

[AlternatePFG]

I would Say that the new Legacy DLC has Saved Dragon Age 2. Highly recomended.

Yeah, that is just fantastic, forced to buy DLC in order to get the entire story. Let's talk about Neverwinter Nights 2, without Mask of the Betrayer expansion, the game was very poorly optimized and ran like shit on a good computer. Mask of the Betrayer made the game actually playable with decent framerates, but still everyone slams NWN2 as a terrible game due to the flaws of the original product.

So why does DA2 get a pass in this regard (or is it just trendy to slam anything and everything Obsidian has done)?

Well MotB was a full on expansion, when this is really just a short DLC. I really don't think a 3 hour DLC can save a game, especially if it's 10$.

 

[Gill Kaiser]

You need a "mediocre" option.

 

[satsugaikaze]

So why does DA2 get a pass in this regard (or is it just trendy to slam anything and everything Obsidian has done)?

If you read the internet, you'll know that DA2 has been far from getting a free pass.

Also, I've read a metric ton of comments that have always been talking about how the game would have been better if it was more like Origins, and I think it'd be a load of tosh if they did. It seemed to me that their main goal was to not make the same cookie-cutter RPG game that Origins was.


On a personal note, I have to admit that I hated Origins. Having loved Neverwinter Nights 2, it's really odd for me to dislike a game so eerily similar in some respects. But in the context in which I played it, I played it right after finishing Mass Effect (bought both in one purchase). Going back to the traditional pause-play stuff and especially the silent-protagonist deal just felt plain backward. The characters and dialogue were the only thing that really got me through the game, and II arguably had that in spades just as much as Origins did. In Origins, I managed to get up to Orzammar before being completely fed up with the tedium of the combat system. It just simply didn't feel visceral enough. Dragon Age II, I suppose, had what Egoraptor might call "game-feel". Sound effects, animations, color palette - in Dragon Age II they just felt like they had more of an impact.

As for the narrative structure itself, I could argue in its case about how the game was primarily exploring the shifts in paradigms about society's perception of what allies and enemies are, thus making the large time-jumps necessary, but I certainly agree that it could have been handled better.

If I were to suggest an improvement, I'd probably say add more Varric commentary! This is the exact same problem that Final Fantasy XIII had. The hindsight-laden commentary is a great way to frame the narrative, but Dragon Age II simply didn't use it enough. Aside from that one hilarious companion mission, Varric's storytelling really did seem to feel just like headnotes and footnotes.

 

[Da_Schwartz]

Compared to some of the RPG garbage thats been coming otu recently i thought it was pretty good. But rushed. To me the story took its time and played out well paced, then at the end its like go go go go go go annnnd stop. See ya @ the DLC suckers. Like the head dev was all of a sudden whoa whoa whoa, at this rate this game will become something epic, better end it here so we have something to sell as an add-on. -_- Pretty much i was upset to see it just end like that.

But still it's not as bad as people say it is. Some just like to hate it because it's popular, if you don't like it, don't play it.

 

[Therumancer]

Snip

The problem is that too many gamers these days have the mentality that the developers should be making the games exactly how they want them, that the developer shouldn't think about what other people might want, or even what the developer wants to create.

If BioWare has a problem it is that they both want to make the game they want to make and please all the rabid foaming at the mouth fans (not an exaggeration as seen from the seriously unfair user reviews on Metcritic) at the same time.

.

Much snipped, but it comes down to these points more or less.

The thing is that when it came to "Dragon Age 2", Bioware didn't annoy a small group of rabid fanboys, but the majority of the fanbase, there is a distinct differance. This is not to say that nobody liked "Dragon Age 2" but... well... the results speak for themselves. To someone who DID like the game the complaints on Metacritic were unfair and unwarrented, but not to the people making them, and the whole point is to collect the general range of opinions.

Yes there ARE Trolls out there, but they have always been out there, and they generally do not influance ratings since they are included in what we normally see. People who blame things like 4-Chan for "Metabombing" miss the point that they metabomb everything, people only complain about that when they don't like a score something is getting.

I'll also say that part of the point of a series is to produce "more of the same" so to speak. If you want to create an entirely new game, that plays in another way, then it should be a new series/product line, even if it's a spin off. Sort of like how they largely did "Ultima" as a top down RPG, and made the first person games set in the same universe an entirely differant series called "Ultima Underworld".

Beyond just generally being a shoddy game, which I guess we will have to agree to disagree on, I feel it went beyond just the recycled dungeons to pretty much everything except for the dialogue and cut scenes (guys jumping off roofs in medieval armor like they are ninjas irks me, not to mention the monsters spawning in waves on top of you, and there being little or no time for fight preparation since you can't see what's there until it attacks most of the time), the bottom line is that they never should have attached a "2" to the end of the name. They should have either launched a new RPG line if they wanted to experiment with these things, even if they wound up using the same general world setting.

In the end though the bottom line is the game got wrecked overall, and either Bioware learned from this or they didn't. It's not an isolated incident though, as I pointed out
they seem to have simply developed a bad attitude, and that feeds into the whole thing.

 

[Kahunaburger]

I hope you got your money back. Good luck trying the "lol its subjective" line with an editor or publisher.

I took and editing and publishing class as well. What do you think an editor is for? The editor is there to catch typos. But still, not everything will be caught, I have seen many books and magazines with typos.

Jay Leno would never have had any funny pieces for his headlines segment, and I would never have seen in my local paper, Pizza Hut's ad that they were hiring divers.

You think very much in black and white.

The problem is that the world is grey.

Yes, anyone with standards thinks in black and white. That must be it. There's no other reason they could look at that clip of DA2 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKbbGX4Wz0Y] and see bad writing!

(And my comment still stands. Good luck with trying to convince a editor, publisher, or customers that there's no such thing as bad writing.)

 

[Jennacide]

Didn't pick any of the options, as my opinion is a middle of the road "meh." The combat was well done, the acting good, and story well told until act 3. The problems of course out weighed a lot of this, particularly environment reusage, and one of the most idiotic plot shifts in history.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

I hope you got your money back. Good luck trying the "lol its subjective" line with an editor or publisher.

I took and editing and publishing class as well. What do you think an editor is for? The editor is there to catch typos. But still, not everything will be caught, I have seen many books and magazines with typos.

Jay Leno would never have had any funny pieces for his headlines segment, and I would never have seen in my local paper, Pizza Hut's ad that they were hiring divers.

You think very much in black and white.

The problem is that the world is grey.

Yes, anyone with standards thinks in black and white. That must be it. There's no other reason they could look at that clip of DA2 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKbbGX4Wz0Y] and see bad writing!

(And my comment still stands. Good luck with trying to convince a editor, publisher, or customers that there's no such thing as bad writing.)

Also, who can forget how downright embarrassing the graphics got at times?
Every design decision screamed "rushed".