Poll: Dragon Age vs Dragon Age: The Battle Continues!

[idon'tknowaboutthat]

Okay, 70+% of people are not insane and liked DA:O better, I can sleep soundly tonight. Seriously, how is this even a contest? DA:O had a better story, better writing, more dynamic and varied combat, looked better for it's time, didn't have copy-pasted dungeons, etc. In DA2, why do I care about some mage/templar war I have absolutely no involvement in? At least in Origins, you had the darkspawn taint, so you had to become a Warden, so the story made sense. Combat's always the same in DA2, just do those stupid cross-class combos and you win, but that's the only way you can win, since they axed like half the spells and abilities from the first game. And watch out for those extra mobs that magically spawn in just as you defeated the last group, right at the back on top of your ranged units, to make the game "harder", instead of legitimately making challenging fights by having strong enemies that use varied abilities. And yeah, like I said, fighting through a dungeon, and then fighting through the next dungeon that's the same one but going the other way... like we wouldn't notice, Bioware?

 

[Saviordd1]

Tough.

Origins: Storytelling, characters, world building
2: Combat, companions, visual design.

Overall Origins though, it was just much more thought out. I think if they had given Dragon Age 2 another year of development it could've been great but the repeating areas and lack luster third act just were killing points when compared to Origins.

But jesus christ at least the second one made the combat actually fun.

 

[babinro]

Both equally.

I prefer the story and most of the character from Origins...
I greatly prefer the combat while still enjoying some of the story and some of the characters in DA:2...

When you say, "Dragon Age", my mind immediately turns to Origins for fond memories but if I'm asked to replay either game I'll actually want to replay DA 2.

Here's hoping DA 3 combines the best elements of both.

 

[GroovySpecs]

I loved DA:O but I hated DA2 with a passion. There were parts of that game where i literally switched off, walked away in disgust and had to calm down before going back to. Once I completed DA2 I traded it straight in at gamestation, because I knew with 100% certainty I would never pick it up again, to date its the only game I have ever disposed of.

 

[Greg White]

For all the complaints about DAII, I loved how it gave some effectiveness to greatweapons. Being able to hit more than 2 guy without a special move gave the option so much more entertainment value.

Some people complained about the story, but I'm not sure why. Things just seemed unrelated until later on. The artifact you found in act 2 caused the templar leader to slowly go crazy in act 4 after she got it towards the end of act 3, the mage thing builds throughout acts 2, 3, and 4, and the incursions in act 3 weaken the central government enough for you to rise in stature and the templars to take power for act 4. Things build ever so slowly, but you get hints that something bigger is going on.

In DA:O you see the big threat once and then don't get much indication that they're even a threat for some time afterwards. They take out 1 town, but are completely ignored by everyone else in favor of fighting Logain, and you only see small groups of them here and there. They're supposedly ravaging the countryside, but you run across bandits more often than a darkspawn warband of any description, but then they do show up at the very end after giving you months to get ready for them.

 

[Drago-Morph]

and turng the uncanny vally slasher smiled darkspawn into generic zombie mooks.

Uh, I think you got your games mixed up.

Generic zombie mooks:

Spoiler: DA:O

Uncanny valley slasher smile creeps:

Spoiler: DAII

No, I'm pretty sure I picked correctly.

Besides I couldn't take the DA2 darkspawn seriously after seeing them waddle into battle 'like my baby brother with a full nappy'.

Not very scary.

I'm sorry, but if you think the DA:O Darkspawn are anything other than the most generic type of monster goons, then I just can't your opinion seriously. You're just projecting your senseless DAII hate onto everything.

 

[Raikas]

Okay, 70+% of people are not insane and liked DA:O better, I can sleep soundly tonight.,

Having different taste in games is hardly a sign of insanity.



Anyway, To answer the poll, I loved them both. Origins was clearly a more polished product so it was better on the first playthrough, but was also very generic - it was still great, it just didn't have anything new.

With DA2, I was disappointed at first - the recycled environments, the enemies that seemed to fall from the sky, the silliness of the ending - but it grew on me when I replayed it a second time (and then a third, and a fourth). Yeah, it did a lot wrong, but that's less important to me than the fact that at least it tried to be something different - it wasn't a generic "Hero slays the dragon, saves the realm" story, and I totally loved that. I liked that the characters were less generic as well, even if it meant that they weren't always likeable. I liked the new skill trees (although I'd/ still have liked to see a chohersion skill). And I loved the way the banter/dialogue and relationships changed depending on the history of dialogue choices -and that's the thing that impressed me the most and is what made the whole game so replay-worthy for me.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Biased toward Origins because for whatever reason I couldn't finish a single playthrough of 2 while completing 4-5 playthroughs of Origins. Can't even explain it, reused assets don't bother me at all. Though I don't like disliking the protagonist and Hawke tended to rub me the wrong way regardless of what dialogue I chose.

EDIT: To it's credit, I did enjoy hopping around the battlefield like a kid on a sugar rush while playing as a rogue in DA2.

In DA:O you see the big threat once and then don't get much indication that they're even a threat for some time afterwards. They take out 1 town, but are completely ignored by everyone else in favor of fighting Logain, and you only see small groups of them here and there. They're supposedly ravaging the countryside, but you run across bandits more often than a darkspawn warband of any description, but then they do show up at the very end after giving you months to get ready for them.

Other than the black covering the map, but I agree that's a bit of a cop out. More towns were menaced in the dlc to get Shale but that's obviously not available to everyone.

...Or was that a dlc you were guaranteed to get if you bought it new?

Dragon age 2 was an objectively bad game, so naturally I prefer Origin.

Sorry, no such thing..

No, not even Superman 64.

No, not even ET: The Extra Terrestrial for the Atari 2600.

Certainly, certainly not Dragon Age 2.

Opinions are not objective, just like rain on your wedding day is not ironic.

That said, it's kind of funny how many people's subjective definition of a "bad game" has moved from "a game which simply does not work" to "a game which was slightly disappointing", because frankly that's all it is here. There's nothing wrong with Dragon Age 2. It works, in fact mechanically it works better than Origins, it's just flawed and visibly rushed through development.

A bad game is one that has shitty visuals, worse than even the game that came before it, a bad game is one that has a crappy story, a bad game is one that reuses environments with barely any changes from one area to the next, a bad game is one that has enemies literally spawn out of thin air.

My god you must hate retro gaming!

 

[Terminal Blue]

And secondly I have no idea wtf death curse is. Theres a spell called death hex... but that's not a combo.

Death cloud + death hex.

It consumes the death hex, but not the death cloud, in order to cause a massive amount of single-target damage without interrupting the damage from death cloud. In fact, if you cast it carefully you can get most of the bonus damage from death hex first then cast the cloud to trigger the combo. Not to mention it also means getting vulnerability hex.

I was misremembering the name though. It's called Entropic Death.

Thirdly and lastly, there's tons of good combos. Nightmare, shattering, the shockwave combo is a great follow up after you have used force field to tank a bunch of damage.

Nightmare is a half-damage entropic death without the cloud Shattering is pointless except for detonating walking bomb, which Entropic Death can also do in addition to its many other functions. Shockwave is okay, but is ultimately a waste of two very useful spells for a highly situational benefit.

Again one of those doesn't exist. The mass paralysis really isn't better than just sleeping everything and then waking nightmare. And storm of the century is either a waste of time or downright counterproductive.

Well, I guess if you think paralysis explosion and waking nightmare are the same that explains why you didn't get much out of storm of the century.

You can solo a good deal of nightmare very, very easily by relying primarily on those two spell combinations. Frankly, the huge AOE doesn't matter because you don't even particularly need a party, and if you are bringing a party you should just be bringing more mages just to cast more instances of storm of the century, entropic death, paralysis explosion, mass paralysis, cone of cold, (virulent) walking bomb, blood wound and mana clash. Because that's all that really matters.

Pretty much everything is overpowered if you do it correctly...

..which would be the same thing as saying nothing is overpowered, which would be great. That would be the ideal state and the state which Dragon Age 2, for all its many flaws, almost got to. However, unfortunately..

..it's just not correct in the case of Origins.

Not even remotely true. Shatter lets Leliana and mages wreck mid level opponents very quickly as well as take down single targets.

..or, you could just take storm of the century and paralysis explosion, and not ever have to deal with mid level opponents at all.

sleep+horror does extremely high single target damage useful for dueling sections like the proving and the duel with loghain.

Or you could just take entropic death, which does (more than) twice as much damage with a secondary AoE effect.

See what I'm getting at yet?

DA2 is basically less a combo and more just a basic debuff with a tiny visual indicator icon. It's boring and not very effective.

What..

Firstly, it is a combo. There are specific abilities which consume the debuff in order to trigger another effect, leading to a pattern of setting up and triggering. I don't see in what universe that is if not a combo.

Secondly, it's extremely effective and one of the best methods of removing mid level enemies, which you actually have to think about in Dragon Age 2 because you can't just rely on exploiting a few broken skills.

Then maybe they should learn how to use the abilities they got instead of just assuming the game is broken? I know it requires thinking, but isn't it supposed to be in part a combat strategy game?

Well, that would be very sound thinking and all if we'd decided a priori that the game is perfectly balanced and thus any observation of imbalance within it is due to one's own inadequacy in playing it.

Again..

This is not true. Get over it.

Seriously, I think you're taking this way too hard. I absolutely love Origins. I've spent more time playing it than any other game, and for much of that time I never really considered these issues too deeply. So yes. I know why you're defending it like it's the last stick in the ground, I just don't think you need to. We don't have to pretend that a good game is flawless, and it doesn't compromise our enjoyment to admit that there are things wrong with it. Because there are serious things wrong with Origins.

I love Origins, but I don't want to keep playing it forever. I actively don't want Bioware to just settle for simply regurgitating Origins over and over again. I'm really glad that they tried some new things in Dragon Age 2, even if the game as a whole was far worse, because it did fix a lot of the problems with Origins and I believe that if that can be learned from then it can only bring improvement.

They do different things and that doesn't make one of the tools worthless.

Except that the game is largely based on numerical effects, and some options are clearly superior to others.

Shield warrior isn't going to be ultimate badass DPS superstar.

Nope. In fact, shield warrior isn't particularly good for anything because, counter-intuitively, a two-handed warrior makes a better tank.

This is primarily down to a fact which is, again, never explained to the player, which is that knockdown effects cause a character to lose threat, which is why your shield-using tank will occasionally fail to work even when you seem to be doing everything right. Thus, while your two weapon tank may take slightly more damage (largely unimportant due to the availability of infinate potions and low cooldowns on healing spells) they actually make a better tank while also being able to do more damage.

So now you know.

The mage can't do super high single target damage.

?Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate mana clash since I began to live. There are around 4000 points of damage in my one-hit-kill on Gaxkang on nightmare difficulty. If the word hate was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those thousands of points of damage it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for mana clash at this micro-instant. Hate. Hate."

DA2 on the other hand tried to amalgamate all the classes together to the point where most everything is practically a texture swap.

I don't buy that.

In DA2, a shield-using warrior is actually the best tank while a two handed warrior still does more damage. You know why? Because as well as damage reducing abilities (which are now more important due to the limits on healing), shield warriors also have abilities which help them to gain and hold threat better.

In DA2, rogues are able to deal the most single target damage, while mages remain able to deal the most AoE damage. Furthermore, both are actually useful and play a role in most engagements in the game.

In DA2, only mages can still heal (although healing spells in general are much less important, and thank God).

In Origins, half of the mage specializations were focused on melee combat.

In fact, in Origins you literally could build a rogue to play like a warrior, or a warrior to play like a rogue. Actually, I think that was one of the areas in which Origins had an outright better character creation system, because while neither of those builds was terribly strong (the warrior far less so than the rogue) they were fun to play on low difficulty levels and it was nice to have that option. It just should have been better balanced.

So no, I think Origins had far less class distinction. However. I also think in some ways that also made it better, just maybe not in others.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

and turng the uncanny vally slasher smiled darkspawn into generic zombie mooks.

Uh, I think you got your games mixed up.

Generic zombie mooks:

Spoiler: DA:O

Uncanny valley slasher smile creeps:

Spoiler: DAII

No, I'm pretty sure I picked correctly.

Besides I couldn't take the DA2 darkspawn seriously after seeing them waddle into battle 'like my baby brother with a full nappy'.

Not very scary.

I'm sorry, but if you think the DA:O Darkspawn are anything other than the most generic type of monster goons, then I just can't your opinion seriously. You're just projecting your senseless DAII hate onto everything.

So you find the combination of sunken face + mail coif + random bits of angular armour to be 'unique?'

Fair enough.

Just look closer at the DA:O human darkspawn's face.

 

[Amaror]

Yeah Origins gets my vote.
Dragon Age 2 has nothing going for it, with that retarded story (You like the mages, guess what they have been blood mages all along!) the snoozefest of a combat and overall flatter companions than in origins (save for varris) (oh i will never forgive them what they did to anders AND justice at the same time).
Origins has a great story (And NO, it's not generic, because the main story is the civil war, NOT the darkspawn attack, which you would notice if you played the game for more than five minutes) just awesome tactical combat and great companions.

 

[sumanoskae]

Origins is far superior, please refer to my previous posts on the subject for more information.

Short version; Origins works on pretty much every level and it's best feature is it's colorful and complex characters. It's only real weakness is it's seeming lack of ambition, but it has lots of interesting ideas in places you wouldn't think to look (*YOUR SEX JOKE HERE*).

DA II has a lot of really fascinating ideas that it fucks up and overshadows with it's horrific pacing and it's bag of straw finger puppets which are to this day the only time Bioware has written a cast of characters that I didn't give a fuck about.

P.S: Where's my Warden?

 

[Amaror]

Origins did not have that graphical inconsistency, but it was overall graphically inferior.

Both games also had a crappy story. When people talk about how Origins had a good story, they are generally talking about certain atomized elements of the story which were well-handled. The overarching story itself is wallpaper paste. A robot with access to a copy of Lord of the Rings could come up with that story. Dragon Age 2 tried to tell this new kind of bildungsroman story which, unfortunately, wound up being incredibly poorly tied together with no real overarching plot. However, some of the Storytelling in Dragon Age 2 was much, much better than anything in Origins. So again, give and take.

Wait, you seriously want to tell me that you liked the godawful character models and overall ugly anime style of DA 2 better than the, maybe a bit rusty, but still good medieval style graphics from Origins?
Besides i always get annoyed when people are complaining about the paper thin story of Origins, because the main story of Origins was NOT the Darkspawn invasion, but the Civil War with Loghain. I mean you obviously played the game to the end, how did you not get that?
That's the reason why people say that it has a great story, because that story was pretty damn great. Besides each substory was also great, so...

 

[Terminal Blue]

Wait, you seriously want to tell me that you liked the godawful character models and overall ugly anime style of DA 2 better than the, maybe a bit rusty, but still good medieval style graphics from Origins?

Both games routinely use the same models.

In fact, you could have washed out the colour palette on Dragon Age 2 and much of the game would look exactly the same except with higher detail textures and nicer arses.

That said, both games have examples of bad or obnoxious armor design.

Spoiler

As for characters, I can take a couple of silly looking and overdesigned characters like Fenris provided I don't ever have to try and take Morrigan's walking wardrobe malfunction seriously ever again. Clothes do not work like that.

Besides i always get annoyed when people are complaining about the paper thin story of Origins, because the main story of Origins was NOT the Darkspawn invasion, but the Civil War with Loghain. I mean you obviously played the game to the end, how did you not get that?

No. Sorry. It's about the blight.

I did play to the end, which is why I would point out that the game doesn't end when you duel Loghain, it ends when you kill the Archdemon, because that's the finale. That's the narrative conclusion of the story. That's what the entire thing as been building up to. The civil war is simply an obstacle to achieving that goal.

I also like how you've assumed my wallpaper paste comment didn't apply to the civil war. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who didn't get through the initial meeting with Cailan and the first few seconds of Loghain being on screen and immediately think "I know where this is going!" probably needs their brain checking.

Hint: If Alan Rickman would be a suitable candidate to play a character in a live action adaptation of a fantasy story, then they're going to betray someone. Fish swim, birds fly, pasty looking guys with dark hair in fantasy betray people. It's the law or something.

Besides each substory was also great, so...

Really?

* "The mages have turned into demons, kill they ass!"
* "Werewolves are attacking the elves and their blatantly evil keeper, kill they ass until we reveal this twist and we resolve everything with arbitrary magic!"
* "Undead are attacking the town. Kill they ass!"
* "Demons have taken over a kid's body. Kill they ass!"
* "A traditionalist, caste based society is on the brink of civil war due to conflict between supporters of a scheming autocratic reformer and a rightful but conservative candidate. Both need the support of a mad scientist who is seeking a powerful artifact which could potentially reverse the fortunes of this entire society but at great cost to its individual members. Also there are darkspawn in the way. Kill they ass!"

Okay, one of the substories is great, but generally most of them lack any vision or big ideas to sustain them beyond wheeling out gribblies for the player to fight. It's exactly the same problem which Dragon Age 2 often fell victim to, we have this incredibly deep lore full of interesting political conflicts and instead the biggest drama we can come up with is often "the town is under attack by X". Dragon age 2 had a lot of "blood mages here, kill they ass" stories as well, but it did at least try to work in some of those political dilemmas in a more sophisticated way than "thank you for saving us from the abominations hero, now we shall ask your opinion on whether we should inexplicably kill all the mages for no good reason".

Now, there is good storytelling all over Origins. There are good and interesting characters and the game is good at creating investment in the situations you're in, but that in itself doesn't equate to a good story.

 

[Archereus]

I am on the DA2 team. GO DA2 TEAM WOOT! But to be serious I find DA2 much better for a few reasons but the biggest thing that puts DA2 over Origins is some of the short comings that origins had. There were a few classes in origins that were completely useless(mage warrior for example), as well as skills(like trap making).
One thing I need to disagree on, with many Origins followers is on the story. The story really isn't as special as people say, it's very cookie cutter to be honest; You have been chosen to be the only person to rid the blight and to be able to do this you must recruit the armies of the land to fight the blight, oh and surprise surprise, each army you go to recruit requires you to do something for them so that they will go to war. This was the same story used in the Eragon book series and many other games and books as well. As well the moral choices in Origins got really old very quick. Sure the first few were tough but their was a moral choice for each and every thing you recruited, moral choices really lose their value if overused.
Origins tried really hard to be a great game but failed to deliver on many aspects. Despite DA2 being a simpler game(simpler isn't a bad thing) it delivered on it's main features very well. Hawk was a very interesting character, especially if you went funny Hawk. The supporting characters were all a lot of fun. The story was actually very interesting to play through the greater control you had in combat made it so much more fun.(honestly click and auto attacking, then waiting for the fight to finish really isn't fun)

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

Death cloud + death hex.

Large field spells are mostly a waste of time.

Well, I guess if you think paralysis explosion and waking nightmare are the same that explains why you didn't get much out of storm of the century.

I guess if you think I said that then we are going to have a very difficult time conversing considering you don't read what I write. And I don't 'get much mileage' out of storm of the century because it's a waste of time and I can clear a room faster than hiding for 30 seconds with a repulsion spell on the door.

You can solo a good deal of nightmare very, very easily by relying primarily on those two spell combinations.

Yes and I soloed nightmare without those spells so again who cares? There's plenty of powerful spells and abilities. Stop going into tunnel vision because I pointed out that the DA2 combos you think are great basically amount to 3 generic minor debuffs.

However, unfortunately..

..it's just not correct in the case of Origins.

That's one spell. And yes it is retarded, but what is your point? Most everything else is about on par and mana clash is only usable against select enemies.

..or, you could just take storm of the century and paralysis explosion, and not ever have to deal with mid level opponents at all.

And add an extra three hours to the game while I wait every single time for the dumb storm to clear? Yeah no thanks; I'll just charge through and wreck everything.

Or you could just take entropic death, which does (more than) twice as much damage with a secondary AoE effect.

You cast a field spell on top of yourself in a tiny room? wtf

See what I'm getting at yet?

No I don't; because you literally just recommended dropping AOE spells on top of my own character.

in Dragon Age 2 because you can't just rely on exploiting a few broken skills.

That's exactly what I did though. Assassin shadow archer drop decoy then repeatedly shoot enemies with 100% criticals that get ridiculous damage. No effort involved and I got to skip over the shitty combat.

Well, that would be very sound thinking and all if we'd decided a priori that the game is perfectly balanced and thus any observation of imbalance within it is due to one's own inadequacy in playing it.

Again..

This is not true. Get over it.

Again that is one spell that only has one specific use. If it was the be all end all it would be the only spell you need. But it's not.

because it did fix a lot of the problems with Origins

No it didn't.

Except that the game is largely based on numerical effects, and some options are clearly superior to others.

Except that a game is more complicated than a spreadsheet and dropping giant aoe clouds everywhere is prone to either get your own party killed, or simply waste time. So your 'superior' options are inferior ones.

Nope. In fact, shield warrior isn't particularly good for anything because, counter-intuitively, a two-handed warrior makes a better tank.

Shield warrior made for a great tank and this on nightmare mode no pausing; so you're wrong.

I don't buy that.

You can choose to not buy whatever you want. But the rogue has abilities to physically overpower their enemies and giant clouds of arrow damage. They shoved all the classes right into other classes.

You know why? Because as well as damage reducing abilities, shield warriors also have abilities which help them to gain and hold threat better.

Who cares about threat level? I never had a problem with people attacking the target I didn't want them to. Threat is super easy to lower for mages and rogues alike.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Large field spells are mostly a waste of time.

Right..

Okay, I'm going to stop talking about game strategy now because it's going absolutely nowhere. So instead, let me phrase this in terms of a point you made. You already mentioned that one of the positive things about Dragon Age is the distinction of clases, one of your examples of this being the fact that mages are not single target damage dealers.

So, if mages are not single target damage dealers, and if area of effect is a waste of time. What are mages actually for in your opinion? Where is their unique and special niche in this beautiful and intuitive class role system? Passive support? Healing? Some incredibly niche situation which never comes up? Going arcane warrior and tanking?

Yes and I soloed nightmare without those spells so again who cares?

Certainly not me.

I don't care if you soloed nightmare while avoiding overpowered builds/not wearing armor/using only starting weapons/not leveling up. Good for you, I really hope it was fun, but from a balance standpoint I don't really care. If you want to consider yourself more "hardcore" than I am you can have that title with my blessing and, I would hope, full knowledge that it's fucking meaningless because you know nothing about me.

However, your skill or otherwise does not change the fact that Dragon Age Origins is not particularly well balanced. The basic numerical mechanics do not operate in a consistent way. Not all playstyles are equal in power or ease. I don't understand why that is such a terrible thing to hear.

Most everything else is about on par and mana clash is only usable against select enemies.

Really? Riposte is on par with momentum? Fein death is on par with lethality? Shattering blows is on par with indomitable? Defensive fire is on par with arrow of slaying? Anti-magic burst is on par with crushing prison? Mana drain is on par with walking bomb? Flying swarm is on par with blood wound?

No. No. I get it. I'm sure you managed to find situational utility to everything what with you being so bright eyed and clever and overall superior to the mewling subhumans who don't accept that Dragon Age: Origins was handed down on the slopes of mount Sinai.

But that's not balance. Balance implies that all these things are equally useful to the game, not just that you can find a use for them if you are in the right situation.

And add an extra three hours to the game while I wait every single time for the dumb storm to clear? Yeah no thanks; I'll just charge through and wreck everything.

I'm trying to wrap my head around what you're saying, and the only conclusion I can come to is that you've assumed that I'm saying to use storm of the century on every single encounter.

No.

However, it makes an absolute joke of many of the hardest encounters in the game. Encounters which you could not finish in 30 seconds if you just decided to "charge through and wreck everything".

In the dross encounters, it doesn't really matter what you do does it? You could probably kill a couple of things just by spamming drain life and using your staff. The point is those encounters which tend to impede most players progress can often be annihilated very, very simply with little to no risk by using crowd control, AOE and very, very simple tactics.

You cast a field spell on top of yourself in a tiny room? wtf

No. You paralyse your target. You step out of the room. You cast a field spell into the room. You paralyse your target until it is dead.

There are very few really difficult encounters which take place in small rooms. The game is not that badly designed.

That's exactly what I did though. Assassin shadow archer drop decoy then repeatedly shoot enemies with 100% criticals that get ridiculous damage.

Congratulations. You noticed that Assassin/Bard/Shadow is the optimal rogue spec and that there's no point building a rogue any other way once you discover that one.

Two weapon fighting is better though. 3 criticals a second is better than 1.

Except that a game is more complicated than a spreadsheet and dropping giant aoe clouds everywhere is prone to either get your own party killed, or simply waste time. So your 'superior' options are inferior ones.

"It's a game that requires the player to understand that a hammer is not a wrench."

Okay, I finally think I see what you meant. You meant it's a game that requires the player to understand that AoE is shit because you never manged to use it.

Well, fuck it. I used it, and it made the game pathetically easy. I know I don't have your staggering, titanic cranial capacity, but surely this should actually prove your point. Even I, clearly a massive noob, could break the game using AoE. What more evidence do you want that it is incredibly imbalanced?

You can choose to not buy whatever you want. But the rogue has abilities to physically overpower their enemies and giant clouds of arrow damage. They shoved all the classes right into other classes.

You mean exactly like rogues in origins had the ability to physically overpower their enemies and shoot giant clouds of arrow damage with added stun.

No wait. Sorry, rogues in Origins were a lot better at these things and could actually get away with it without dying a horrible death. Granted, they still sucked when compared to the assassin/bard/shadow backstab machine, but every rogue build sucked compared to that one.

I think we need to focus on the important thing here though, which is that the fact that one particular rogue build is vastly, vastly superior to all the others is, like all the things we've been talking about, absolutely not a sign of poor balance. The game must be perfectly balanced by virtue of being Dragon Age: Origins and therefore the inviolable and sacred document of which all future Bioware games must be carbon copies.

I really think I'm starting to be done with this because I get the feeling you have something to prove here, and I'm not particularly interested in being the person who has to try and disprove it to you. So if you want to consider yourself vindicated in your disturbing adoration for Dragon Age Origins' mechanics you can do so with my blessing. I'm sure you're a better player, nay, an all round better person than I am and that all my objections and observations are simply my fault for just not understanding the game well enough to be able to comprehend its true brilliance in the way you do.

There you are.. all better now?

 

[Miyenne]

I prefer Origins, like most people here.

DA2 wasn't terrible, but it was rushed and some good story lines got tied up in rather loose, frayed confused knots at the end. It was rushed. But it wasn't terrible. It was a small scale game, and comparing it to Origins isn't fair.

But yes, I want my Warden Queen back.