Honestly, I can certainly understand the fair share of criticism this game has received. Myself, I'm a lvl 17 mage, in act 3, and have just uninstalled the game, because I can't continue. It feels like going to work to grind this piece of crap. And after hearing even from fan boys that the ending was disappointing, heck, I'm seriously worried, since I've been disappointed right from the start.
First, I started to play up to lvl 7 as a mage, until I realized "Hey, this is really boring." So I rerolled a rogue. Same result, this was boring as hell. Then a warrior. Didn't matter, since the combat mechanics sucks.
The BIG problem is the game revolves altogether around the combat (well, that's how it turns out when you can't walk 5 meters without being assaulted by 50 smugglers in 3 waves). So the game just can't fail in this key aspect of the game. Well, too bad the combat SUCKS then. It doesn't matter if you're a mage, rogue or warrior, you're going to autoattack mobs until you cry. It's ALL about the frigging cooldowns, which are absurdly long.
High level mages get away a little bit more from autoattacking, but it's still pretty bad. Cunning based rogues focused on backstabbing and such, and twohanded warriors are going to autoattack until they cry. Sword and shield are so incredibly dull to play you might kill yourself from the experience.
You get boatloads of sustained abilities, but who the heck wanted to autoattack in the first place? "You get +10% autoattack damage!" That's like garnishing turds with sprinkles. Apparently, it's a little bit more "fun" in the console versions, where you button mash your autoattacks, while you in the PC version occassionaly press "R", yawns some more and then fire away some spell that FINALLY got out of cooldown.
And tactics, forget about tactics, since EVERY FRIGGING FIGHT has 2-5 frigging waves in it! Graaaaaaagh! It is all about the cooldowns anyway, so just spam away and... autoattack until you can do something again.
The other characters are as interesting as chewing cardboard, the side missions are even more pathetic than you would expect in a MMORPG, it's "gather 5 rat tails" in bunches here, which is just... if you don't have the time to fill in even mediocre missions, just DON'T try to make the game looking longer than it is. The main story is amazingly un-epic. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against grill stick adventuring, but when it's this boring, I really don't know.
I'm so frigging sick of Kirkwall and its surroundings that I might throw up. The same cave, warehouse and back alley, over and over and over and over and over again. Seriously, is the WHOLE GAME revolving around this dung pile of a city?
This repetitive crap doesn't even come close to being a worthy followup of the first game. Combat is boring as hell, the game is repetitive as hell, the characters are as uninspiring as the main story and the side missions feel like they are just there to make the main story look better.
And don't even get me started on the main character. Is he/ she an idiot, or does Bioware believe the people playing their games are idiots? Three standardized, incredibly black & white answers, where all three feel incredibly stupid pretty much all the time. If I could, I would let my main character be mute. Better to shut up and be a suspected fool, than opening up and remove all doubts.
What was the whole point of importing your character save from game 1? I've heard maybe ONE VAGUE reference from the first adventure. Why even call it a sequel?
The graphics is simply but embarrassing if you don't play it on Windows 7. I don't, so the game looks like it's 10 years old, on a 10 year old computer. I don't really care about graphics that much, but when everything else is crap, it only highlights the amount of fail.
A game can't get more consolified and dumbified than this. I loved the first game, I'm a big roleplay nerd, but this pile of dung? I can't stand any of it.
3/10. I'm extremely disappointed.
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