Dragon Age II

[BigBiker05]

I still have 3 dlc campaigns and awakening to play. Please don't tell me Dragon Age II is to Drage Age as Mass Effect II is to Mass Effect.

[Fox_Blaze]

I tried the demo today, and needless to say, jumping in as I have not knowing anything about the series at all, I utterly failed. I DIED twice because I didnt know what the heck i was doing.

[ketchuo]

You'll get the hang of it Blaze.

Anyway the game is more action, but it isnt like mass effect to Mass effect 2.

[Jesus_Faction]

DA2 is a big step backwards from DA:O

[Bronze Fox]

DA2 is a big step backwards from DA:O

That's what I expected from the demo.

[metacide]

I have my complaints with it, but I like the mechanics far more than I liked the mechanics of DA:O. I also like that my party doesnt act like they have had a lobotomy by default.
The level up trees are far better I think, and the dialog trees are way more user friendly.

Really the only thing I dont like is that I can't play dress up with my underlings' armor. Everything else pleases me.

[Ixtab]

From the demo, it seemed like it was a lot less strategic than the first one. I guess that is just because you can't zoom out as far though. I wasn't impressed with the skill trees either, as there seemed to be a lot less options to work with.

Anyway, that's just what I thought of the demo.... I am still excited for the game, and plan to get it as soon as I can. Hopefully it will be better than the demo makes it seem.

[Tungsten]

I kept reading about battles being less strategic and more action-based...and didn't know what people were talking about until I realized I kept reading console reviews.

That being said, I still find DA2 (for the PC) strategic. Using cross-class combos I can sometimes get up to 600+ damage, which helps a lot in hard where enemies seem to have 10000000+ HP. The two things I do miss are both mage related: friendly fire and spell combos. Hopefully they'll add friendly fire in a patch or something.

I don't mind the inability to change my companion's armor, but it does bother me that they dumbed down companion relationships to a few conversations when you're at their houses. It also kind of sucks that while all your companions have a different "friend bonus," all the "rival bonuses" are essentially the same. I also don't like the conversation wheel...but I think I'm in the minority with that complaint.

I do like the skill trees, and I love that companions have a unique skill tree. So far, Merrill has my favorite skill tree.

The storyline is still...kind of lolwut-ish. It seems more like a bunch of short stories rather than a single epic. The quests are fun, but I do hate the recycled dungeons. There are some pretty epic fights, especially at the end of the first part.

All-in-all, DA2 is a very fun and enjoyable game. As for it being better or worse than the original, I'm not sure. There are things that they did better and things they did worse.

[MateoTheBold!]

How bad are the recycled dungeons? It's one of the reasons that has me on the fence for the game, among others. Like Bronze Fox, I played the demo and throughly hated it. I loved the first DA and my other question is is: Anyone play the demo, come away unimpressed, and later buy the game and enjoy it?

[Boss Llama]

I love DA:O very much, one of the most impressive games I've ever played, but I'm not impressed with DA2 so far. In DA:O, I could log in, and lose 12 hours playing without realizing it - here, I have to fight to want to play an hour at a time. The graphics are pretty, but otherwise, this is a step backward in almost every way. It feels like a fairly primitive console game thusfar, and the inability to swap nearly any armor on your party members is beyond stupid. The questing is vapid (One never even knows what you're actually doing half the time, it's typical "find A, go to B" stuff, but without the part where there's meaning to your actions), and the storyline, while intruiging, is so broken up that it isn't particularly enjoyable. Everything feels like an excuse to go from one cutscene to the next, and the voicing of the main character is appaling - you almost never say anything resembling the option you selected, and the whole chat-wheel thing is damnable. Combat is a mockery of what it used to be. Tactics are pointless with these ill-conceived spawn-waves that simply materialize anywhere on screen they want, making it so that you can never clear areas, defend corners, or otherwise make use of a chokepoint or battle-line, nor ration your use of stamina or mana in a meaningful way (you never know how many more waves will randomly appear). It's very arcadish, with an overly stylized, unnecessarily flashy, and generally silly feel. :-/

Now, I've only played it for a few hours so far, and hopefully it will improve, but compared to the same amount of time playing DA:O... this is just sad :-/ I really really was looking forward to this game, and I want so much to like it! Grr.

Random additional thing... anybody had any luck installing The Black Emporium using the pre-order bonus code? I redeemed my code, and it told me it was successful, but it won't DL anything, and when I look at the DLC page, it wants me to buy it.

[crimsonshootingstar]

Yeah no luck on that here either.

[metacide]

Random additional thing... anybody had any luck installing The Black Emporium using the pre-order bonus code? I redeemed my code, and it told me it was successful, but it won't DL anything, and when I look at the DLC page, it wants me to buy it.

I went into this game with super low expectations and it has far exceeded all of them. I'm quite happy with it.

As for the DLC stuff.. it's literally DLC, and it's manual. The game will point and laugh if you try to do it automatically like the slow kid at school who will wait forever next to the elevator that says "Out of Order".
To get Emporium, you have to go to the Socail Bioware page, log in, and then go to where you can see all of the redeemed codes. You then download it, once finished downloading you can install it.

Yes, that's right, it makes you work for your bonus content. Don't you feel special?

It took me a while to figure this out as well, a bit irritating.

[crimsonshootingstar]

Random additional thing... anybody had any luck installing The Black Emporium using the pre-order bonus code? I redeemed my code, and it told me it was successful, but it won't DL anything, and when I look at the DLC page, it wants me to buy it.

I went into this game with super low expectations and it has far exceeded all of them. I'm quite happy with it.

As for the DLC stuff.. it's literally DLC, and it's manual. The game will point and laugh if you try to do it automatically like the slow kid at school who will wait forever next to the elevator that says "Out of Order".
To get Emporium, you have to go to the Socail Bioware page, log in, and then go to where you can see all of the redeemed codes. You then download it, once finished downloading you can install it.

Yes, that's right, it makes you work for your bonus content. Don't you feel special?

It took me a while to figure this out as well, a bit irritating.

Wow thats special of them. Thanks for the tip it worked.

[Boss Llama]

As for the DLC stuff.. it's literally DLC, and it's manual. The game will point and laugh if you try to do it automatically like the slow kid at school who will wait forever next to the elevator that says "Out of Order".
To get Emporium, you have to go to the Socail Bioware page, log in, and then go to where you can see all of the redeemed codes. You then download it, once finished downloading you can install it.

Wow, and I thought the DA:O DLC was counterintuitive.

Ah well, thanks for the info.

[bz]

Please don't tell me Dragon Age II is to Dragon Age as Mass Effect II is to Mass Effect.

That's exactly what it is.

ME2 was 1 step forward, 2 steps back.

DA2? 1 step forward, 3 steps back. EDIT: Reserving judgment until I've finished the game. Several user-created mods have already gone a long way.

To be fair, I only have about 10 hours of playtime so far, but I'd have to agree with the points that have already been mentioned: oversimplified, spazzy combat (at least for the rogue... I almost miss the back stab animation), laughable area cloning, and general console-ization (and I can't decide if the inability to change your companions armor is just lazy or bat-**** inane.)

AND no spell combos?! Argh!

There are quite a few things I like so far about DA:2, the same way there were quite a few things I liked about ME:2. Unfortunately, what they sacrificed to make those changes was everything that I loved about the original.