Dragon Age II

[dave is ok]

The game is actually pretty good. If you like Dragon Age, you'll probably like 2 better.

[Diff-chan]

Man, Bioware, you were (are) considered one of the paragons of western RPG development. What happened?

Same thing that happened to Origin, Westwood, and Bullfrog. EA bought them.

[epmode]

The game is actually pretty good. If you like Dragon Age, you'll probably like 2 better.

Most stuff I've seen and read makes it look pretty bad. Dumbed-down dialogue trees with no real way to talk yourself out of anything, respawn-happy combat that makes resource/cooldown management a guessing game, far more copy-paste areas sometimes appearing in back-to-back sidequests, no main plot to speak of, buggy, etc.

Not that anyone should be surprised with that 18 month development cycle.

I'd consider a GOTY edition for $15-20.

[dave is ok]

There's no more persuade/threaten or whatever, but the dialogue trees themselves are fine. That's the one thing that Bioware almost always gets right - writing. The combat is better to look at, not like the first games combat was a strong point. Less copy-paste than DA:O, although any at all is fucking unacceptable in this day in age. The main plot is weird, it's not like a "Go out and save the world" story like Dragon Age. All of the people in your party have houses and you can go visit them, they have jobs besides hanging out with you all day that they talk about. The game takes place over the course of a decade and the main plot point is the growing tension between different groups - so I applaud them for trying something different at least and not just 'Gather party, fight big dragon' like most RPGs

[Opaque]

Dumbed-down dialogue trees with no real way to talk yourself out of anything

Correct. You basically never have real choices just different dialogue options that lead to the same outcome. I tested this a bunch of times by quick reloading when I didn't like the direction something went and noticed I got literally the same dialogue tree no matter what I chose.

, respawn-happy combat that makes resource/cooldown management a guessing game

Correct. Every time you get into a fight you are 100% positive that at least one more wave of enemies will spawn out of the ground at some point, but you're never really sure how many waves there will be. It's pretty lame that you never just see everyone you'll be fighting off the get go like in the original.

far more copy-paste areas sometimes appearing in back-to-back side quests

Correct. There is one cave, one basement and only like two house interiors other than your own. You've seen everything 30% into the game and the shit just gets recycled dozens of times after that.

no main plot to speak of

Correct. It's basically broken up into three chapters and each one quickly shoves a plot point down your throat and then you can either do side quests or make a "choice" as to how you want to progress the story.

buggy, etc.

For what it's worth while I was playing I would randomly get situations where I couldn't select anything or if I was in the menu I couldn't select the button to leave the menu; the game would always have a one frame blank screen kind of skip before this was about to happen, so I almost always knew I was fucked. You couldn't save in those situations either because hitting escape wouldn't enter the menu, so if I was inside a building where you have to select a door to exit I was pretty fucked. This probably happened about a dozen times or so.

HOWEVER

The game is actually pretty good. If you like Dragon Age, you'll probably like 2 better.

Correct. I can't fucking explain it, but I still liked playing the game. For everything they fucked up they made something else really well done, there's a lot of potential here for a third game.

[Drewbacca]

Same thing that happened to Origin, Westwood, and Bullfrog. EA bought them.

The bureaucracy creeps in. So much success from Bioware breeds arrogance in that climate.

[Diff-chan]

The bureaucracy creeps in. So much success from Bioware breeds arrogance in that climate.

What happened to Origin, Westwood, and Bullfrog is that EA started demanding moneyhats so you ended up with rushed junk like Ultima VIII or C&C Renegade designed to "broaden the franchise." And the big shots in the studios, Molyneaux/Garriott/etc., just became figureheads as EA management took more and more control.

[FirstBlood]

The combat is better to look at, not like the first games combat was a strong point.s

STOP SAYING THIS, MR. XBOX

[dave is ok]

STOP SAYING THIS, MR. XBOX

lololol

[AaronChance]

I didn't like the demo so I didn't buy it, but I wouldn't have bought in anyway in protest of Bioware almost always using the same whiny male side-kick. Fuck you, Bioware, even if you let me kill like half of them. That doesn't make it right.