scumble on 21/2/2014 at 16:53
I have rarely played "classic" RPG with party combat, and complicated D&D rules. Neverwinter Nights seemed a bit fiddly to me, and you only got a single helper with limited control. Never played Baldur's Gate, and KOTOR was perhaps the closest I played with up to three members. I tend to be more absorbed by something like Bethesda's first person games.
For no particular reason I purchased Dragon Age 2, possibly because it was just a few quid, but I had looked at it before while checking reviews from the past few years.
There must have been something I found quite boring with turn-based combat before because I never got close to completing NWN or KOTOR. Possibly I should give Mass Effect a go as well if Bioware has been shifting this way.
So why is the battle in Dragon Age 2 immediately more interesting than other Bioware efforts? Is it improved technology or style. It's certainly got lots of blood and enemies exploding in a shower of limbs. Possibly it seems more convincing as one would expect there to be blood rather than people falling over and going "uggghhhh!". Not realistic of course, but it feels more like a battle than letting the computer roll virtual dice in the background.
Bioware forked out for voice talent as well, although I was slightly taken aback to hear Kate Mulgrew's voice coming out of a character who wasn't Janeway, yet it was distinctive enough for me not to feel like she'd just wandered into the game via Voyager's holodeck. It was the only voice that was obvious mind you.
So far the the levelling system seems straightforward with abilities a bit like perks in Skyrim. I think full D&D rules were what made me feel character levelling was like working with a spreadsheet in NWN. I might be exaggerating. Having less character classes helps as well. That's another thing that seems like overkill for a computer game RPG. Still everyone has differing tastes for complexity.
The actual role playing element seems to just consist of different attitudes in the dialogue, but I can't see whether it has any effects on your character's development. That was one interesting thing about KOTOR, that choices determined your alignment, affecting which skills you could learn.
Some combat tips might be helpful, as the tactics section in the character menu seemed a little daunting. I can understand that it's like a set of conditions to alter behaviour, like basic AI scripting, but it isn't yet clear how useful this will be in battle. I haven't played it enough to see how reliable the AI are in doing what you tell them.
I like the darkish tone of the game so far, and the motion capture dramatisations are pretty smooth and not stupidly acted. If I have one detail that's bothering me it's that everyone looks too clean again, except just after a battle. We have the technology now such that dirt could probably be procedurally generated to look fairly convincing based on the context. At the start the characters are supposed to have been running and battling for days, and they look like they've just had a shower and done their laundry. We get particle effects and volumetric fog, but apparently a bit of convincing dirt is clearly too boring to add?
Malleus on 21/2/2014 at 17:11
Quote Posted by scumble
The actual role playing element seems to just consist of different attitudes in the dialogue, but I can't see whether it has any effects on your character's development.
No effect on stats, but the dialogue option you choose the most will be your character's personality, and it will allow special dialogue options later (like, an aggressive character may have the option to solve a problem with intimidation). There are also situations where you don't get to choose what you say, but your character will answer according to her/his personality. The more you select a certain kind of answer, the more cemented you personality becomes, so you can't really change it as the story progresses unless you very much stick to a different attitude for a long time.
EDIT: Wait, you haven't played the first game? Cool if that's the case, I did the same. :) Started with DA2. It has a lot of flaws, but a lot of awesome stuff as well, hope you enjoy it.
Jason Moyer on 21/2/2014 at 17:51
Quote Posted by scumble
Possibly I should give Mass Effect a go as well if Bioware has been shifting this way.
Mass Effect is a third person shooter with a pause button and conversations. I don't mean that insultingly, all 3 games are among my favorites of all-time, but they're not really all that Dragon Age-y.
IMHO the closest games to Dragon Age 2 are Neverwinter Nights 1/2, at least in terms of how I played all 3 of those games. In all 3 all you really need to worry about are setting roles/tactics for your party members and controlling your avatar, with the occasional pause if you need to nudge one of the AI to do something (in DA2 there is really only one fight where you really NEED to pause a lot, it's a boss fight from one of the DLC but I can't remember which). Dragon Age Origins is closer to the infinity engine games, at least on normal difficulty, where you pretty much want to pause constantly and micromanage your party.
scumble on 22/2/2014 at 00:04
I think based on that this particular version might suit me. I don't mind pausing every so often to redirect the battle, but having actually read the manual I see how useful the tactics setup is. Party micromanagement doesn't appeal to me at all. I don't think NWN was quite as engaging as this, but it could just be a case of it looking quite dated now. Possibly the old sprite based RPGs have aged better. When I look at 3D games from 10 years ago everything looks incredibly primitive.
However I noticed with the dialogue choices that it can affect the friend/rival status, but I haven't figured out why this changes after battles...
I'm not sure I'm that fond of the random enemies coming out of the ground trick, as it makes it seem less immersive. One feels more like a spectator - part of the appeal of the elder scrolls was the battles just happening where you bumped into into them. The final fantasy style "switch to battle arena" style got a bit annoying, as did the old random encounters while wandering round an empty location.
But I'm not an RPG enthusiast as such, I'll just pick up on them from time to time. The game mechanics are almost secondary to the feel of the environment and the setting, or if I find any of the characters appealing.
Jason Moyer on 23/2/2014 at 13:18
The main NWN campaign was awful, and while the expansions for it (the two that basically combined to make one long game) were great the engine was always kind of fiddly and meh. The engine is still crap in Neverwinter Nights 2, but on the other hand it's an Obsidian game and the main campaign + Mask Of The Betrayer combine into one long incredible story with meaningful party influence (the main campaign ends the way KotOR 2 was supposed to), good writing, etc.
N'Al on 23/2/2014 at 13:43
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
the main campaign ends the way KotOR 2 was supposed to
That's hardly an improvement. NWN 2 vanilla's ending is pretty rubbish - as is most of the rest of the game, really. Thankfully Mask of the Betrayer manages to redeem the series, and then some.
DaBeast on 23/2/2014 at 14:31
DA2 was so much better than the hatestorm suggested. It does have some awful bits of writing and jarring character designs, but it was still pretty decent.
I tried to replay NWN2 and just couldn't get into it again. So much harder than I remembered; I actually spent longer in character creation than playing the game :(
Jason Moyer on 23/2/2014 at 19:18
The thing that threw me for a loop the first time I played NWN and NWN2 is that you need to make a character as if you're playing a solo RPG like TES or Fallout or whatever. Unlike the Infinity Engine games, you're pretty much totally screwed if you don't have combat skills in addition to whatever else interests you roleplaying-wise.
Mask Of The Betrayer is pretty hard regardless, though. The whole soul-eating thing is a bitch, especially if you're playing as an evil character. Storm Of Zehir can be pretty hard, too, with some of the oddball enemies it throws at you. The main NWN2 campaign I found relatively easy, except for the final battle which, IIRC, I ended up cheatmode'ing my way through ending-of-Throne-Of-Baal style. Of the dozens, if not hundreds, of cRPG's I've played, I'm pretty sure the endings of NWN2, Throne Of Baal, and Vampire Bloodlines are the only times I've ever said "fuck this" and enabled godmode or whatever.
EvaUnit02 on 23/2/2014 at 20:48
Ah, DA2. The DLC campaigns Legacy and Mark of the Assassin are actually very good. A HUGE improvement overall, avoiding virtually all of the design criticisms of the vanilla campaign. Well worth the premium price that they go for (post-2010 Bioware DLC for the PC platform NEVER goes on sale).
After play aforementioned campaigns I was very disappointed that the last major DLC, Exalted March, was cancelled.
Exiled Prince is rather crap and boring IMO, feel free to give that one a miss. The most notable thing is a brief cameo by a DA1 companion, but that's meaningless since you haven't played Origins. (I will say however that Sebastian is actually one of the most realistic and least juvenile of DA2's companions, since he never tries to bone Hawke.)
EvaUnit02 on 23/2/2014 at 21:07
RE: NWN1's vanilla campaign:- It's definitely a load of rubbish. Basically Bioware intended to originally ship only the toolset, but their publisher Atari late in development forced them to include a campaign. (However at the end of the day Atari was probably right, the game probably would've sold less without an actual campaign.)
