Dragon Age II Review Tidbits
Dragon Age II Review Tidbits
Preview - posted by VentilatorOfDoom on Mon 21 February 2011, 10:55:15
Tags: BioWare; Dragon Age IIGamestar and PC Games, two german gaming magazines, both did a Dragon Age II reviews recently, and a user on the Bioboards translated some bits:
<span style="font-weight: bold;">PC Games gave it 88, pros and cons:
</span>
+ very well told hero story
+ varied followers, each with their own stories
+ great dialogs with moral decisions
+ exciting boss battles
+ martial-arts-fans should have great fun with possibly the fastest (or fast paced) battles in a fantasy game
- ...but old-school RPG players might have their problems with the flurry of activities in battles
- limited class progression with fixed skilltrees
- poor level design with one-to-one copy-pasting of whole quest areas (do they mean, some areas are a carbon copy of each other???)*
- unsatisfying ending
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Gamestar gave it 87, pros and cons:
</span>
+ thrilling storyline
+ great dialogs and quests
+ coherent / consistent game world
- some fiddly battles
- less epic as DAO
Their conclusion: great RPG, slightly weaker than DAO
* Okay, according to someone who's got the magazine, with 1:1 copy-pasting they refer to quest areas for sidequests, which Bioware seem to reuse, that is, they take one area, slap a different name on it and sell it as another area. They gave an example (i'm translating here, dunno if the names in english are correct): there is an area called Wilmod's Camp and another one called Fortified Caves, both identical.
A score of 88/100 for the next AAA BioGame? That's harsh.
Also, "but old-school RPG players might have their problems with the flurry of activities in battles." Well, that's where the super-tactical tactics screen comes into play. With all the annoyances removed (friendly fire and so on) you can just set up your tactics, i.e. massively nuke anything, and then go back to the tactical combat action immediately. And with tactical combat action I do mean you watch your characters doing the fighting for you, maybe you mash a button here and there. That's how I imagine it, but maybe I'm wrong.
Spotted at: RPGWatch
<span style="font-weight: bold;">PC Games gave it 88, pros and cons:
</span>
+ very well told hero story
+ varied followers, each with their own stories
+ great dialogs with moral decisions
+ exciting boss battles
+ martial-arts-fans should have great fun with possibly the fastest (or fast paced) battles in a fantasy game
- ...but old-school RPG players might have their problems with the flurry of activities in battles
- limited class progression with fixed skilltrees
- poor level design with one-to-one copy-pasting of whole quest areas (do they mean, some areas are a carbon copy of each other???)*
- unsatisfying ending
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Gamestar gave it 87, pros and cons:
</span>
+ thrilling storyline
+ great dialogs and quests
+ coherent / consistent game world
- some fiddly battles
- less epic as DAO
Their conclusion: great RPG, slightly weaker than DAO
* Okay, according to someone who's got the magazine, with 1:1 copy-pasting they refer to quest areas for sidequests, which Bioware seem to reuse, that is, they take one area, slap a different name on it and sell it as another area. They gave an example (i'm translating here, dunno if the names in english are correct): there is an area called Wilmod's Camp and another one called Fortified Caves, both identical.
Also, "but old-school RPG players might have their problems with the flurry of activities in battles." Well, that's where the super-tactical tactics screen comes into play. With all the annoyances removed (friendly fire and so on) you can just set up your tactics, i.e. massively nuke anything, and then go back to the tactical combat action immediately. And with tactical combat action I do mean you watch your characters doing the fighting for you, maybe you mash a button here and there. That's how I imagine it, but maybe I'm wrong.
Spotted at: RPGWatch
