Come on man, you can't compare those. DA:O, BG1&2, Pathfinder, etc. all have recycled maps, but DA2 is so much more egregious than any of these. DA2 didn't even bother to change the HUD minimap for the maps it recycled. I remember searching for "secret" doors that simply didn't exist because of that - which was sometimes true and sometimes not, since the minimaps were exactly the same everytime, too.
Fair enough. I'm sorry for not being as insulted by buggy minimaps as a lot of other people apparently were.
No need to apologize, it's just that it represents a degree of laziness* over and above that of the other examples you gave.
It's just nearly every game I've ever played had some cut corners somewhere in it, and if I were to choose the corners that must never be cut, having correct minimaps would be pretty low on my personal list of priorities.
Sure, to be honest my main problem with DA2 was that the endgame was essentially the same regardless of which side you chose.
Ironically, the combat system in DA:O had much bigger issues. 2H warrior was almost useless (poor survivability, low DPS). Ranged rogue was bad until very late (which in practice meant it was a poor choice because of the usual inverted difficulty curve). The highest sustained DPS for melee rogue was auto-attack (those fancy moves gave you a burst of big numbers but long animations made them inferior in the long run). Mana Clash, Blood Wound and Paralysis Explosion were insanely OP (basically, "I win" buttons).
DA:I was bad because Barrier and Guard made the combat incredibly tedious. It was a classic war of attrition where nothing really mattered except how much B/G you could generate on your party and strip from your enemies. DA:2 combat was about carefully using crowd control. In DA:I it was about outliving enemies while trading blows which made 1 sword-and-board warrior + 3 mages the ultimate party (in fact, on Nightmare+Trials it was impossible to beat some early encounters with any other setup).
And yet romance is probably the best bellwether for overall decline in RPGs. Nobody with good combat, quests, or exploration in their game has any time for that.
It's decline because you can't romance the talking sword.
Don't know about Zevran. I'm gay, but not THAT much.
Do you have a moment, buddy? A friend of mine wants to talk to you.
Well, given that PST is just a visual novel, it makes sense that someone would want to play a game over a VN.
