I feel sorry for any 'normal' person looking for a game like this. How they hell they are meant to judge the quality from such a mess of reviews is beyond me.

lol.

You know, it's weird.

IMO, the spells/talents are cool. The idea of the cross class combos is cool. The fact they tried to make the combat faster and more responsive is cool. It just... doesn't click.

Not sure if it's the over-the-top animations (which, to be honest, I really don't mind), the encounter designs (other than the wave mechanics, I mean), or what. I know for sure the wave mechanics bug the shit out of me, but it's not just that. I guess there's a combination of factors that give an overall vibe to the combat that just doesn't do it for me.

Someone at the BWS boards put forward a question that reflects pretty much my feelings about combat:

"Combat is more fluid and more responsive. So, why isn't it fun?"

I really can't stand the combat. I no longer feel like my party is made of extraordinary individuals skilled at what they do tackling some trully epic stuff, i feel like they're a bunch of cheap super heroes tackling a never ending, pointless task.

Probably because of who you are fighting. In about 70% of DA2 you fight nothing but street thugs which doesn't exactly paint the picture of the Champion of Kirkwall. The enemies have been copied and pasted as much as the environments have with even the mages using exactly the same spells and it's nothing like the Darkspawn of DA:O. Even when the Darkspawn do appear there are no Genlocks or Shrieks anymore, just an endless wave of Hurlocks sprinkled with the odd Ogre or Emmisary. It's like having a game like Devil May Cry and making the player fight through the same enemies with the same attacks for the entire game. CW8 is spot on with the comparisson to an MMO except DA2 doesn't even have the luxury of co-op.

Yeah, each encounter feeling exactly like the previous one explains a big chunk of it, and the way spawns were handled likely accounts for the rest. Had those been done right and i could probably force myself, likely whit alot of bitching every now and then, to stomach the more personnal taste related issues that i find annoying about this new combat like pace and animations, but sadly they made a complete mess of the whole thing.

With a metacritic score in the 70s now and pretty much everyone I know disappointed with the game, Laidlaw is still defending his mainstream-seeking changes.

The more I read from Laidlaw the more I think he has completely missed what the actual players wanted. Eating food in GTA was like grinding constitution? Everyone hated that in San Andreas and it was one of the first things to go in GTAIV. Not to mention it was just a side thing, an extra that had no bearing on the actual gameplay. If Laidlaw wants inspiration from a game like GTA then he should start looking at the varied and above all FUN sidequests that can be found in a GTA game. Even fetch quests in GTA are never "Find 10 packages and deliver them for a reward", it's almost always something like "Get these packages, btw it's cocaine, and the cops know, and you have a clapped out truck to do it in, and you have 1 min 30 seconds till the boat leaves. Chop chop".

If Kirkwall was as lively as and as varied as Liberty City and had dozens upon dozens of hidden sidequests all varied then we would probably gloss over the flaws of the samey maps and enemies. Kirkwall was empty, almost all the side quests were fetch quests and again the combat was dull. Combine that with the repeated locations and enemies you arrive at what DA2 is. A decent story with a good length wrapped up in a very dull and repetitive game.

I've also noticed that the backlash has started to be levelled at Bioware rather than EA which in my oppinion is the correct thing to do. EA may have rushed the game in fact Inon Zur the composer all but confirmed it but the actual glaring flaws in the game are purely a design decision and that's nothing to do with the budget. Laidlaw has been telling us for months this is the direction Dragon Age is going in so quite frankly it's hard to blame EA here because Dragon Age 2 is pretty much exactly the product Laidlaw wanted to deliver. If they had spent less time pointlessly redesiging the style of the visuals and more time on working on more than one bloody cave it would have been a much better game.

Oh well, at least the graphics are top knotch.

Arishok disapproves

Yeah, that about sums it up.

RPGCodex review. You know things are bad when you find yourself agreeing with the Codex.

Win

Okay after reading this I've come to the conclusion that you guys all wanted to play DDO. No, really, it's free and would have been a better investment of your time. It makes me really mad how much this game has been pushed vs. what I keep reading. It was 40 bucks on Amazon 2 days ago, when shooters do that right after launch I assume it's to try to attract enough players to make your multiplayer worthwhile. When a single player game does it, I don't know, I think there's something wrong with it (unless it happens on Black Friday or something). Maybe it's in a bid to get a few bucks from those who don't know how this turned out.

I made a friend who didn't play RPGs (he's more of a Halo kind of guy and not a hardcore gamer) play the demo. He picked out things that blew right off. I mean, here's a non-RPG player who's never played anything very close to one in his life and yet he knows what's utter crap (at least the things presented in the demo).

None of us were impressed with the demo either. However we are fans of Bioware's games and we know that even with a slightly wonky game system the story will be great (well except NWN1) and more importantly we will be able to make changed to that story to shape it in our own way. This is the most important part that is missing from DA2. It's a decent story but that's all it is, there are absolutely no ways to change it. I played exactly the same game that everyone else here has.

Go back over the forums and find a thread about DA:O or Mass Effect 2 and you will find people comparing what they did or discussing builds or parties but in this thread? Nada. Dudes did you save Isabela? Yes we fought the Qunari. Dudes did Isabela run off? Yes we fought the Qunari. Dudes did you get the respect of the Arishok? Yes... we fought the Qunari...

See the problem? And that is only one example of almost every main quest that has the same solution no matter what you do. It truly is a first for a Bioware game.