No a lot of people did enjoy it but the people who didn't seem to be the majority. As a western made JRPG it was fine I guess but as a sequel to Origins is was a massive failure. I blogged about most of my gripes.

It's a good game, just not Origins 2.

Also it could have used another 6 months development time IMHO.


Playing through Awakenings again just now and I've noticed that even it has more unique maps than DA2! xD

lulz. I can't blame you. Who wouldn't be afraid of a cave that had so much bad shit going down in it.

Could you imagine how cluttered those precious few maps would be if dead bodies didn't conveniently explode/ vanish? :D

Now I can understand that they didn't make more maps because they wanted to put their limited time and resources elsewhere. What I don't understand is why they didn't divide them into tiles and give us meaty radomized maps like Torchlight and friends. That way they could have given us nice big arenas to fight in without need of an airborne division for backup.

Oh well, maybe Bioware/ EA will have mercy on us one day and give us a toolkit to fix their mess.

A toolset is looking less and less likely by the day. Awakening still has scripting problems that modders can't fix as the existing toolset can't unpack the files in it. It's much the same with DA2, with what modders have to work with the most you can expect is the basic cosmetic mods. Creating whole new assets is totally out of the question at the moment.

It should be pointed out that Fernando Melo said the reason the first DLC was cosmetic and not content is all the story based DLC has been pushed back due to feedback from the vanilla game. I'm more inclined to trust what he says rather than Laidlaw but at the end of the day there is only so much DLC can do to the game. They certainly can't go in and add more caves to the vanilla campaign as far as I know. Even if they could that would then piss off people that don't want to pay for DLC to fix the vanilla game.

I agree with everything in your blog actually, apparently just not to the extent that you do as I liked the game quite a bit.

I can't give a full review because I never finished. It was simply too dull to keep my interest. Personally, if they had simply fixed the graphics and put the rest of their budget into a new story w/ characters I would have been happy. I love innovation but DA2 was in the wrong direction.

The problem with DA2 is that it became overhyped. Were it a first title in the Dragon Age series, I feel like people would've responded much differently; they would've enjoyed it more, and mentioned future potential.

More than likely the reaction would have been less... intense.

But there's still no glossing over that BioWare really just mailed this one in. Recycled maps, constant waves of enemies, and the story (IMO) wasn't pulled off nearly well enough and didn't live up to its potential. Couple that with the complete reworking of the franchise and it's easy to see why there's such discontent with the game.

And I'm a big BioWare fan. But this game... I had to force myself to finish it. That's something I can't say about any other BioWare game I've played. I have no interest in any DLC for it at all (and I bought most of the DLC for DA:O), and I really don't care much about patches for it, since I can't envision myself ever wanting to play the game again. Even if it were the first in the franchise, I don't think I'd have a much better opinion of it.

I think the repeated content, MMO-like quests and lack of any significant choices in the story would have been negatives no matter what the name of the game was. The combat issues and changes from the first game though are mostly only complained about by comparison to Origins.

As Desslock said in the latest PC Gamer, the game would have been much better as a sequel to Jade Empire, but still not a great RPG.

Ricitello about the coming shift in EA's strategies, Gamasutra.

Alot of bullshit but the DA franchise is mentioned.

So they're going to 'completely adopt the "games as a service" model'. I guess 'offensive' to describe this strategy pretty much hits the nail right on the head.

They're about 2 years too late for this, imo, too much game programming talent is being pumped out and the EAs of the world can't absorb them, even if only one in a hundred ever produce an Angry Birds type success it's going to show the wear of an EA model. Unless his games as a service model is paying 5 bucks a month for all you can eat (everything they pump out, period) I don't see how they can compete in the small and fast arena. They're going to have to stick with the mega productions to make cash, really.

He mentioned ARPU >_< Average Revenue Per User. It's a term that was made famous by mobile phone operators and it's a vile practice. Mobile operators worked out years ago that their market was over-saturated and new connections no longer drove profits. Thats when they started making addons so people didn't only pay for their line rental but also paid for insurance, data tarrifs, text messaging bundles you name it. ARPU for games can only mean one thing and thats selling the game isn't enough, they are already going to sell shitloads so they need to get more out of each sale. Riccitiello clearly means this is an offensive push for DLC, subscriptions and god knows what else.

I fear a future in which every EA game will be flooded with low-content horse armor DLC. Don't make the DLC better just make more of it, pure shovelware as some muppets will buy it.

The reason ARPU is important is because industries suddenly find there's no more new buyers to bring on board with their product (when I say "no more" this is relative, it means deep saturation). I'm not saying it's good, it usually means all the target markets are saturated and no one else interested has disposable income. Basically they'll try and sell you horse armor and convince you to skip going out to lunch. So basically as bad as you paint it.