- Jun 30, 2003
- 32,646
- 11,791
- 136
Cliffs are at the bottom - I have a huge gripe section.
Dragon Age Origins was billed as the spiritual successor to the widely lauded Baldur's Gate 2, arguably a masterpiece in PC RPGs; one of the, if not the, best RPG to grace the computer.
Dragon Age does an admirable job of trying to recreate the party-oriented RPG glory of BG2, but falls short. I'm not going to rip on the story (it's rather generic, but has some highlights), or the characters (only a few I actually cared about). I'm going to address it virtually all from gameplay and combat. Here's why DA:O isn't as could as it could have been:
The good:
visceral combat, decent spell/specialization selection, a fair amount of dialogue options and party interaction. Despite the total number of NPC's being relatively small, some of them are quite good. I really liked Alistair, and was very sad when he got pissed off at me (on the flip side, you can give gifts which will basically undo all the negative influence you have with party members, if you have enough of them).
The bad:
The most grievous offender is the AI. Bioware tried implementing a tactics system that way the AI could use abilities intelligently. Unfortunately, by default the AI will waste your party members abilities on enemies undeserving of the mana/stamina required for that spell. So, you might think that manual mode (which is how I play BG2) would be the proper alternative. And you'd be wrong. So very, very wrong. The manual AI is the terrible. Party members will fail to defend themselves, and stop attacking during the middle of a fight. This is particularly true when stuns and knockdowns occur. This makes efficient combat goddamn near impossible. I don't mind getting my ass kicked by powerful enemies (lich-guys are tough till you level up a bunch), but when my characters act like retards, I can't help but want to punch my monitor.
Which reminds me of something else... about to get ambushed and have the game paused? Better unpause/pause very quickly, because unless your characters have their weapons drawn, they will ignore your commands once they see enemies (in order to draw their weapons). Yes, that's right - all that great tactical planning you had of using your AOE spells and stuns in combination with each other just went to shit because you activated some enemies. Cmon bioware, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.
And my next point: the number of stuns and knockdowns available to enemies seems to far outweigh the number available to you. I was ambushed by a pack of wolves at level 15. Easy, I thought. They're wolves. No - every party member was quickly beset by the "overwhelm" skill, which is an automatic stun/knockdown with guaranteed damage. My party was quickly wiped out, to my dismay. The worst offender? A spider boss in the dwarven caves that has a large AOE stun. He also calls down buddy spiders who have nasty ranged attacks, so you get raped very easily.
I also particularly hated crushing prison - a stun spell that does DoT, and curse of mortality - a DoT that prevents healing. Both last for ~20s. 20s!!!
Even the knockback with fireball wasn't nearly as annoying.
Now if all that weren't enough, the slow mo sections will also get you killed. Finishes moves are cool. Finishing moves that do not grant invulnerability while there's an army of archers in front of you are not cool. My main character died several times to this.
Here's another thing - don't bother using 2 handed weapons for a warrior. You're far better off doing sword/shield - you get just as many stuns and knockbacks, you have better defense, and you only do marginally, marginally less DPS. The character Alistair (designed for sword/shield) was infinitely better than my warrior (2 handed) in basically every respect, despite me being built to dish out stupid amounts of damage. And yes, I even last Alistair tank when possible. I missed my attacks anyway.
Another thing that will make/break the game quite easily, I felt, is the order in which you attain your party members. I happened to get the offensive mage first. That's great, but had I known that getting the healer at level 17 would prevent me from selecting her skills and spells, I certainly would have gotten the healer first to maximize her healing abilities (and give her some AOE attacks too).
And the final massive annoyance - camera angles. Don't bother trying to fight up a hill. You will die because you can't select anything. The camera also jumps around when you are close in, which makes coordinating combat more difficult than it needs to be.
I've written quite a lot of bad, but DA:O is actually a pretty good game. It's just plagued by piss-poor (IMO) AI, some balance issues, and a camera that desperately needs fixing (dear bioware, you guys changed the camera in NWN2, did you forget how to make it work in DA:O?)
Despite all my bitching and moaning, Dragon Age gets a B-. The gripes I have aren't enough to warrant a C - it's definitely above average, but there are too many things that prevent it from being a truly great game. It's a shame that the AI is really more of a hindrance than help, because all the AI fixes alone would probably take DA:O to a B+/A game quite easily.
Cliffs:
1) combat is fun, but the AI is atrocious and makes fights harder than necessary. not just in 1 way, but multiple.
2) there seem to be too many stuns available to enemies and not enough counters to them
3) the camera is a pain in the ass
4) despite my huge section of bad, DA:O gets a B-. It's above average, but the AI really kills the game for me. Hopefully Bioware will address these issues in DA:O2.
Dragon Age Origins was billed as the spiritual successor to the widely lauded Baldur's Gate 2, arguably a masterpiece in PC RPGs; one of the, if not the, best RPG to grace the computer.
Dragon Age does an admirable job of trying to recreate the party-oriented RPG glory of BG2, but falls short. I'm not going to rip on the story (it's rather generic, but has some highlights), or the characters (only a few I actually cared about). I'm going to address it virtually all from gameplay and combat. Here's why DA:O isn't as could as it could have been:
The good:
visceral combat, decent spell/specialization selection, a fair amount of dialogue options and party interaction. Despite the total number of NPC's being relatively small, some of them are quite good. I really liked Alistair, and was very sad when he got pissed off at me (on the flip side, you can give gifts which will basically undo all the negative influence you have with party members, if you have enough of them).
The bad:
The most grievous offender is the AI. Bioware tried implementing a tactics system that way the AI could use abilities intelligently. Unfortunately, by default the AI will waste your party members abilities on enemies undeserving of the mana/stamina required for that spell. So, you might think that manual mode (which is how I play BG2) would be the proper alternative. And you'd be wrong. So very, very wrong. The manual AI is the terrible. Party members will fail to defend themselves, and stop attacking during the middle of a fight. This is particularly true when stuns and knockdowns occur. This makes efficient combat goddamn near impossible. I don't mind getting my ass kicked by powerful enemies (lich-guys are tough till you level up a bunch), but when my characters act like retards, I can't help but want to punch my monitor.
Which reminds me of something else... about to get ambushed and have the game paused? Better unpause/pause very quickly, because unless your characters have their weapons drawn, they will ignore your commands once they see enemies (in order to draw their weapons). Yes, that's right - all that great tactical planning you had of using your AOE spells and stuns in combination with each other just went to shit because you activated some enemies. Cmon bioware, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.
And my next point: the number of stuns and knockdowns available to enemies seems to far outweigh the number available to you. I was ambushed by a pack of wolves at level 15. Easy, I thought. They're wolves. No - every party member was quickly beset by the "overwhelm" skill, which is an automatic stun/knockdown with guaranteed damage. My party was quickly wiped out, to my dismay. The worst offender? A spider boss in the dwarven caves that has a large AOE stun. He also calls down buddy spiders who have nasty ranged attacks, so you get raped very easily.
I also particularly hated crushing prison - a stun spell that does DoT, and curse of mortality - a DoT that prevents healing. Both last for ~20s. 20s!!!
Even the knockback with fireball wasn't nearly as annoying.
Now if all that weren't enough, the slow mo sections will also get you killed. Finishes moves are cool. Finishing moves that do not grant invulnerability while there's an army of archers in front of you are not cool. My main character died several times to this.
Here's another thing - don't bother using 2 handed weapons for a warrior. You're far better off doing sword/shield - you get just as many stuns and knockbacks, you have better defense, and you only do marginally, marginally less DPS. The character Alistair (designed for sword/shield) was infinitely better than my warrior (2 handed) in basically every respect, despite me being built to dish out stupid amounts of damage. And yes, I even last Alistair tank when possible. I missed my attacks anyway.
Another thing that will make/break the game quite easily, I felt, is the order in which you attain your party members. I happened to get the offensive mage first. That's great, but had I known that getting the healer at level 17 would prevent me from selecting her skills and spells, I certainly would have gotten the healer first to maximize her healing abilities (and give her some AOE attacks too).
And the final massive annoyance - camera angles. Don't bother trying to fight up a hill. You will die because you can't select anything. The camera also jumps around when you are close in, which makes coordinating combat more difficult than it needs to be.
I've written quite a lot of bad, but DA:O is actually a pretty good game. It's just plagued by piss-poor (IMO) AI, some balance issues, and a camera that desperately needs fixing (dear bioware, you guys changed the camera in NWN2, did you forget how to make it work in DA:O?)
Despite all my bitching and moaning, Dragon Age gets a B-. The gripes I have aren't enough to warrant a C - it's definitely above average, but there are too many things that prevent it from being a truly great game. It's a shame that the AI is really more of a hindrance than help, because all the AI fixes alone would probably take DA:O to a B+/A game quite easily.
Cliffs:
1) combat is fun, but the AI is atrocious and makes fights harder than necessary. not just in 1 way, but multiple.
2) there seem to be too many stuns available to enemies and not enough counters to them
3) the camera is a pain in the ass
4) despite my huge section of bad, DA:O gets a B-. It's above average, but the AI really kills the game for me. Hopefully Bioware will address these issues in DA:O2.