THE BIZARRE DESIGN DECISIONS OF DRAGON AGE II

How dare you? You elitist, spoiled, nerd.

You forgot to add the stupid extra waves of cannon fodder enemies when talking about the combat.

Yes, yes, yes, thank you.  Agree on every point.  A very good game but not in the same league as the first.

Quote:

Originally Posted by stelios 

How dare you? You elitist, spoiled, nerd.

 

You forgot to add the stupid extra waves of cannon fodder enemies when talking about the combat.

 

Yeah, the reinforcements are really bugging the shit out of me.  In theory, they should add a more organic, unpredictable feel to combat, but in practice it just means I misinterpret how difficult every fight will be and have to do them all several times, which actually emphasizes just how programmed and mechanical it all is.  The faceless sameness of the enemies doesn't do anything to help.

So he is playing it! I knew it.

Me? Why wouldn't I!

I can deal with the enemies springing out of nowhere nonstop, but how many people have we killed in this city? There can't be that large of a population.

Another thing that bugged me in the more repetitive sidequests I was doing? I hate picking up an item and IMMEDIATELY knowing who it belongs to. So many times you'll just pick some crap up and know who it was that lost it, way across town, even if you've never even looked at them before.

Anyway. This cracked me up quite a bit-

Not you, stelios. I imagine he he's playing this game with clenched teeth and a vice-like grip on his mouse.

The thing is, I agree that a lot of these design decisions don't make sense, but the changes don't seem to be diminishing much. I'm in the middle of Act II, so there's still a long way to go, but I find myself itching to get back to the game even more than I did during my first DA:O playthrough.

No I'm not playing it. Why wouldn't I say so in the game's thread if I did? I've only gone through the demo with each class and what I commented on was easily apparent.

The demo blows.

Out of all of Alex's observations, the only one that really irks me is the magic omni-cave, which pretty much gets retired by the end of Act I. I didn't much like the spawning hordes of villains at first, but in the end, it's just a different combat style. It forces to you plan battles both before and during a fight.

I could deal with the spawning hordes if it wasn't every single fight, or if it made sense within the reality of the story.  When an Arcane Horror summons more shades after I dispatch the first round, there's a certain logic there.  When I'm ambushed by a street gang, and they divide their attack into three separate waves for no reason, there isn't.  It really doesn't help anything when they just bamf into the middle of the fray either.  Occasionally, you'll see some animation of a thug jumping down from a building, but more often, they just appear next to you when you kill X number of identical, faceless enemies.

Dropping down from Nightmare to Hard has helped this considerably, however, as I can now beat some of the fights in less than 4 tries. 

I've noticed that there are wild swings in difficulty when playing on hard. The underling fights which are way too easy on normal are just challenging enough on hard, but most of the boss/story battles are miserable when it's on anything above normal. it's possible I just suck at it, though.

Regarding the button-mashing, auto-combat was supposed to be in the console versions, but inexplicably got left out of the final, shipped release -- according to the devs over on the official BioWare forums, they're working on patching that right now (along with, one assumes, the DLC Achievements finally showing up for Xbox players). 

So, all of us consolefags will soon be getting the "proper" PC combat experience, too (assumedly).