KreideBein
Scholar
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2006
- Messages
- 957
I actually bought DA due to the overwhelmingly positive reaction. Turns out that it was a fantastic investment; DA does indeed live up to the post-release buzz. (To be honest, I was rather expecting the skyway apologists to be right about this one. The marketing campaign for DA truly made me cringe.) Having just completed it as a human mage, here are my general impressions:
The writing and VA are far better than I expected. As others have mentioned, neither category reaches the heights established by, say, VTMB, but they work quite well and are rarely obtrusive, with the occasional exception where the writing veers into a Whedon-esque style of putting "funny" comments in serious situations (e.g. Alistair's "sneaky witch-thief" comment). The only other problem was a very minor version of Oblivion syndrome where voice actors are used for multiple characters. To be fair, though, I only noticed that a handful of times throughout the entire game.
Combat is great, probably the best RTwP system I've played. I played most of the game on normal (had to switch to easy during the encounter with Loghain's female flunky, whatever her name was; that fight was absolutely insane), and the challege level stayed consistently high, even for relatively minor encounters. The proper use of tactics and talents is essential in most of the fights, particularly in any battle with an orange enemy. I had to reload on multiple occasions due to approaching the fights with an IE mentality. The AI is pretty good for the most part, except for some annoyances like my ranged characters constantly swapping to melee weapons and my main healer (Wynne) mysteriously running out of mana mid-fight. Auto-regen isn't nearly as bad as I had initially thought, and is basically a replacement for spamming the Z key after a fight in other RPGs.
I can't comment too much on the usefulness of the warrior or rogue classes since I didn't delve into them as much, but mages are quite well-done. They're certainly not as godlike as in BG2 and whatnot, especially since the top-tier damage spells didn't do massive instant damage, resulting in you having to think more about how to use them without being wasteful. I was also rather pleased that the almighty Paralysis Explosion spell combo, which tends to ease the difficulty of many fights, is almost useless against "boss" enemies. It forced me to massively re-evaluate my tactics for such encounters.
The story also ended up being a lot better than I would have expected. I was expecting a typical Bioware story about ancient evil or whatever and... well, that's what I got, but Bioware managed to make the whole thing interesting. The various races and factions were well fleshed-out through both in-game dialogue and the Codex (which, by the way, is awesome), and though I often saw bits of other stories in the game, they didn't strike me as being offensively derivitive. The choices within the story are surprisingly good, though I can't be sure how many different outcomes there are to be had, seeing as how I've only been through the game once. The situation with Jarvia and the Landsmeet struck me as particularly intriguing, though there were quite a few others that were well-done in the choices department.
The companions were generally enjoyable, though the only ones with whom I interacted much were Alistair, Leliana, Morrigan, and Wynne. The "twist" with Alistair was welcome due to how much it affected the story, as was Morrigan's offer near the end. Leliana and Wynne seemed perhaps a bit shallow, though. One thing which delighted me was that Zevran tried to kill me a second time when his friend showed up. My expectations from scenarios like this in other games led me to think that it was all a farce, that he was fine, and so on. Turns out that not giving him any attention results in him not being too loyal (or at least I assume so; it follows that he'd stick with the PC if his approval were higher).
Overall it's excellent. Some areas of the game are merely "good" rather than great, but I couldn't find much of anything that stuck out as being genuinely bad about it. Definitely worth an actual purchase, and I'm inclined to agree with VD that this is the best (overall) RPG since Arcanum. I'd go so far as to say that it's even better, but as Silellak pointed out, there's the ephemeral "click" factor. DA clicked with me, I admit it.
The writing and VA are far better than I expected. As others have mentioned, neither category reaches the heights established by, say, VTMB, but they work quite well and are rarely obtrusive, with the occasional exception where the writing veers into a Whedon-esque style of putting "funny" comments in serious situations (e.g. Alistair's "sneaky witch-thief" comment). The only other problem was a very minor version of Oblivion syndrome where voice actors are used for multiple characters. To be fair, though, I only noticed that a handful of times throughout the entire game.
Combat is great, probably the best RTwP system I've played. I played most of the game on normal (had to switch to easy during the encounter with Loghain's female flunky, whatever her name was; that fight was absolutely insane), and the challege level stayed consistently high, even for relatively minor encounters. The proper use of tactics and talents is essential in most of the fights, particularly in any battle with an orange enemy. I had to reload on multiple occasions due to approaching the fights with an IE mentality. The AI is pretty good for the most part, except for some annoyances like my ranged characters constantly swapping to melee weapons and my main healer (Wynne) mysteriously running out of mana mid-fight. Auto-regen isn't nearly as bad as I had initially thought, and is basically a replacement for spamming the Z key after a fight in other RPGs.
I can't comment too much on the usefulness of the warrior or rogue classes since I didn't delve into them as much, but mages are quite well-done. They're certainly not as godlike as in BG2 and whatnot, especially since the top-tier damage spells didn't do massive instant damage, resulting in you having to think more about how to use them without being wasteful. I was also rather pleased that the almighty Paralysis Explosion spell combo, which tends to ease the difficulty of many fights, is almost useless against "boss" enemies. It forced me to massively re-evaluate my tactics for such encounters.
The story also ended up being a lot better than I would have expected. I was expecting a typical Bioware story about ancient evil or whatever and... well, that's what I got, but Bioware managed to make the whole thing interesting. The various races and factions were well fleshed-out through both in-game dialogue and the Codex (which, by the way, is awesome), and though I often saw bits of other stories in the game, they didn't strike me as being offensively derivitive. The choices within the story are surprisingly good, though I can't be sure how many different outcomes there are to be had, seeing as how I've only been through the game once. The situation with Jarvia and the Landsmeet struck me as particularly intriguing, though there were quite a few others that were well-done in the choices department.
The companions were generally enjoyable, though the only ones with whom I interacted much were Alistair, Leliana, Morrigan, and Wynne. The "twist" with Alistair was welcome due to how much it affected the story, as was Morrigan's offer near the end. Leliana and Wynne seemed perhaps a bit shallow, though. One thing which delighted me was that Zevran tried to kill me a second time when his friend showed up. My expectations from scenarios like this in other games led me to think that it was all a farce, that he was fine, and so on. Turns out that not giving him any attention results in him not being too loyal (or at least I assume so; it follows that he'd stick with the PC if his approval were higher).
Overall it's excellent. Some areas of the game are merely "good" rather than great, but I couldn't find much of anything that stuck out as being genuinely bad about it. Definitely worth an actual purchase, and I'm inclined to agree with VD that this is the best (overall) RPG since Arcanum. I'd go so far as to say that it's even better, but as Silellak pointed out, there's the ephemeral "click" factor. DA clicked with me, I admit it.
