Dragon age, good interactive movie, bad game

[taltamir]

Dragon age is a terrible game mixed with an excellent "interactive movie". The story is well written, the setting is well crafted, the graphics are cool, the voice acting is amazing, and so on.

But what they messed up on is the game part. The game is just a boring uninspired grind fest with too many MMO trappings, a horribly unbalanced system, a ton of character design traps that will make you suck if you don't bypass them...

A bioware employee actually explained that the reason their skill/spell/talent descriptions were so vague is that they locked in all the final wordings in the game for translation while they were still working on balancing the gameplay. So, yes, every single line of dialogue was set in stone before they finished balancing the gameplay (which they never did finish).

The bugs are annoying, many of which are balance critial, for example the description says that dex contributes to bow damage, but it is actually STR that determines your damage with a bow. Many skills have issues like that, or they are just plain terrible.

Premium content decimates suspension of disbeleif (in game merchants selling it, your journal shows "premium content" as a town name, and lists quests, your map shows some areas in Gold, they are DLC areas, etc... and those are all there if you bought it or not... buying it still means it is labeled premium content and a different color.

Best party is 1 shield tank with knockdown immunity and 3 mages... hard and impossible are no different than normal, while easy is still too hard, and is only made "easy" by making AoO spells not affect your own guys (another suspension of disbeleif issue).
Dragons, trolls, bosses, etc are all push overs while the most difficult fights are the 20+ random mooks spawns you keep on facing. (not to mention that as usual you leave 2/3 of your people in the camp while only you and 3 helpers fight)

And lets not forget the terrible uninspired side quests... (fetch this, kill this, etc.)

Despite being single player every aspect of it is MMOish... enemies run through your warriors who block the door, unless your warrior uses his "aggro" skills. You can just chug potions, etc etc etc... terrible game. I finally got the point where I couldn't play it anymore despite wanting to see what happens next.

[warty goblin]

Haven't played the game. What I will say is that games need to stop trying to be movies.

It's why I don't play Call of Duty games. I have no desire to play an action movie. If I want that experience, I'll watch one. I'd much rather play something that's designed from the ground up to take full advantage of the interactivity uniquely available in a game.

[Mr.Silver]

Shouldn't this be in the Gaming section? Hell there's already at least 1 Dragon Age thread there where this would have been better suited.

[Blaine.Bush]

The search function is your friend.

[taltamir]

frankly, I'd like to have some cheats to just "skip" the rest of the terrible game and get to the next point in the interactive movie... I want to see the ending but I really can't stomach it anymore.

if you intend to play the game, get on the forums and read about character optimization... by "tactical game" they meant "some classes / builds suck, some are awesome, read the forums or replay a lot".
Well... except they deleted the forums to make a new "dragon age social network".
its... sufficiently forum like... check out the char op forum here:
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/category/66/index

[Fiendish_Dire_Moose]

Wait...The setting is well crafted and not ripped out of the nearest copy of LoTR?

[taltamir]

Shouldn't this be in the Gaming section? Hell there's already at least 1 Dragon Age thread there where this would have been better suited.

I was actually looking for where exactly to place it... and I missed the gaming (other) forum... you are right that it would have been a better spot for it.
If someone will move the thread there I'd be much obliged.

Wait...The setting is well crafted and not rippied out of the nearest copy of LoTR?

They take basic LOTR things like "elves and dwarves" for granted... but the setting includes the whole magic, religion, fade, etc that are all new and I almost dare say original.

[Blaine.Bush]

frankly, I'd like to have some cheats to just "skip" the rest of the terrible game and get to the next point in the interactive movie... I want to see the ending but I really can't stomach it anymore.

if you intend to play the game, get on the forums and read about character optimization... by "tactical game" they meant "some classes / builds suck, some are awesome, read the forums or replay a lot".
Well... except they deleted the forums to make a new "dragon age social network".
its... sufficiently forum like... check out the char op forum here:
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/category/66/index

I haven't found any build that really sucks. Even archery isn't that bad if you play intelligently. The only thing I can see being bad is if someone really stupid decides to play and thinks, "Hey, I'll take one talent each in two-handed weapon, weapon and shield, dual-weapon, and archery! I'll be awesome!"

[taltamir]

I haven't found any build that really sucks. Even archery isn't that bad if you play intelligently. The only thing I can see being bad is if someone really stupid decides to play and thinks, "Hey, I'll take one talent each in two-handed weapon, weapon and shield, dual-weapon, and archery! I'll be awesome!"

All the cohorts that join you are preleveled to your current level automatically... all of them are preleveled EXACTLY THAT WAY.
The party stash is only available if you you buy one of the DLCs, then you need to finish it, and then it acts as your party stash.
There are whole lists of "bad design decisions" bioware made on the forums.

[Fiendish_Dire_Moose]

I was actually looking for where exactly to place it... and I missed the gaming (other) forum... you are right that it would have been a better spot for it.
If someone will move the thread there I'd be much obliged.



They take basic LOTR things like "elves and dwarves" for granted... but the setting includes the whole magic, religion, fade, etc that are all new and I almost dare say original.

Creepy Templaric religion is nowhere close to original, it's almost done to death in magical settings. The only original thing about the magic is it's just that, magic. No specialized BS with a social title attached and prettied up. Any mage can heal, any mage can shapeshift(after a spec point of course), and any mage can cast burny burny death.

Even the enviornments looked LoTR-ish. Anything that was stone and not in dirty dirty poor man land is almost covered in white out. Even racial relations are in the crapper.

While I find the game fun to play for an hour or two, I can't help but feel(and know) that I've seen it all before. The game brings very little new to the table.
It's Mass Effect with dragons.

[Blaine.Bush]

All the cohorts that join you are preleveled to your current level automatically... all of them are preleveled EXACTLY THAT WAY.
The party stash is only available if you you buy one of the DLCs, then you need to finish it, and then it acts as your party stash.
There are whole lists of "bad design decisions" bioware made on the forums.

What's wrong with the way they're preleveled?

[Dienekes]

The interesting thing, is for the "creepy templar religion" I found is that, really it's not so creepy.

Now there can be, and is, arguments if what they're doing is right and honorable and so forth. But they do some very good things, they do some things that seem to be came from a good idea though may or may not have been twisted.

Now as to the game itself. I rather liked it. I play on hard, and I love how difficult it is. I enjoy the tacticality of the combat. If you go in guns blazing with little thought, you will be screwed. If you actually take the time to make plans you will be very rewarded.

I would ask to speak of what balancing problems you've had. Cause really, I haven't found any. Now some classes are more useful than others, that's no lie. But really, I found almost any party can be made useful on hard anyway. Though I haven't played on nightmare.

The in game selling of premium content IS annoying. You and I agree 100% there.

So yeah, anyway. Mileage may vary for this one apparently.

[taltamir]

What's wrong with the way they're preleveled?

take lilliana.. she has half her points in bows, and half in melee. making her a crappy bowman and a crappy meleer. Since she didn't specialize in either.

This is actually pretty common... their stats area always all over the place (stats being "strength, dexterity, etc".) and so on.

Now as to the game itself. I rather liked it. I play on hard, and I love how difficult it is. I enjoy the tacticality of the combat. If you go in guns blazing with little thought, you will be screwed. If you actually take the time to make plans you will be very rewarded.

And by tactics you mean exploiting the artificial stupidy. pulling =! tactics. (bioware explicitly cites pulling as an example of "tactical play")

I would ask to speak of what balancing problems you've had. Cause really, I haven't found any. Now some classes are more useful than others, that's no lie. But really, I found almost any party can be made useful on hard anyway. Though I haven't played on nightmare.

I didn't have any tactical problems, I was lucky enough to start off as a wizard so my early mistakes didn't matter, I also consulted the forums, and have some experience with such games so I was able to develop some very effective strategies. So really I had no problems kicking anything's ass. The assumption that someone must be a "noob" to not like bad gameplay is a fallacy.

The infinite identical mobs (who are each stronger than the dragon I faced a little while ago due to level scaling) I have to mow through as I go through TINY areas with invisible walls up the wazoo to get to the next "interactive movie" point... that I have a problem with. I want to get to the next area without having to kill 500 "level appropriate" random mooks.

If you want to know some of the balancing problems in the game then check the forums that I linked. they have about a million threads explaining in detail (which, I actually post in under the same name as here; well, used to until they switched it to "social networking" from forums)

[Blaine.Bush]

take lilliana.. she has half her points in bows, and half in melee. making her a crappy bowman and a crappy meleer. Since she didn't specialize in either.

This is actually pretty common... their stats area always all over the place (stats being "strength, dexterity, etc".) and so on.

And by "half her points in melee" you mean the one point in Dirty Fighting that all rogues start with, and the one point in Below the Belt which leads to Lethality, a great talent for rogue archers?

Edit: As opposed to the four points in archery, two points in lockpicking, and one point in Song of Valor.

[taltamir]

And by "half her points in melee" you mean the one point in Dirty Fighting that all rogues start with, and the one point in Below the Belt which leads to Lethality, a great talent for rogue archers?

Edit: As opposed to the four points in archery, two points in lockpicking, and one point in Song of Valor.

not just a great talent, a required talent... which I am surprised they haven't fixed it...
According to the tooltips dex determines bow damage, str melee damage, and lethality allows replacing str with cunning (if higher) for melee damage.
Those are wrong.
All damage, including bow, is determined by str, and cunning lets you replace ranged damage with cunning as well.

Presumably they will make a patch soon that either changes the description, or changes misbehavior to match the description.

I HOPE they weren't aware of this bug and were intentionally going for it.

[Dienekes]

And by tactics you mean exploiting the artificial stupidy. pulling =! tactics. (bioware explicitly cites pulling as an example of "tactical play")

I was referring to when to use which spells and abilities to maximize your damage output per encounter and using whatever terrain you have as an advantage along with traps. But if you want to put words into my mouth that's cool too.

I didn't have any tactical problems, I was lucky enough to play a wizard, check the forums, and have some experience with such games. So really I had no problems kicking anything's ass. The assumption that someone must be a "noob" to not like bad gameplay is a fallacy.

I play a warrior type on hard with only 1 wizard in my party. I did not say you were a noob, again lovingly putting words into my mouth. If anything I am since this is my second Bioware game and I have only once looked at a charops page. I merely asked which balancing problems you were having since I as of yet have not experienced anything broken.

The infinite identical mobs (who are each stronger than the dragon I faced a little while ago due to level scaling) I have to mow through as I go through TINY areas with invisible walls up the wazoo to get to the next "interactive movie" point... that I have a problem with. I want to get to the next area without having to kill 500 "level appropriate" random mooks.

A valid argument, as mooks do scale, and I as well have met an invisible wall. However, I enjoy the combat so it's not a problem for me.

If you want to know some of the balancing problems in the game then check the forums that I linked. they have about a million threads explaining in detail

Cool, I haven't really come up to them though.

[Blaine.Bush]

not just a great talent, a required talent... which I am surprised they haven't fixed it...
According to the tooltips dex determines bow damage, str melee damage, and lethality allows replacing str with cunning (if higher) for melee damage.
Those are wrong.
All damage, including bow, is determined by str, and cunning lets you replace ranged damage with cunning as well.

Presumably they will make a patch soon that either changes the description, or changes misbehavior to match the description.

I HOPE they weren't aware of this bug and were intentionally going for it.

At release, chance to hit with bows was determined by dexterity and damage with bows was determined by both strength and dexterity. A patch has already been released to fix this, so that only dexterity is used in determining damage with bows.

[Lord Seth]

Obligatory Zero Punctuation link.

[taltamir]

well, yahtze complained about the excess use of words, and said "if you like RPGs you will probably like this one, I don't know, I don't like RPGs"... then again, he is saying the game gripped him and he can't wait to see what happens next. I know the feeling... if you can just make it last until the end of the game...

I love RPGs and I hate this one (well, the game play, I like the interactive movie part)...

[warty goblin]

The impression I got from Yahtzee's review was that the story was pretty good although probably nothing to write home about, but the gameplay was very much old hat.

My personal feeling on this sort of gameplay is that I have a limited desire for it, and currently that is completely satiated by the infinitely less pretentious and 40% cheaper Drakensang: The Dark Eye, which also has the advantage of featuring colors besides brown and gore.

[Tavar]

featuring colors besides brown and gore.

What are these colors you speak of?

[Hallavast]

well, yahtze complained about the excess use of words, and said "if you like RPGs you will probably like this one, I don't know, I don't like RPGs"... then again, he is saying the game gripped him and he can't wait to see what happens next. I know the feeling... if you can just make it last until the end of the game...

I love RPGs and I hate this one (well, the game play, I like the interactive movie part)...

Well, the guy doesn't come off as capable of giving a credible review of the game, since he's not familiar with fantasy OR RPGs. It's actually kinda funny, because he insists that the game is not dark fantasy (and ridicules the term) but rather just straight fantasy. Then he references conan... This tells me he knows nothing about what he's trying to review. I'll pass on his advice.

[Avilan the Grey]

I have just read the OP post and ???

Of course everyone's taste is different, but I love the feeling of playing a classic, well made Bioware game again.

It is basically BGIII, and I love it.

[Shadowcaller]

I have just read the OP post and ???

Of course everyone's taste is different, but I love the feeling of playing a classic, well made Bioware game again.

It is basically BGIII, and I love it.

I had the exact same feeling actually...

[Don Julio Anejo]

I have just read the OP post and ???

Of course everyone's taste is different, but I love the feeling of playing a classic, well made Bioware game again.

It is basically BGIII, and I love it.

{Scrubbed} True, characters and the game world were done pretty well, especially considering the world was done from scratch just for this game, the story is more a lot more complex than is typical for most "kill generic stuff and become hero of the realm" RPGs, different starts for different character types is an awesome idea but the MMO gameplay, Alistair's spiky hair, Morrigan's stripperific outfit, in-game aggressive selling of the DLC's all make it seem like the game's target audience is 13 year olds. At least the game isn't that stripperific, but it still has way too many faults.

Oh, and no combat log + really vague skill/ability descriptions. Seriously, I've never done any programming in my life, but just use damn numeric strings for the localization.. eg:

Dexterity increases your attack by (String 1) for every point you increase it.
-is the same as-
Dextérité augmenté votre attaque de (String 1) pour chaque point que vous augmentez

Write something like when localizing and just make a damn text file with all the values for it. Voila!

[Avilan the Grey]

It's basically BGIII for 13 year old X-box morons. True, characters and the game world were done pretty well, especially considering the world was done from scratch just for this game, the story is more a lot more complex than is typical for most "kill generic stuff and become hero of the realm" RPGs, different starts for different character types is an awesome idea but the MMO gameplay, Alistair's spiky hair, Morrigan's stripperific outfit, in-game aggressive selling of the DLC's all make it seem like the game's target audience is 13 year olds. At least the game isn't that stripperific, but it still has way too many faults.

Oh, and no combat log + really vague skill/ability descriptions. Seriously, I've never done any programming in my life, but just use damn numeric strings for the localization.. eg:

Dexterity increases your attack by (String 1) for every point you increase it.
-is the same as-
Dextérité augmenté votre attaque de (String 1) pour chaque point que vous augmentez

Write something like when localizing and just make a damn text file with all the values for it. Voila!

I completely disagree.

1. Spiky hair? What spiky hair? Are you sure you are not using a mod?

2. Yeah because we all know that in D&D no female mages are wearing a casterkini. Evar.

3. What does In Game marketing (which is a bad idea) have to do with target audience age? I am sorry, I just don't see the connection.

4. I don't think the descriptions are vague. They are clear enough. Of course I am not really into the "Uber-optimizing" thing. Besides, this point of yours seems to contradict the "For 13-year old morons" part.

[Kcalehc]

So far I'm enjoying it. Some of the interactive movie sequences are a bit too long for my tastes though - I'd actually rather be playing.
Not very far in but I'm enjoying the new world that they built, mildly original in places, still different enough to feel new. The downloadable content thing is a bit annoying however, they could have left that to a seperate place where you knew it would be.

[Mewtarthio]

Wait, what's all this about in-game marketing of DLC? I've not run into anyone referencing a DLC before I downloaded it.

[jmbrown]

Out of curiosity, what version are you guys playing because the PC version has either been patched to fix those things or can be easily modified.

I stand by my belief that Dragon Age never should have been made for consoles. It was originally going to be a PC exclusive but when Electronic Arts jumped on as publisher, they forced BioWare to port it to 360 and PS3 because EA beleives that PC games aren't profitable. The console versions were literally rushed out the door (at PAX 08, the PR and marketing guys said it was PC exclusive then a week later they said they were porting it to consoles). Had the game stayed on path as a PC exclusive they would have had more time to hammer out the problems instead of splitting the team to work on multiple versions.

EA is also the bigger proponent of DLC. I don't mind DLC especially good stuff that adds to the gameplay, but EA releases DLC the day of launch which is absolutely ridiculous. Are you trying to tell me that these "features" were separately funded and developed after the game went gold and the discs were printed? Because if not, they should have been in the final product from the very beginning.

Long story short, I feel absolutely terrible for the people playing this on the consoles and getting a bad opinion. After beating the game I opened up the editor and modified the attack value of all the bosses and skills and even created some unique items I felt would make the game more interesting. I plan on running through it again on hard and seeing if the experience changes any. After that I'll probably start working on some story modules.

[Comet]

Wait, what's all this about in-game marketing of DLC? I've not run into anyone referencing a DLC before I downloaded it.

Warden's Keep and Stone Prisoner both do this.
Personally, I don't have a problem with it. I still get to decide whether or not I download the DLC and there's no harm in refusing to do so.
As for immersion, you could say that my immersion breaks every time I visit the options-screen. I don't really see anything different here.