(Meant to post this several months ago)
Having completed Dragon Age 2, I wanted to jot down likes/dislikes.
Ok, I understand they wanted to reduce the budget as compared to DA1 and that they wanted to make it more console friendly. I won't gripe too much. I'm going to just live with these two items as a consequence of cheaper and console friendly:
1. Area reuse: obviously a cost control measure where every area gets used for 10+ quests
2. RPG Lite: Eased porting to console and making it more controller friendly. Perhaps this also widened their player base.
Things I liked:
Varric
Merrill
Isabela
Things that bugged me about DA2:
Minor Annoyances
No Autorun key
Show item/people names isn't a toggle
Golden mask: Best helm I found. Completely dominates the look of your character... ruins some cutscenes, IMO.
Locked chests in the middle of the street.
Medium Annoyances
Shallow mana/stamina pools: It feels like you only get 1 or 2 abilities until you're down to basics. Makes combats either a grind or a potion fest.
Weak item differentiation: I feel like their item randomizer is a d6 table that 90% of the items use:
1- +xx Attack/defense
2- +xx mana/stamina
3- +xx% magic, physical, crit damage
4- +xx% damage resistance
5- +xx% attack speed
6- roll on special table (immunity to stun, crits, knockback + maybe 4-5 others)
No real healing character (assume hawke isn't mage):
Anders- Recast timer on the heal is like 30-60 seconds and his panacena doesn't make a dent
Merrill- No heal
Bethany- Not around
Potions- Yep, there is your healer
Major Annoyances
"Funny" Item Names: Near the end nearly every magic has a name that tries to be cute:
Belt- Seven Deadly Cinch
Ring- Three Wolf Boon
Shield- Lord Bearing's Shield
... and many more.
This is a bit of a staple now a days where every MMORPG has a quest called "Pulp Friction" or "Unusual Suspects."
Blood magic, blood magic, blood magic: In DA1 blood magic was referenced sparingly and was spooky powerful stuff. In DA2, it seems all mages are blood mages.
Demons, demons, demons: Again, in DA1 fighting a single rage demon was scary stuff, they were tough fights. Now there are fights with several rage demons, abominations, etc all working together. I guess the Champion of Kirkwall is way tougher than the Champion of Fereldan?
Only characters I could keep up were tanks. My mages and rogues always died nearly every decently hard fight. A new, better taunt mechanic would be nice for tanks.
