Things I like...
DAO - Animation wasn't cartoony. Battle had a natural feel to it. I could choose the PC's vocal style. Sustainables were a fixed cost. You could choose gear for your companions. A couple straight LI's, meaning you had to play both sexes to earn the hopeless romantic trophy. Being able to choose the who gets the royal ass cushion. Having a woman strip in public so you can rob her with ease. Being able to rob people.
DA2 - Your sister loved you, your brother followed you. You were trapped in a perpetual state of "life sucks, but I'm still here". The battle menu stayed on until you turned it off, so you could have everyone doing something at the same time. Varric narrating; all he needed was a brandy and a pipe, and a quip, "let me tell you a tale you'll never believe"; which leads me to ask, does his narration change if he doesn't like you? The different paths the dialogue wheel can take you. Tactics slots which grow which the characters; and combat training is moot.
Things I don't like...
DAO - Two-handed weapon fighters. The tactics slots are too limited for mages; especially mages who are trying to gain combat training and cohersion.The spell wheel is static, I should be able to arrange it to suit me combat priorities; or by rights, the spells should arrange themselves by logic, healing spells always go on the first page, followed by spells like Mind Blast and Sleep and Mass Paralyze, followed by slow AoE spells ending with the fast target spells which can go on your hotkeys anyway; what goon stores Cone of Cold between Flame Hands and Fireball? Have you any idea how many times I shot fire at rage demons? Or tripped Dark Sustenance when trying to cast Tempest. Zevran; I don't seem to have a use for him, bit of a useless tit who tried to kill me. Not much difference in treatment from one origin to another, despite the radical demographic; I can see Isolde acted the way she does to an elf, but to Cousland, she should have held her tongue at times, and the other upper classes should have slipped "mi-lord" a little more often; Templars should have been cantankerous towards Blood Mages, and civil towards fellow Templars; Fereldans at large should have been distrustful of the Dalish Warden; I haven't entered Orzammar or talked to Gorim with the Casteless Warden, so I'm have no say there. Apparently there's a brothel in Orzammar, but I haven't found it, and the only prostitute there who offers, doesn't have the dialogue option; aside from the Kinslayer origin, which can only be obtained before Ostagar. Not being able to exit Orzammar from the map like the other habitations. Female Dalish Leather, while sexy, is ultimately in-congruent with folk of the wild, "yeah, my wife came home covered in scratches again", "did she get mauled by a bear?", "no, she ran through a thicket to get away from one."
DA2 - Animation was cartoony. Everyone in cut scenes walked like they had just shit their pants. Everyone had over-defined teeth. Battle was unrealistically fast; rogues and warriors are best left to their tactics; mages are rather limited, and there fighting style is just stupid, especially when some of the staffs are horrible weighted on one end. You didn't get to choose your companions gear. What self respecting peasant wears a sheet of chainmail over her incredibly low cut dress; and her hands looked like chewed leather in comparison to the creamy complexion of her face and tits. The interrogation of the Fereldan traitor looked robotic. Ending dialogue which is in-congruent with previous questioning. You're a passenger in your companions dialogue; and you don't get to initiate conversations en-route; essentially, you talk when they want you to talk. The option to literally prove you're a mage, seems intellectually bankrupt; this is Kirkwall after all, mages and Templars are everywhere. Not being able to on an item or enemy and move to it from distance; causes great strife when just coming off of DAO, which allows you to do this; shaking your weapon during combat is not funny. The fucker who decided to mess with the start and select button features needs to be shot.
Shadizar666 (Ruck Rules) 07:27, February 20, 2013 (UTC)
In DAO, I liked everything. Story was great, combat felt balanced perfectly. As a fellow console peon I have the same sentiment about the spell wheel, but unlike with action games where you rush in mashing buttons, or in FPS games where you flick a reticle into place on an enemy's head and keeping it there while it shakes from recoil while they dashed around shooting at you able to kill you with half the rounds you need to kill them, in this it felt like on the hardest difficulty you have to think through the most difficult fights. I didn't like the bugs that kept me from finishing a couple quests, like Velanna's Exile, but the game still gets a 10.
For DA2, I didn't mind the way the story was told. Everything felt neater with fewer variables I'd want to screw around with to see what happens (unlike ME1, which led to three separate imports into ME2), and for an interquel, it works, but I will concede that some things could've been written with more substance. I'll be here all night trying to write down what could've been done better, but my biggest problem was the imbalances on Nightmare. As a Warrior, you can't get past Lothering without lowering the difficulty, as a Mage you have to be a Primal Force Mage Spirit Healer to survive, and I haven't started as a Rogue yet. Pulling and kiting enemies is impossible, items have cooldowns and stop appearing once you have more than 4, and Fenris/Carver kills half the team including Aveline. Forget the ninja backflips in full plate, the Templar Hunters and other Assassin types were way too overpowered. In short, if you couldn't kill everyone on-screen within the first five seconds they would overwhelm you, at least that's how it felt. RShepard227 (talk) 09:50, February 20, 2013 (UTC)
- I fully agree with the nightmare mode issue; except that you can get out of Lothering with a warrior, it's just stupid hard. I did a restart on "Hard" and it seems like going back to daycare; I swear the ogre stumbles when I sneezed in his general direction, did I scare him with my sudden movements?
- And on the note of ogres. One thing I didn't like, was that you couldn't dodge charges or boulders, and once you got slammed into a wall, the charges kept coming. The boulders were absurd curve balls, and the golems did it too, once they were in the air, they were guaranteed to hit you; your own golem boulder throw acted according to the logic of physics, when you throw it somewhere, that's where it's going to go, and if the target is no longer there, tough shit, put lead on it. Shadizar666 (Ruck Rules) 19:38, February 20, 2013 (UTC)
Yes, Dragon Age Origins felt more unique, but DA2 wasn't bad. DA2 always gets bashed because it's "not enough like origins". I've played both games around 10 times, and I love both of them. Origins is just so exciting with the fantastic plot, but so is DA2. Yes, DA2 isn't as long as origins, and doesn't have as many side quests. It has hardly any. But Origins has a lot of faults too.
Origin Cons: -melee combat is boring and terrible, takes so long to run up to someone and then wait for your character to hit them on the head -the lag between mini bosses and quest updates (try doing the fade again, you have to wait like a minute after every head demon) -hardening alistair and leliana is too difficult. 1 dialogue option changes the entire rest of the game/epilogue? too iffy -some things are just useless (shapeshifting, Zevran, Sten after you get Oghren) -not NEARLY as replayable as DA2 -re-used armor...like mage armor was the same thing but diff colors, and mostly the same for warriors
DA2 Cons: -..okay story -Hawke voice acting (I prefer to have a silent character, because then it's easier for -me- to relate to the character) -neat rivalry/friendship idea, but if you were rivalry with anders, the game ASSUMED that you hated mages :/ -they re-used areas -20 million enemies keep jumping from above wave after wave after wave after wave after wave -boring map, not enough places to go
anyways, i just think they are both great games, and personally i think DA2 is just as good as origins but in different waysDanthehumanmage (talk) 19:52, February 20, 2013 (UTC)
- "hardening alistair and leliana is too difficult"
- O_O
- The first time I hear people having issues with that. It is supposed to be difficult, because changing the whole mindset of a grown-up person really is difficult. Regardless, I didn't find it that difficult in the very first playthrough of mine. -Algol- (talk) 21:51, February 20, 2013 (UTC)
yeah but it's completely unfair to female wardens that get DUMPED by an unhardened King alistair, just because they didn't choose the meanest option when doing his quest 24.184.226.251 (talk) 21:56, February 20, 2013 (UTC)
- That may be, but a hardened Alistair makes for a better king. And if you marry him to Anora, you can still be his mistress; which is remarked upon by the barkeep in DA2. Shadizar666 (Ruck Rules) 22:28, February 20, 2013 (UTC)
- Leliana dumps the Warden in DA2? Shadizar666 (Ruck Rules) 23:12, February 20, 2013 (UTC)
- According to Leliana's file; if she's still romanced, she'll acknowledge the relationship as such. But not if certain plot points weren't met, or if some others were. Such as marrying Anora, dying, letting Marjolaine live, etc. I've not completed with Leliana's love yet, so I can't confirm one way or the other. Shadizar666 (Ruck Rules) 02:31, February 21, 2013 (UTC)
35-48 times. That's how many times I've gone through Origins. DA2 15-25 After playing them again I realized something. DA2 is just as Awesome as DA:O My resons as followed DA:O Pros: 1) Amazing Characters. If DA:O hadn't had Alistair or Morrigan or even the bloody dog I would NOT have finished it on my first play-through. 2) Interesting Story. It's not just that the story was told well it's that it was also interesting to see how it ended or how you made it end. 3) Choices. The big choices were nice, but it was the little ones that had me replaying. Like Hardening Alistair of Leliana, or helping/killing Kolgrim, hell even keeping or killing the dog had some replay-ability.
DA2 Pros- 1) Combat- I rather liked the hacking and slashing classic arcade style combat. 2) LI's- I am probably the only one who will ever say this, but I prefer the LI's DA2 had than DA:O had. Though that could be because I played DA:O more. 3) Armor- The armor for Hawke was extensive and varied.
DA:O Cons: 1) Leveling up. My word is it hard! It took me the entire game to just get to level 18. You can't imagine how happy I was when I found the glitch Traps are a girls best friend. 2) The Fade. Everything about that quest was redundant. It get's you no where, it does nothing for the overall story, it takes like 5 or 10 minutes just for the blasted fade portal to confirm you killed a boss, and don't even get me started on long it is. There's a reason there is a mod to get rid of it. 3) Lack of tutorials. I love the game but it took me the first 10 play throughs to figure out where to put my stats.
DA2 Cons- 1) Lack of Choices- I don't care about the big choices like Killing or keeping Anders, no. I want little choices that can be carried over to the next game. Like hardening a character or saving a castle. A little quest that has a big impact, so to say. 2) Lack of Skills- I miss having the option to trick people with my silver tongue or threatening people to give me money. 3) Merrill- I wanted a female Elf romance so bad, but Merrill was just horrible! I mean the romance was nice, but being friendly toward her made you look like a dumbfuck and rivalmancing her made you look like a jerk. You just can't win in that romance. These are only mine and only name a few. B.S.S.T. (talk) 06:15, February 21, 2013 (UTC)
- for your DA2 cons, I'd say every secondary/side quest counts as a little choice that will carry over to DA3. The sarcastic personality gives you options to trick people, and the direct personality gives you options to threaten.--R0B45 (talk) 16:12, February 22, 2013 (UTC)
DAO con - Having to move away from your source of resources in order to craft.
DA2 con - Having to find resources, and then go home to use them. Shadizar666 (Ruck Rules) 18:43, February 22, 2013 (UTC)
DAO pro - Sword and Shield weapon fighters are amazing; despite their general lack of activated talents, they make up for it with sustainables and passives which keep them alive. A S+S fighter with moderate cunning and constipation is a force to be reckoned with.
DAO con - Two-handed weapon fighters suck; first by being slow, then by low likelihood of actually hitting. So while they may do great amounts of damage, they're outshone other fighter who can quickly pick apart their enemies. And with low dex and no shield and usually a threatening posture, they get torn apart.
DA2 pro - The two-handed fighter is a force to be reckoned with; all the problems in DAO were fixed with this warrior.
DA2 con - The Sword and Shield fighter suffers greatly in this game. By drawing attention to themselves and not knowing what to do with their sword, they die in relatively short order. Shadizar666 (Ruck Rules) 20:33, February 23, 2013 (UTC)
- "A S+S fighter with moderate cunning and constipation is a force to be reckoned with." What about diarrhea? 103.14.63.247 (talk) 08:28, February 24, 2013 (UTC)
- Best typo ever in the lifetime of Internet. :-D Dorquemada (talk) 08:42, February 24, 2013 (UTC)