[Fury]

I've been playing this game for four days now and I have yet to notice anything game breaking. I wouldn't even know of this bug if you hadn't mentioned it. It's not a major bug, moderate at best. These things slip past easily especially when they're introduced late in development. This isn't even only bug I've seen, but none of these have been major issues.

My point in previous post still stands. It's obvious you don't like the game based on the demo and what you've read, we get it.

[Ravenholme]

Errr.

No.

It really isn't.

Visual novel, to me, means a locked-down experience, JRPG-style. Dragon Age 2 is anything but, since it gives you a lot of choices how the story proceeds.

Also? You are now the owner of an official warning. We really do not recommend that people incriminate themselves here.

I don't know how many visual novels you've played, but they tend to have quite a few choices (and in the more complex ones, interconnecting webs of choices) that lead to different routes and endings. Good or Bad. (Gonna use Fate/Stay Night as an example here. 3 Core routes, one has a single good ending, the other two have two "good endings", but there are 40 odd "bad" endings throughout based on your choices. Some of which are endings in their own right.)

So, DA2 sounds like a VN without the static background imagery and with more gameplay between Story Road Cones. And, given what I've heard about some of the choices, more rail-roading than some. Oh, and a far worse story/execution than a Good VN.

And before Fury accuses me of not having played it, I own the PC signature edition, and am dipping into it when not doing coursework.

[The E]

Ah, ok. Seems my interpretation of what the term "visual novel" means was wrong. Thanks for the clarification.

[Ravenholme]

Ah, ok. Seems my interpretation of what the term "visual novel" means was wrong. Thanks for the clarification.

There are a few which are pretty much books without any player interaction, don't get me wrong (And something like Umineko No Naku Koro Ni would come under this heading). But the vast majority do have player involvement through significant (or sometimes insignificant) choices made by the character. Putting them somewhere under Choose Your Own Adventures, so a form of RPG-lite.

[Fury]

And before Fury accuses me of not having played it, I own the PC signature edition, and am dipping into it when not doing coursework.

Why would I? However you interpret a visual novel or whether DA2 is such is irrelevant to how good or bad the game is. I only snapped at Battuta because of his tendency of exaggerating problems to make his own opinion stronger. Or that's how I saw it anyway. Regardless, time to drop that subject already.

[Ravenholme]

RockPaperShotgun does Dragon Age 2 (Spoilaz-ish)

My views on DA2 summed up so far. Very disappointing.

For those sitting on the fence: wait for The Witcher 2

[General Battuta]

And before Fury accuses me of not having played it, I own the PC signature edition, and am dipping into it when not doing coursework.

Why would I? However you interpret a visual novel or whether DA2 is such is irrelevant to how good or bad the game is. I only snapped at Battuta because of his tendency of exaggerating problems to make his own opinion stronger. Or that's how I saw it anyway. Regardless, time to drop that subject already.

Yeah, that description of a bug that users have encountered in the course of normal gameplay, breaking their game by rendering their characters invulnerable, is really exaggerated.

Speaking of exaggerating and bull****ting to make your opinion stronger, it turns out a number of perfect-10 Metacritic user reviews dismissing criticism of the game and declaring it a 'true epic' were from accounts created that day by Bioware employees.

Stay classy, Bioware.

jesus christ dtb

(In the meantime you can get some good schadenfreude reading the game's lead designer performing desperate damage control; props to Eurogamer for coming out and asking why it wasn't as good as DA:O).

[Ravenholme]

And before Fury accuses me of not having played it, I own the PC signature edition, and am dipping into it when not doing coursework.

Why would I? However you interpret a visual novel or whether DA2 is such is irrelevant to how good or bad the game is. I only snapped at Battuta because of his tendency of exaggerating problems to make his own opinion stronger. Or that's how I saw it anyway. Regardless, time to drop that subject already.

Yeah, that description of a bug that users have encountered in the course of normal gameplay, breaking their game by rendering their characters invulnerable, is really exaggerated.

Speaking of exaggerating and bull****ting to make your opinion stronger, it turns out a number of perfect-10 Metacritic user reviews dismissing criticism of the game and declaring it a 'true epic' were from accounts created that day by Bioware employees.

Stay classy, Bioware.

jesus christ dtb

(In the meantime you can get some good schadenfreude reading the game's lead designer performing desperate damage control; props to Eurogamer for coming out and asking why it wasn't as good as DA:O).

Put me firmly in the "Should've been more like DA:O" camp. I loved for the dialogue to actually be meaningful and complex, and gladly sacrificed player voice acting for that. I preferred it that way. It's nice to have nuanced responses to dialogue beyond "Nice", "Funny Jerk", and "Jerkass", which half of the time do not say what you thought they were going to say.

[The E]

Well, having now reached the beginning of Act 3, I suppose I should post a few more thoughts.

1.The annoying

--Repetitive environments (There's an achievement called "Spelunker". It's unlocked by visiting 10 caves. I still wonder why I have gotten it, since I only visited 2 caves. Over and over again.)
--Enemy waves. Which remind me of the worst FS2 missions with endlessly respawning waves. Now, it wouldn't be too bad if the game did a better job of hiding the spawning, but alas, these people seem to have developed a remarkable aptitude for hiding in plain ****ing sight and plopping into view when they see their mate getting slaughtered.

2. The Good

As the RPS article demonstrates, DA2 has a rather slow, disjointed start. It takes a while for you to get used to the main character, and the story doesn't provide much in terms of antagonists that could act as foils for Hawke.
However, once you leave Act 1 behind and get into Act 2, the story does pick up the pace rather nicely. Conflict seeds that were sown in Act 1 grow more noticeable, with the story constantly throwing choices your way that determine the way things are going to go.
So yeah. After a bad start, the game improves quite nicely.

Yeah, that description of a bug that users have encountered in the course of normal gameplay, breaking their game by rendering their characters invulnerable, is really exaggerated.

Oh my god. A game has a bug that can be exploited. Surely this has never happened before.

Oh, wait, yes it has. I really do not know what you are trying to say here. The bug itself is a rather minor affair (insofar as it hasn't affected me yet), and likely the result of the overall rather shoddy QA run EA seems to have done on this one. It's not a big gamebreaker. Seriously. How many big RPGs are there that have shipped without exploitable bugs?

[General Battuta]

Oh my god. A game has a bug that can be exploited. Surely this has never happened before.

Oh, wait, yes it has. I really do not know what you are trying to say here. The bug itself is a rather minor affair (insofar as it hasn't affected me yet), and likely the result of the overall rather shoddy QA run EA seems to have done on this one. It's not a big gamebreaker. Seriously. How many big RPGs are there that have shipped without exploitable bugs?

That's not what I said at all. A bug that can be exploited isn't a big deal. A bug that unintentionally causes your characters to gain armor as a result of an utterly ordinary gameplay action, switching out items, is a very different matter. It is a big gamebreaker because it broke the game for the players that encountered it. They had to stop using the affected characters in their parties.

[Scotty]

Why would you stop using an invulnerable player?

[Ravenholme]

Why would you stop using an invulnerable player?

Given what Battuta said, it would appear that it may have broken the game at some point.

[Kolgena]

Oh my god. A game has a bug that can be exploited. Surely this has never happened before.

Oh, wait, yes it has. I really do not know what you are trying to say here. The bug itself is a rather minor affair (insofar as it hasn't affected me yet), and likely the result of the overall rather shoddy QA run EA seems to have done on this one. It's not a big gamebreaker. Seriously. How many big RPGs are there that have shipped without exploitable bugs?

That's not what I said at all. A bug that can be exploited isn't a big deal. A bug that unintentionally causes your characters to gain armor as a result of an utterly ordinary gameplay action, switching out items, is a very different matter. It is a big gamebreaker because it broke the game for the players that encountered it. They had to stop using the affected characters in their parties.

To be fair, the exact same bug existed in Awakenings, though you had to do something specific to glitch your character like that. Furthermore, every time you used a tome of re-specialization, you automatically gained something like 2 attribute points. Weird things also happened if you imported characters with shields on. The stats on those shields would get permanently added to your character. There were also pretty big graphical bugs with the Warden's Keep DLC + Awakenings.

Then again, Awakenings wasn't great itself, but bugs don't make/break a game. Origins had its fair share of dialogue bugs and decisions making no sense. (Leliana's love triggers are mostly broken)

[General Battuta]

Why would you stop using an invulnerable player?

Given what Battuta said, it would appear that it may have broken the game at some point.

Only in the sense of the game being stupid if your character takes like 1 damage every hit. I won't argue it past that.

Kolgena: don't get me wrong, DA:O was buggy as **** and still has a horrible memory leak.

[Ransom]

For what it's worth, I haven't encountered a bug yet.

[StarSlayer]

Why would you stop using an invulnerable player?

Given what Battuta said, it would appear that it may have broken the game at some point.

Only in the sense of the game being stupid if your character takes like 1 damage every hit. I won't argue it past that.

The same reason Fallout 3 was more fun when you had to run like a screaming little girl from Rad Scorpions for lack of ammo for your POS excuse for a sidearm than when you had some much XP and gear you could one shot Death Claws.

[DCFan]

Holy ****, are you StarSlay3r by any chance? The really hot pro-gamer?

[Ace]

Well, it looks like Starslayer has a fan. Just remember if someone asks if you're a god say YES.

[Locutus of Borg]

dont cross the streams

[General Battuta]

I will say this, I really like the way your decisions about what Hawke says impact Hawke's personality in non-interactive dialogue. I love the idea of companions visiting each other, and I love the apparent reported amount of banter. Hope all that's in ME3.