If you guys remember,
the last post was a brief overview of the Dragon Age series- combined
with some hate for Mass Effect- that eventually and unavoidably
turned into an entire different topic all together, but I did use DA
as a segue- so it’s all good.
As I’ve said before,
Dragon Age 1 suffers from a lot of issues from both a game play and a
technical aspect, but it’s still fun. I touched briefly on this
subject & gave the vague reason as to why I still think it stands
tall amongst the vast sea of modern RPG/JRPG’s. Before I really get
into the why feature or character X makes the game stand out, I think
it’s important to talk about the flaws this series suffers from.
Because without knowing what this game has done wrong, and how much
that would drag down most other games, you can’t really get a sense
of how much good dialogue & character development can save a game
with terrible game play & visuals- a game that otherwise would be
simply awful.
First things first,
this is going to be from the Xbox 360’s point of view. One day I
may tackle the PC version in some other format, like an LP, but don’t
quote me on it- because I take ages to do anything.
Graphically, Dragon Age
is a mess- there’s clipping issues, terrible animation, dated
graphics, stupid ass walking animations (particularly when you have
your weapon drawn) awful lip syncing and in places underwhelming
environments. So in conclusion it looks like ass. On its own this isn't that much of a problem, you see a lot of people give a lot of
praise to games that don’t have great graphics- but have great
presentation & style, and in places, DA does have this.
Another of DA’s
issues (and this is console specific) is its interface, on the PC the
interface makes sense for the type of game it is- you’re given a
standard World of Warcraft style action bar. However, on consoles you
get 3 quick binds- the XYB buttons and another set when you hold the
R trigger and whatever the equivalent on the PS3 is. This is a large
problem when you’re controlling a party of 4- each with their
unique skill set & build. It makes combat a lot slower than it
would otherwise be on the PC. Speaking of the skill set, this games
skill tree (and I use the term lightly, because it is in no way
reminiscent of a tree) is terrible. It
is improved on in Dragon Age II, but that’s another post all
together.
To
get to each skill on the tree, you need the one before it. This
basically means that your end game character will have an entire
truck load of skills that you won’t be using, because all you
really want is the end tree skill- in most cases anyway. Of course,
with progressive skills this makes sense- to get level two speech
craft I obviously need level one. However, to shoot a fireball why do
I need to know how to shoot an ice blast? It’s a game design flaw
that gets worse as the game goes on. Your first few levels you’re
blazing through and it doesn't matter if you have to spend a skill
point to get to the next one because you’ll level up in another 5
minutes anyway, but in the late game where you level up once every
hour or so it makes your time feel completely wasted.
So, in conclusion
playing Dragon Age Origins for the combat, on the console versions
anyway, is a very acquired taste. It's quite slow paced (especially
if you are on the harder difficulty) and I feel like it can drag when
you're fighting Darkspawn for the most time if you've played DA as
much as me- you'll learn to hate the Deep roads as much as any sane
person. Dragon Age II improves on the combat system and comes off as
a lot more action RPG like. So if that's what're you looking for,
just pick up Dragon Age II. Whilst you can carry over saves, they
have very little impact as you don't play the same character. So
you're only going to miss larger information about the setting of
Dragon Age in general, nothing a Google search can't sort out for
you.
Next time, I'll talk
about the features of Dragon Age that really justifies the response &
praise it gets given or maybe I'll talk about the combat, not going to lie- I haven't written it yet.
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