Dragon Age: Origins is definitely one of my favorite RPGs this generation. I thought that the story and world (although some people think generic) was one of Bioware's more fleshed out experiences. The consequences of each choice felt that it held more weight than even Mass Effect. So, it's easy to say that when I got my hands on the Demo for Dragon Age II (my gosh it took forever being 2 gigs on my DSL) I got pretty excited and dove into it a few times to check out the classes.
I started as a warrior; it's what I gravitate towards.
It's nice this time around because your action button isn't just for selecting what enemy to auto attack, it was now your 'swing the sword' button; like action RPG-style. Run up to an enemy and start hacking away! It's a nice change of pace for the game but yet feels very familiar too. The nice thing is that all of your skills will compliment what your doing as well. For instance, as a warrior, you have a nice few moves like dashing at enemies to get close and nail em, or swinging a wide arc in front of you to take out a crowd. The moves flow well with your combat and help you play your role as 'tank' well. Even Shield Bash works nicer and more effective. And I would say that effective is the perfect word for what they are doing with skills.
Speaking of skills, it was nice to see that they didn't simplify the way things worked out in Dragon Age for your stat's and skill trees. They did change it to be more of a branching system, but everything has more point to it and works out nicely. Granted a lot of stuff was locked out of the demo, but they gave you the layout of most of it and didn't, as some would think, "Mass Effect 2 it". All of the stuff is still there, no worries.
Now, being the fan that I am, I went and tried the other classes. Rogue works very well for getting in and getting some sneak attacks and dazing enemies. They fight fast and have a good evasive maneuver so you can get in, deal the damage, and get out. The Rogue can also be an archer. This was a little odd because you have to keep tapping your action button like melee combat and I was kinda hoping that you could auto attack for ranged things like that or maybe change how it all worked. One nice thing though was that when you got close enough for melee, you whipped out a dagger Rogue-style and dished it out like you were -blading. I thought that was a nice little touch.
But the problem with Archers is also the problem with Mages sadly. While the action oriented style of the game is great for melee fighters, playing a Mage is a little odd at first. When sitting back blasting darkspawn with your wand, you also tap your action button to do a ranged missle attack combo. I didn't get close to see if you had a different feel of melee combat when in range, but I would assume you would because of the staff/sword weapon the mage had. The spells and everything else worked great and the targeting could use a little work but all was well.
Overall, the game looks better, runs a little smoother, and plays nice. The game's skills work more effectively and they add a lot of practical use to the game's flow in combat - and that is something that is very appreciated. They didn't muddle up your Dragon Age outside of combat, and to be honest, I think the combat overall is a nice improvement. Do yourself a favor and give it a shot, and get excited, the game hits on March 2nd.
-Eddie
*Edit
I played a little more with the Mage class and I'll have to say that the tapping the action button doesn't feel too bad because of the combo flow of it, but mainly because your spells are in a little more frequent use, but the idea is still there. It will definately throw some of you off.
No comments:
Post a Comment