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| I didn't feel compelled enough to change her name from the default. |
And of course, here are my thoughts. Not really a review....just general comments =D
Yay!
- Character Customization: Aesthetics aren't too important, but I'm kind of a sucker for character appearance. For one, I couldn't get over how I couldn't get any of my Mass Effect 1 and 2 female characters to not look creepy, but I had no issues making a pretty chick with the character editor. My char in the piccy above doesn't look nearly as nice as she does in-game. Oh, and the leveling isn't too bad either. =D Plenty of options and specializations.
- Character Interactions: I enjoyed the conversations between the different members in the party--specifically the ones involving Alistair--that took place as you were running through towns. Also, awkward conversations ftw.
- Interesting NPCs: They were pretty memorable and felt like actual characters as opposed to HAY GUYS I'M A GENERIC ANGSTY PARTY MEMBER WITH A DEPRESSING PAST or HAY GUYS I'M SOOOO HAPPY AND POSITIVE. I appreciated the fact that all the characters had some interesting backstory, and I was glad that the player had to work to get these characters to reveal information. Oh, and the voice acting was pretty good as well.
- Immersive World: I really can't care for games that aren't immersive, and luckily for DA:O, I found the world to be very detailed. There is more history, backstory, and lore than I even cared to read about, but that's besides the point.
- Gore: Yeah...about that. I enjoy watching Alistair jump onto an ogre's face in slow motion before the killing blow. Oh, and you're covered in blood. After. Every. Single. Battle...Every. Battle. And then you go walking around town and carry out conversations with random people...covered in blood. It was kind of hilarious in a good way.
- Replay Value: The game is varied enough that the replay value is very high. Not only can you play as a different class with different abilities, but your race also affects things. I've already started a runthrough as a Circle Mage.
- Alistair: If only he were real...
Meh
- Silly Hats: Mage hats. While I like being able to outfit my entire party in whatever armor I want (as opposed to having them wear the same outfit/armor the whole game), I cannot stand how retarded some of the mage hats look. Yeah, I'm that shallow. And this is a largely unimportant point.
- No Spoken Lines for the Main Character: I found it strange, but it wasn't too bad.
- Exposition Dumps: I never cared for them and never will. I don't want to be told a story at the beginning, nor do I want to be told a story at the end. There are better ways to cover background information in an introduction than to have a mini video about the past, such as revealing bits and pieces throughout the course of the game. And the very end is basically the same, minus the video. Again, I don't want text telling me about everything that happened at the end, as there are many better ways of going about this. It just requires better storytelling, which brings me to the next point:
- Storytelling: The premise is good. The plot is good. The origin stories are mostly good. The execution, however, was inconsistent and the large variations in pacing and amount of details was a little strange. For example, I felt that the Dalish quest was a little bit skimpy in depth compared to the Dwarven one. And honestly, the main plot doesn't really go places. The majority of the happenings in the game aren't very interesting, despite the fact that some of them touch upon interesting ideas. I mean, you spend most of the game trying to recruit the races, and to do so, you basically have to gain their trust by solving a problem. Except the problems are kind of mediocre in nature and could be easily replaced with any other generic issue. But yeah, had the tale been executed a little more skillfully in certain areas, I think the story would have been much more effective. Also, is it bad that I enjoyed my origin story more than most of what was happening in the rest of the game? xD Regardless, the plot is still good enough.
- Slow Combat: It's like hack and slash free-for-all rapefestathon, minus the fluidity. Phys chars is a little clunky, though I have no issues with casters. I would have preferred more dodging and stuff.
- Codex: I appreciate the great amount of detail put into Ferelden, but the codex is basically a huge textbook...in reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllly small text.
- Open...ish: Sure, it's open world and you have a nonlinear plot. But I feel like it's more of a, "hey, here are 3 tasks. Choose the order." No big deal.
Nay
- Level Design: YEAH NO. That is all. Though I hear DAII is worse c;
- Teammates in Battle: Why am I not allowed to select, say, 3 characters and direct them all to move to Location B while I stay at Location A? It kind of sucks balls when your team runs into a deathfest mob and you're trying to get them to move back but you can't because if you order "hold position," you still have to manually move each individual character to whatever location in real time because your non-active characters will most likely be attacking people in the middle of the deathfestmob. I'm thinking tactics work better on the PC version, but at least give a "FOLLOW THE LEADER" command for the xbox.
- Party Swap: Hey, I want to switch out this one character for another one....OH WAIT I CAN'T. I gotta run through 9001 sets of caves and tunnels until I can get to an area where I'm allowed to swap.
- Difficulty: Battle difficulty is not really based on tricky bosses and enemies. For one, if you can keep hacking and casting without dying, you win. It feels like difficulty is based on how many enemies the game decides to throw onto your face at any given moment on top of having to fight a relatively harmless boss with a lot of HP.
- Glitchy: For some reason, this game has been really glitchy for me. It hasn't for some people I know, but the interwebs has its equal share of EPIC BUGGERY and I DIDN'T HAVE ISSUES. Well, I fall into the former category.
Overall: Gameplay: 8/10 | Graphics: 5/10 | Sound: 8/10 | Replay: 9/10 | Plot: 7.5/10
On it's own, I'd give DA:O an 8/10. It scores a little lower when compared to other things, but I won't bother to quantify that. The important part is that I enjoyed playing this and can't wait to finish my mage run.
