No review today because I’ve been slightly preoccupied with trying to sort life stuff out and so haven’t had a huge amount of time to play new games. If you’re bored and were expecting me to entertain you, though, do not worry! I spent a couple of hours yesterday uploading all the “reviews” I wrote in 2011 because I thought they needed a more permanent online home than a forum thread (and so that I could refer to them when needed), which are now available in the archive (scroll to bottom). Be warned, though; some of them are kind of bad both because of the more conversational tone of a forum and because I have been slowly getting better at the whole writing thing with practice. Not my best work.
Anyway, back to finding somewhere to live for the next year. See you Wednesday!
Good luck with your house/apartment/whatever hunt!
Also, interesting stuff from back in 2011. I’d gladly debate the merits of Dragon Age II. I need to replay it, but my initial impression was that I liked it more than the first game despite its many, easily identifiable, and often quite severe flaws. My great worry is that the enormously negative reaction to the game will result in Bioware completely jettisoning the things I liked even as they fix the things they bungled.
Thanks! Unfortunately it’s Oxford I’m moving to, so this is probably going to end up being both expensive and difficult.
The thing with Dragon Age II is that the concept is great. I love the concept. I bought the game on the strength of the concept. They should revisit the concept. I *hate* the execution; it’s the blandest, lowest effort implementation of the concept possible, something that seems to be increasingly common in Bioware games these days (c.f. Mass Effect 3′s War Asset list).
While I agree with you as far as the levels and combat mechanics, I actually think they did a fantastic job with the characters. DA 2 is the only Bioware game I’ve played in which I actually felt there wasn’t an optimal way to interact with the characters. It’s the only Bioware game where I’ve actually lost characters, and the only one where I thought the romance options actually, genuinely added something to the game (mostly because Hawke was more of an npc than a player avatar).
Aveline was stand-out. Varric was pretty good. The rest though? And how they handled Anders? Not so much.
And the game can’t really be forgiven for the plot or how it handles player agency (stomps all over it). Hentzau hasn’t actually played to the end and not witnessed the utterly utterly mind-bendingly awful last act and what sets it off.
Even some good character-work can’t really unseat the poor conception and direction of the game.
OK, Anders was kind of a travesty, thanks primarily to his almost complete 180 from Awakening. However, ignoring that, I didn’t have any huge problems at the end of the game. There weren’t any good choices and a bunch of pissed off party members who were all pissed off for reasons that made perfect sense based on their characterization up to that point. I thought they could have done a better job with the archmage’s decisions, but it wasn’t unjustifiable.
I’m not saying it’s perfect, or that everyone has to agree. But I think the characters stood out in DA2 as being the only element of the game that was given (or was allowed to be given; I suppose we’ll never know for sure how much influence EA had over the timeline for the game’s production) full time and attention from the devs.
Wait what is he doing with that cat.
Probably trying to dissuade it from sinking its claws into his crotch.