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[lorddarkflare]

Time constraints? :lol It was in development for six years and delayed at least twice. It was very polished for a game of it's complexity.

True, very true.

Not many WRPGs released with this level of polish.

 

[JWong]

True, very true.

Not many WRPGs released with this level of polish.

So where was this polish when you fight to the tower in the first major battle? The difficulty curve was extremely steep. You had to go into tactics mode (top down), set up traps, play around with "tactics slots", and specifically manage every one of your character in order to beat those 6 Darkspawn encounters. They never even trained you to do that in the first few hours.

 

[LoganKnight4949]

So where was this polish when you fight to the tower in the first major battle? The difficulty curve was extremely steep. You had to go into tactics mode (top down), set up traps, play around with "tactics slots", and specifically manage every one of your character in order to beat those 6 Darkspawn encounters. They never even trained you to do that in the first few hours.

Sounds like you have a bigger problem with the pacing as well as the tutorial aspect of it than the polish.

The game is very polished. Very few bugs and inconsistencies which tend to plague WRPGs.

 

[Khrno]

Time constraints? :lol It was in development for six years and delayed at least twice. It was very polished for a game of its complexity.

Just because it was in development 6 years, it doesn't mean that more wasn't needed, when the end product clearly shows how some more months would have helped it to be less glitchy, regardless of complexity or whatever, that's not excuse.

 

[WanderingWind]

Just because it was in development 6 years, it doesn't mean that more wasn't needed, when the end product clearly shows how some more months would have helped it to be less glitchy, regardless of complexity or whatever, that's not excuse.

Any big game is going to have glitches. In my experience, DAO has fewer glitches than just about any RPG I've played.

 

[KHarvey16]

For its size and complexity(just think of all the specific circumstances and situations that could be unique to a particular playthrough) Dragon Age had much fewer issues than I thought it would. Playing on PC the worst thing that happened to me is a sword graphic would "stick" and refuse to change when I swapped weapons.

 

[Pickles the Firecat]

So where was this polish when you fight to the tower in the first major battle? The difficulty curve was extremely steep. You had to go into tactics mode (top down), set up traps, play around with "tactics slots", and specifically manage every one of your character in order to beat those 6 Darkspawn encounters. They never even trained you to do that in the first few hours.

Games are allowed to rely on "genre-experience". If you'd played similar games in the past none of these things would have been an issue to you. Or at the very least they shouldn't have been. Every other genre of game under the sun is allowed to do this, why wouldn't a party based WRPG?

The human noble, dwarf noble and mage origins are also pretty standard tutorials and act as decent introductions to the basics of combat in DA:O. In the human noble origin you have

Spoiler

the siege of your castle

. In the mage origin you get to

Spoiler

break into the phylactery chamber

. And so on. These are tutorial sections of the game, and I think they do a pretty good job of explaining how the game itself works. I haven't tried the others but I would imagine it's much the same with them.

Conclusion: tower isn't that hard, tower really isn't that hard if you'd played similar games, tower comes after a pretty solid tutorial (in most cases). Also, the game doesn't have that many glitches (and it didn't seem to play a large role in the Edge review either), but daggers/shortbows still being completely broken this long after release is absolutely unforgivable. Yeah we got a hotfix, who gives a shit. I'm sure 360/PS3 owners take a ton of solace in the fact that those of us with the PC versions can actually play a useful rogue.

 

[JWong]

Games are allowed to rely on "genre-experience". If you'd played similar games in the past none of these things would have been an issue to you. Or at the very least they shouldn't have been. Every other genre of game under the sun is allowed to do this, why wouldn't a party based WRPG?

The human noble, dwarf noble and mage origins are also pretty standard tutorials and act as decent introductions to the basics of combat in DA:O. In the human noble origin you have

Spoiler

the siege of your castle

. In the mage origin you get to

Spoiler

break into the phylactery chamber

. And so on. These are tutorial sections of the game, and I think they do a pretty good job of explaining how the game itself works. I haven't tried the others but I would imagine it's much the same with them.

Conclusion: tower isn't that hard, tower really isn't that hard if you'd played similar games, tower comes after a pretty solid tutorial (in most cases). Also, the game doesn't have that many glitches (and it didn't seem to play a large role in the Edge review either), but daggers/shortbows still being completely broken this long after release is absolutely unforgivable. Yeah we got a hotfix, who gives a shit. I'm sure 360/PS3 owners take a ton of solace in the fact that those of us with the PC versions can actually play a useful rogue.

I've played every one of those "tutorials", and they all played like KotoR. I can go in, click on some guy, and attack him with whatever skills I got. Very simple intuitive gameplay that the industry has been building towards. You don't even need to pause the game. Then comes the tower where the game takes a 180 turn. You have to pause the game, set up your characters in the most perfect way, and fight in a very slow manner as opposed to everything that had been done in the tutorial.

They don't explain anything clearly. They rely on text tips to teach the player. Horrible idea. Those tutorials are just story flavors which I only like the Dwarf noble version. They really don't teach the game well.

 

[Pickles the Firecat]

I've played every one of those "tutorials", and they all played like KotoR. I can go in, click on some guy, and attack him with whatever skills I got. Very simple intuitive gameplay that the industry has been building towards. You don't even need to pause the game. Then comes the tower where the game takes a 180 turn. You have to pause the game, set up your characters in the most perfect way, and fight in a very slow manner as opposed to everything that had been done in the tutorial.

They don't explain anything clearly. They rely on text tips to teach the player. Horrible idea. Those tutorials are just story flavors which I only like the Dwarf noble version. They really don't teach the game well.

The vast majority of people who are playing on PC will have paused the game and gone into isometric view at least once while playing through their origin story and

Spoiler

finding the Warden treaties in the Wilds

. In fact I'm fairly certain that the game encourages you to twice before the Tower of Ishal. It's also safe to say that a high percentage of people who are playing on PC will have prior experience with party based WRPGs. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, and you seem to be one of them, but planning for exceptions rather than norms would make for a pretty tedious game. I'd also argue that the difficulty in the tower isn't that hard. I don't think the opening encounter where you

Spoiler

fight the genlock emissary surrounded by flames

is well balanced, but after that fight I can't remember another that was particularly hard. But even if it were the case that difficulty increases substantially at the Tower of Ishal--so what? The PC version of the game is supposed to be harder. The average PC buyer is likely to have more genre experience than the average console buyer. Bioware catering to its longtime fanbase in one version of their game is far from a bad thing. Especially when they've provided (what I consider to be) a decent tutorial.

 

[chicken_ramen]

I just beat this boss, it may have been a difficulty spike, but I found it to be more of a worrying display of completely terrible AI. I haven't got very far obviously, and maybe the bad AI was related to the type of creature it was, but basically I just ran one character around in circles because he was too slow to catch any of them, while the others wailed on him, completely safe. He changed targets maybe three times but all I had to do was run that character around in a big circle and all he ever did was chase, while every one else slowly chipped away his health. The fight was brainless and boring.

Also, I didn't think the Genlock fights in that location were much of an increase in difficulty over what had come before. I died a few times, but that's how these games work. They're meant to be little puzzles of character management, and this game is able to pull that off pretty well.

 

[buffi]

I played through the game without reading any guides or similar and I had no issues with difficulty until the last boss which kicked my ass a bunch of times before I took it down.

 

[SmokyDave]

I'm really confused on Bayonetta. I played the PS3 demo weeks ago and then tried out the 360 demo and I'm feeling it, but not 10/10 feeling it. I'm a huge fan of this type of game (I even loved Heavenly Sword!) and whilst Bayonetta is definitely going to get purchased, I'm not a tenth as hyped as I am for GoW3 after playing the demo. Still, must have something special going on as the praise is near unanimous.

Games don't exist in a vacuum though.

Reviews do.

 

[Mar]

This was an excellent issue. So many things to read.

The Dragon Age score I can agree on. I love the game and can't put it down, but it has so many problems and things that annoy the hell out of me.

What I didn't quite understand is the text in the review of Dragon Age. They went out of their way to talk about the horrible dialogue, graphics, motion capture, speech and facial expressions. But, I didn't find any of those things to be bad. Indeed, I have enjoyed all of it. Morrigan in particular is great. The facial expressions are expressive and interesting, and the graphics of the characters themselves are so much better than any other RPG I've played in the last few years. They even went so far as complaining about the weapon models being slightly away from the characters bodies and floating... Well, duh. Look at any other game today? You either get horrible clipping, floaty weapons, or no individual weapon models at all.

I really think they were way too harsh on those aspects.

So, score was fine, text I found odd.

The Bayonetta score intrigued me. The review actually convinced me to buy the game. Never been a fan of the genre myself but some of the things they explain in that review just sold me on it.

 

[V_Ben]

This was an excellent issue. So many things to read.

The Dragon Age score I can agree on. I love the game and can't put it down, but it has so many problems and things that annoy the hell out of me.

What I didn't quite understand is the text in the review of Dragon Age. They went out of their way to talk about the horrible dialogue, graphics, motion capture, speech and facial expressions. But, I didn't find any of those things to be bad. Indeed, I have enjoyed all of it. Morrigan in particular is great. The facial expressions are expressive and interesting, and the graphics of the characters themselves are so much better than any other RPG I've played in the last few years. They even went so far as complaining about the weapon models being slightly away from the characters bodies and floating... Well, duh. Look at any other game today? You either get horrible clipping, floaty weapons, or no individual weapon models at all.

I really think they were way too harsh on those aspects.

So, score was fine, text I found odd.

The Bayonetta score intrigued me. The review actually convinced me to buy the game. Never been a fan of the genre myself but some of the things they explain in that review just sold me on it.

when did the issue come out? i must have missed it :-(

 

[bonesmccoy]

3 things for me:

1) Dragon Age is a good game if you are a WRPG fan - or rather, a Bioware WRPG fan. It's not excellent, it's not great, just good. There are glimmers of a fantastic title here and there, but shoddy writing, awful attempts at 'maturity', and of course the wretched graphics (just take a gander at the mountains in Ostagar or in the Shrine to Andraste) hold it back in a serious way. With the hype surrounding this game, as well as the pedigree of its developer, I'd say a 5 is a fair - though a tad harsh - review score.

2) Bayonetta seems to be the perfect game if you like that genre. I don't, so I'm not interested, but others who like the shoot-em-up/buttonfests tell me it does everything it tries to do very well.

3) Edge *always* drops a controversial score. It's become so regular now that it's hardly worth spending any cyber ink over. Take my word, out of Heavy Rain, God of War, Gears of War 3, and Mass Effect 2, one of those games will get a devastating review from Edge while being universally praised by everyone else.

 

[Shuusui]

When are people going to learn that Edge is out PURELY to cause controversy?

Bayonetta could be a 10 though for people into the softcore porn action games.... I guess. Not for me though, thank you.