I have to ask before I buy Dragon Age...

Is it anything like Neverwinter Nights 2 in terms of the gameplay/combat system?

I absolutely hated NWN2 for that reason, but I can't stop hearing enough good things about Dragon Age (and I want my winter holidays to be well spent on an RPG)

 

Yes and No.

You can pause and give instructions (actually, this is a must).
The game is about 2x or 3x as difficult as NWN2, on any difficulty setting.
Character development is uber simplified for the Console simpletons... no more complex D&D character builds.

There is still some sort of background Attribute/Hit-Rate/Spellpower etc check akin to D&D dice rolling going on, but this Bioware simplified and developed (to avoid licensing D&D)

Dragon Age is fun so far, but it's nothing special in the gameplay/combat aspect. The interesting part comes from the storytelling aspect.

 

What CitizenPanda said.

Bear in mind this is a fairly deep RPG, and there's a much pleasure derived from learning about the world you're exploring as there is in beating stuff up. Be prepared to read a whole hell of a lot of text to really understand the world and the depth to it. If that's not your bag, and you just want to run around with a big sword/staff/dagger killing things, hang on a while longer for Diablo 3.

 

you can always try a cracked version, many people are doing so before they decide to buy a game, but from my experience, the game is simply stunning
the storyline is epic, like panda said, and the character builds are pretty complex, theres a lot of skills to learn, different stat builds, different talents and "jobs", the game is mostly based on teamplay, with your AI party, you have a lot of of team mates deeper in game, but you can only choose 3 of them at the same time, they all have different builds, each of them usefull for certain quests
you can also try looking for clips on youtube, theres a lot of them about gameplay
the camera control can be similar to both diablo/nwn or elder scrools-like

 

diablo 3 will be out in 2011 if we're lucky, it was announced a few weeks ago

 

Ive never played NW2 but i hate the combat system on DA:O and having party members but the story just pulls you in. i play on easy(with the latest patch) which allows me not to micro-manage,set tactics ect during battles most of the time unless im fighting a dragon(which destroys me ) or some of the other tough beasts. For me atleast its still hard not to have a few player wipeouts every so often in battle. Overall its a great game. Buy it.

 

Ok thanks, I'll probably take ZP=WIN's suggestion and just play it on easy, im more into story/decision making anyway (probably why i liked The Witcher so much) and combat is secondary to me.

I hope I can play it like say a Dungeon Siege 2 where how you skill your party members is import but for the most part they do their own thing.

 

and then i see reviews like this....common guys I absolutely hated NWN2 because of the gameplay and also how linear it was. Please be honest is DA: O really like this?

 

he expected an action game like mass effect. i'm not surprised he hated it.

oblivion is an action game compared to DA. and to say witcher's combat system is the best of all rpg's is just mind boggling.

AI sucks because he sucks. there is a tactics page for you modify party AI.

story is linear but you can still complete the quest by which ever way you choose, you just can't get stuck unless you have a gimped team. and linear=\=bad.

the game isn't for everyone, try it before if you can.

EDIT2: if you like kotor's gameplay, you're highly likely to enjoy this game.

 

heres my short review of the game, i enjoy most aspects of the game, because of the difficulty of the game the battles are much more challenging than NWN and tactics play a huge part in battles, but as others said the story is the real game here, it is simply fantastic.....one of the best story-lines Ive ever experienced.
good luck

 

i lol'ed at Oblivion being revolutionary and calling it the morrowind series. He also fails at calling this a turn based game. I can spam 4 or 5 spells before ive even touched with my mage and a rouge with 2 swords owns pretty good.Take this idiots opinion with a grain of salt because their is so much wrong with his post. Except this part
"right click and let the computer do the rest while you click a skill on the quick taskbar".

Again playing on easy does not " require constant micro-management" only tougher enemys will you need some kind of a gamplan. Hell i beat the High Dragon(optional to fight) with my PC being lvl 12 and the rest 11, shat gear IMO, default AI tactics, some micro managing to use other players skills and give health,which i couldnt be bothered to set up in the AI tactics screen btw, and a half a**ed gameplan. This wouldnt work on normal and above which would require semi to constant mirco-management gear ect and a good gameplan. As you stated you would be playing on easy so no need to worry about constant mircro-managment. If you cant tell this WAS my biggest beef with this game.

As for me the only reason im still playing DA:O is because of the story and sub stories.As tianxia said this isnt for every one and takes some time to get used to.I still hate combat but not as much when i first started playing.Seriouly though watch youtube vids of what a gameplay is like.

 

Honestly, he's completely wrong in at least one respect: there hasn't been a game with combat quite like this in about 10 years. Also, it is not linear except during certain sections (e.g. the beginning); the model is more along the lines of hubs and spokes.

Can you elaborate on what exactly you didn't like about the gameplay in NWN2? DA:O is similar to it in some ways, but different in others. For example, you still have a party of the usual archetypal characters (warrior, rogue, spell caster) and what determines victory in battle is still their stats and your tactics. You can still pause the game in combat to think about what you want to do next or to switch between characters or issue orders. However, the game is not D&D and there are no 6-second rounds anywhere in the system (so it is not turn based or round based -- it's entirely real time, but with the ability to pause at will).

There are a lot of nasty reviews of this game (including even by "professional" reviewers) written by people who are really bad at it (the one you quoted is one of them). The difficulty is very different from NWN2, KotOR or any other game of this type since Baldur's Gate 2 (nearly a decade ago). You actually have to think about what you're doing and it doesn't hold your hand in terms of enemy placement (i.e. instead of the utterly predictable 1-1-1-3-3-5 enemy difficulty structure for any given dungeon, it can give you something like 1-4-1-1-3-5 which drives people who were expecting the monotonic progression crazy).

This is my favorite kind of game, but it is not for everyone. You can play it like an action game if you set the difficulty to Easy though -- that more or less allows you to ignore 90% of the combat.

 

Can you get rid of npc's that join your party? I could play solo for the duration of the whole story in NWN1. In NWN2 they forced npcs into the party and I couldn't get rid of them. In KOTOR2 sometimes my character was disabled and I had to use stupid npcs EEEWWWWWWW!! that had useless items in the middle of the game because I played solo.

 

you can ask some of them to leave. one or two npcs can't leave because of the plot.
plot decisions will have impact too.

 

you can but you have to mod your character to be way over powered if you want to play that way.

 

Rambamatic
5.0
mediocre

Nothing New Here: Neverwinter Nights revamp fails in Gameplay

* Posted Nov 23, 2009 8:43 am PT
* Recommended by 0 of 4 users.

Difficulty:
Just Right
Time Spent:
10 to 20 Hours
The Bottom Line:
"Been there, done that"

To preface: I play a LOT of games; I am also 40 years old and have been gaming and building gaming maches for most of my life. My rig is an Asus Maximus Extreme w QX 9750 Quad Core, 6 Gigs of DDR3 Ram, and two Crossfire enabled 4870 cards, liquid cooled, Vista 64 bit.

Now, of all my games, some get 4-5 hours and immediate Ebay, some stay in the collection forever. This one got 11 hours, because I wanted to really give it a chance. However, I can't believe that I gave it that much time.

My favorite all time RPGs are the Morrowwind series (and Oblivion) and the Witcher. I HATED Neverwinter Nights, and this game is literally Neverwinter Nights 3, revamped with a different name.

I just find absolutely NO joy in the so-called "real time turn based" combat systems where you attack, then the computer attacks, then you attack and then they attack, etc. It's unrealistic and stupid, and the "right click and let the computer do the rest while you click a skill on the quick taskbar" , gameplay is just boring, repetitive, and stale.

What made Oblivion and especially the Witcher such amazing games is that they had either a first person, real time combat system or a great synthesis of the two (Witcher's combat system is the best of all the RPG combat systems).

Additionally, the AI on the party members flat out sucks: they don't act very intelligently on their own, and require constant micro-management so that they're more like programmable robots than real AI party members. Also, the movement and combat system is tough to use during larger fights, with your character requiring multiple clicks just to get it to respond, and when it does, it goes to the wrong area or crosses to an enemy, but then doesn't attack.

In addition to the foolish combat system, this is an entirely linear story just like NWN2, and many of the quests you can't complete if you haven't spent your skills just right, so you end up 90% complete, but then can't. Frustrating and dumb.

So, although the acting and story are great, this game is just Neverwinter Nights rehashed, with the same stupid, boring combat system that we've seen on all of these hacky RPG knockoffs. Nothing original, nothing we haven't seen before....and nothing fun.


These guys could have had a great game here had they taken cues from REALLY revolutionary games like Witcher or Oblivion, but instead, they just re-hash all the old stuff, repackage it, and pass it off as something new.

Ugh.



((((While this Dude, above, says DAO is mediocre and Oblivion is one of the best, I say Boreblivion was exactely that and haven't been able to put more than 3 hours of gameplay into it before uninstalling it.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder..............meaning it all depends on what you like ! Personally, it's about time we started seeing some old-school real RPG's like DAO and The Witcher !))))

 

I think I'm gonna pass on DA:O.
I can't stand pausing mid battle to issue out commands and stuff. I can stand Mass Effect, as you can still do fine without pausing, but games like NWN and the such are a pain to play through.

 

Yep, that review and tianxia's comments are why I won't buy this game... I LOVE RPG's like Oblivion, Mass Effect, and Fallout 3, but just can't enjoy the turn based play games... I agree completely with the reviewer.

I would absolutely love this game with the story, except for the simple fact it's turn based pause and click game play, and I have just never been able to enjoy that

EDIT: Did realy enjoy Witcher, but from what I gather it's a different combat system than this

 

Pausing is completely at your discretion -- you can do it if you want, but there are no instances where the game makes you pause. You need to be fairly fast (or play on Easy) in order to pull that off, but the speed required is at the level of somebody who is skilled at, say, Starcraft.

It is not turn based. This is not D&D and there are no elements which even resemble "turns" -- it's real time with the ability to pause. The Rambamatic reviewer is... definitely in the lowest quartile of the intelligence distribution and he is simply misstating the facts in several places (of which this is one).

 

I honestly think that those who can't play D&D RPG type games should just stay away on their own with their smart decisions. Why must others suffer from those who can't play the game and write ridiculously retarded reviews?

Seriously people, make your own decision whether to purchase or not. Some like this game type. Some don't. You have your own style. Choose it yourself.

For those who know how to play this game, they know this is one of the best D&D RPG games all around.

 

Dragon Age is a game that takes some getting used to. Initially it does appear to be an incredibly challenging RPG, but once you figure out how to use the tactics system effectively and micro manage your team, Dragon Age can become one of the best gaming experiences one has ever had.

I tend to think that the battle system in Dragon Age is a mix between a RPG and a RTS (strategy). It is an RPG in the sense that you only control a small party of members, each with highly customisable skills and abilities. It's like a RTS because it is necessary to think about team tactics and micro manage each of your party members, especially in tougher battles. The pause feature is a necessity for micro management, since things can happen incredibly fast on screen.

The battle system isn't exactly turn based i.e. Final Fantasy, but you do have an attack speed which depends on the skills you use and the type of character you have, similar to most Action RPG games out there (for example attack speed Diablo 2 would depend on the type of weapon you have equipped). Therefore, it is perfectly possible to have a very fast dual blade wielding assassin in your team, who is capable of landing several hits before a two handed enemy is able to swing even once; and it is also possible to land a few hits on a mage, and use an interrupting skill at the very last second just before they complete casting a long spell.

The game is significantly better than NWN as it has a much more immersive storyline and much more interesting characters. The graphics pale a bit when compared to say, Mass Effect, but I don't find it spoiling the game.

As with most Bioware titles, it is a storyline heavy game, so be prepared for plenty of voiced over conversations. It's not an Action RPG like Diablo, so people looking for that should stick with games such as of Torchlight.

 

I'm shocked by the amount of NWN2 bashing...

 

Yea, for me it's either action(Mass Effect) or turn based(Final Fantasy). RTS games are awesome too, but I'm not a micro expert. I might check this game out if one of my friends have it. I'll probably be forced to play on easy though

The game also seems to have a very complex battle system, such as combining oil and fire to light the field on fire. I really commend Bioware on this aspect. This game looks very polished. Even though it's not my type of game, I'm sure it's one of the best RPGs out there right now. I don't think people should bash this game just because it's not their cup of tea.

 

Fair comment, only thing to note that this game is a D&D derivative and not using the same rules toolset as the NWN and Baldur's Gate series. The differences are slight but they are there so it's not quite accurate to call this a D&D based RPG game.

 

Best term I have heard yet. Many aspects of the game are vastly similar, but Bioware developed the ruleset, lore, world, etc, from scratch. They took what they were familiar with and improved on it IMO, without infringing on proprietary rights (Atari owns the D&D franchise), and did a mighty fine job!