Dragon Age 2: A Quick Demo Review

Yes, I'm doing this, shut up.

So, unless you've been living under a rock for the past week or so, you've probably heard of the new Dragon Age 2 demo that was released. Seeing as everyone in the video game industry has some sort of Bioware fetish ever since Baldur's Gate, not that I can particularly blame them, it is safe to say that this demo has really been the talk of the town since its release. So you know what I did? I went on Steam and I downloaded it. I was really interested, of course I planned on hating it since I hated Origins' combat system, characters, and story, but that's a rant for another day.

Upon booting up the demo I was feeling pretty cheeky about the game. I was making fun of the opening cut scene, laughing  at this apparently metrosexual dwarf, and bracing myself for the disappointment. I of course chose a Warrior first, since the Rogue class bored me half to death in DA:O, and I've never found playing a Mage to be fun. The first time you actually see your character doing anything is during this combat with some Darkspawn scouts where you and your sister (if you are a melee class) or brother (if you are a mage) are basically making the Blight look like a fucking joke. Then the game starts up. Initially I am a bit surprised by the hack and slash feel of the game. In the PC version at least, you are still auto-attacking, but the attack speed is somewhere in the realm of .6 or .7 seconds between attacks, so even with this enormous sword I was just lopping off limbs left and right. The new abilities were pretty badass too, even though the only one that seemed to ever do anything was Scythe. However, I soon felt a void, a crushing feeling known as: Boredom. With a heavy sigh, my doubts confirmed I restarted as a Rogue, hopeful that their abilities would make the game fun. Luckily for me, they were twice as amazingly cool as the Warrior's things. The Rogue would jump around, do weird break-dancey spin kicks, and teleport using smoke bombs and other assorted gadgets. I was having a lot of fun with this character... until the boss came around. Just like in DA:O, the first boss was an Ogre, so I set off to work, leaving my sister, a mage, to AoE the fuck out of all of the Darkspawn that wanted to join the fight. Things seemed to be going fine until I realized something... my damage was fucking awful. Now, there weren't any hard numbers to compare between the Warrior and the Rogue, but the more I smacked the Ogre the more I realized that my tiny daggers weren't doing anything. Factoring in the Ogre's own attacks that sometimes knock you down and throw you across the battlefield, the fight took so long by the time I killed the Ogre off, watched the exact same kill animation from the first game, and was swept off to the next part of the demo, I was bored with the Rogue too. So, left with no other options I decided to try the Mage. Initially I was bored out of my skull just auto-attacking to throw fireballs out of my staff. Then I was given access to my first spell, an ice thing that I didn't bother to remember. This was fairly standard fare for WRPG Mage arsenals so I didn't give it much heed. However, as time progressed and I was given more spells to play with I suddenly realized something, something that shocked me and shook me to my core.. I was... having fun. I was actually having fun playing as a Mage in a WRPG. Even once I lost all of my spells and only had the agro reducing ability that knocked people down I was still having fun using that to throw people around, push them away or into a coming fireball, all of it was just so much fun. I ended up finishing the demo once, as the Mage. I was simply astounded by this fact, playing a Mage was actually fun for me in a WRPG.

But now we get to the actual review part, I'm lazy and have class in an hour so I'm just going to do a quick gloss over my thoughts on the mechanics.

The combat is significantly dumbed down, this is a fact that cannot be ignored. I hated the slow, tedious, often bipolar difficulty of the first game, and this is coming from a guy whose Top 3 favorite games are all JRPGs. However, even with the almost Mass Effect 2 style which they've assumed with this game, the combat is flashy and entertaining, at least as the Rogue or Mage. I think fans of the first game will be very disappointed with this shift, but it will definitely draw in a much wider market.

The story, judging from what I've seen from it, won't be good. If you thought the first game had a unique and involving story let me say this. A young person with a tragic past joins a dieing order of protectors with special powers in order to destroy an evil plaguing the world. Sound familiar? I thought so. I absolutely hated the DA:O story, and I will hate the DA2 story, I can guarantee that.

The characters are what really killed DA:O for me. I didn't give a fuck about anyone. Alistair was a cliched "pauper king" character with no depth beyond that, Morrigan was the typical brooding sociopath that really wanted to be accepted, the Dog wasn't even a character (though they'd like you to believe it was), Lelianna was every repentant with a dark past, Wynne the moralfag, Zevran the anti-moralfag, Oghren was the gruff veteran, Sten was the cultured barbarian, and Duncan was just every single mentor character from the story archetype I mentioned earlier. I hated each and every one of the possible party characters. There wasn't a single redeeming trait in any of them in my eyes. So how do you think I felt about the characters in DA2? Go on guess. I didn't like them. I really only got to see about four party members and only one of them was fleshed out in any sense, and needless to say I didn't like where it was going. Call me a hipster, but I really do hate when a game can't give you anything unique in its characters, instead it simply rehashes the mainstream stereotypes that people are comfortable with.

The setting was the last nail in the coffin of DA:O for me. Not only was I given a bland, brown, and just plain boring world to explore, I wasn't even able to explore it! No, instead I was just jumping around from sets of corridors to sets of other corridors, all covered in that crappy brown grain that the game seemed to love so much. If an RPG can't deliver me the great battle mechanics of a JRPG it had better deliver me the great exploration of a WRPG and DA:O didn't give me either, neither did the DA2 demo. Of course I shouldn't expect a full chunk of the world to explore, but the way the story was set was as a frame story, a story within a story. Exploration couldn't logically fit into that, and knowing Bioware's tendencies I don't have to worry about being wrong about that statement.

Overall: The demo was mediocre, key features were locked like certain progression trees, character designing, and even INVENTORY, but that is really just beside the point. The gameplay is radically changed to make it more accessible to the mindless, moronic gaming public who want super actiony combat and little to no real strategy beyond where to place your next AoE marker, but it was at least entertaining for half an hour. My recommendation? Download the demo, play as the mage, enjoy the spells for 30 minutes, then stop, that is all.

Cheers,

HappyPariah

Disregard this Nerdy Rant

I feel sorry for everyone who hasn't played, at least, the main Metal Gear Solid series. It is the greatest story of our generation, powerful, emotional, and relevant. No other story has yet to make the kind of impact this game has upon me. It is a fresh, beautiful story with a psuedo-military quirkiness that only makes everything so much more believable. I've never found myself so heavily invested in a story. Then when you combine the stunning musical scores of every game: "The Best is Yet to Come", "Can't Say Goodbye to Yesterday", "Snake Eater", "Way to Fall", "Calling to the Night", and "Here's to You" get me every single time.


It doesn't even matter if you don't like the gameplay. I know Splinter Cell did stealth much better, but the story is unequivocal. You cannot and will not find such an emotional piece in another story, let alone video game. Games entirely driven by their story, such as Heavy Rain, while good, are still nothing compared to the Metal Gear Solid series as a whole. While the original is extremely dated... dated to the point where you can't even roll... it is still a mindblowing game with capabilities and insight far ahead of its time. Never has a story made you actually weep for a character that was in it for under one sixth of the total time. You can feel the emotion of every scene. The aftermath of the battle with Sniper Wolf, the end of Metal Gear Solid, the end of Metal Gear Solid 2, the betrayal of Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3, the end of Metal Gear Solid 3, nearly every plot revelation in Metal Gear Solid 4, not to mention the epic final confrontation of Metal Gear Solid 4 in which an iconic theme from every game plays as the two combatants beat the ever living shit out of each other. Every single one of these moments brought me to tears and is forever burned upon my memory.


Bravo, Mr. Kojima. Your stories may be convoluted at times, your humor may be quirky and somewhat intrusive, but your vision has spawned the greatest game series of all time.

Upon the Echelons: A new favorite?!

What’s it been, two months? Sorry, I am lazy… very lazy. That’s it, no insane stories, no excuses, I was just lazy, sue me.

However, in my absence I have come across what may just be my new favorite video game, a little known JRPG by the name of Eternal Sonata.

What could possibly make this game to great as to not only challenge the Persona series for its exclusive spots in my top 3 favorite games, but to change my entire perception of how JRPG combat should work? Let me tell you.

First, the greatest thing about this game is the combat system. It works as a hybrid turn-based/real-time system similar to Valkyria Chronicles. In the beginning your characters have 5 seconds of Paused Active Time and Unlimited Tactical time, meaning so long as you do nothing your 5 seconds of Active Time will not deplete, but every action you take causes the bar to start counting down and once it reaches 0 your turn is over. As the game progresses you unlock Party Levels which begin to add restrictions in order to make battles more challenging and strategic. For example, at Party Level 2 your Active Time becomes Real-Time, once you take your first action the bar will count down regardless of if you stop, these restrictions continue to increase in intensity all the way to the end. However, to counteract this they also have bonuses from the Party Levels, such as 1.5x movement speed for party members, retaining “echoes” between battles, and the ability to chain multiple characters’ special abilities. Encounters take the visible enemy approach where you are able to see the encounters on the map as monsters and only touching them results in a battle, allowing you to skip groups of difficult enemies in favor of weaker ones, as well as lowering the ultimate attrition rate on your party’s healing items. Realistically, this game does everything about combat right, in fact, this game has spawned my new favorite combat system ever implemented into a game, the only thing I could possibly complain about is guarding, seeing as it’s the only way to significantly reduce damage taken Defense an almost worthless stat. Oh… and it’s 3 player co-operative, me and my two friends played through the entire game co-operatively, how awesome is that?

Now we get to the story of the game. I won’t go into detail explaining the story beyond it centering on 19^th century Pianist and Composer Frederic Francois Chopin and his dreams as he is dying of Tuberculosis.  Don’t worry, you don’t need to know anything about Chopin or music at all, there’s really only one dungeon that even mentions music in its puzzles and that is just a simple memorization puzzle. Throughout the story you will get bits of Chopin’s biography set to some of his music, giving the player insight into the portion of his life that influenced the world’s events in that chapter. It’s actually an extremely interesting portion of the game, not just to learn history or discover how the world is being shaped, but because of the music playing, doubtless you know something Chopin has written whether you know it or not, and simply discovering that he wrote it and what inspired him to write it is a truly unique experience. Also, do not be fooled by the seemingly saccharine cover, the game is mature in its story development, delving into morality, economics, politics, human society, philosophy, xenophobia, and existentialism. It is NOT an overly cheery JRPG with a “destroy the big baddy” plot.

But what about the characters? Surely a JRPG is just a crippled mass without a good cast. You’ve no worry in Eternal Sonata. Every character, except Beat the worthless runt, is colorful and deep with an at least average voice actor, plenty of character and the correct level of intensity. The cast is also varied, clocking in at 12 total playable characters (in the PS3 version) or 10 playable characters (in the 360 version).

If you are even a moderate fan of JRPGs I urge you to purchase this game immediately, it is superb, absolutely superb. I can personally guarantee that if you enjoy JRPGs this game will not disappoint you, especially if you can rope 2 others to play alongside you.